As a young undergraduate studying history, I was keenly interested in people and the ways we have interacted with others; be it those within the same group or with ‘outsiders’. Just how those interactions led to where we are today is fascinating. What is becoming abundantly clear is just how much more there is to the story of people. Not only do we interact with each other, but we intra-act with other, both organic and non-organic. Intra-action, as Barad (2011) states, is “when two things are what they are in relation to each other and come into being”. Of course, two entities can interact and intra-act simultaneously, but this way of thinking about humans and everything else around us can shift our thinking into the view of new materialism.
New materialism is a way to look at the world and the things in it that goes beyond the anthropomorphic binary of human and else. This dualism ignores the fact that non-organic material has incredible potential for impact on the sentient world. Objects themselves are influential and exert agency on other objects and on humans as ‘agential matter’ (Bolt, 2012, p. 3).
The Microbit, a small computer chip with a variety of inputs and outputs is mean to teach students about computing and programming. This little device goes much further than just helping the brain understand computer science fundamentals; it provokes the learner to engage with matter in a way that seems interactive. This thing is responding to very specific instructions given by the learner, which in turn, elicits more response by the learner in the form of debugging or increasingly complex code. The form and function of a Microbit is, admittedly, produced by a human, but the fact that this is not a naturally-occurring phenomenon doesn’t render it any less important for exerting agency and potential. The device and user are then engaged in an entangled dance that results in the altered trajectories of human experience, learning, and collaboration. They act, together with other things and forces, to exclude, invite and regulate particular forms of participation’ (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010)
The Microbit manages to take this primary engagement to a secondary level. The design, like any other crafted tool, is done by humans on the other end of the production process. In this way, the designers have a significant influence on the mediation of interactivity and intra-activity. The way they build the hardware and program the software affects how kids learn to write programs. This then triggers what the device becomes, and in turn, triggers new learning and development of the user, and a reciprocal relationship ensues. Toohy Kelleen (2018) points out that a new materialist perspective affirms that humans and non-humans (things, places, time, and so on) interact with one another and are continually in states of becoming. When both user and object inform the development and becoming of each other, we organics are able to see the material world as more than having just “engagement potential”; we view it as a partnership that we can affect, and can be affected by, in order to develop and evolve.
References
Barad, K. (2011). Nature’s queer performativity. Qui Parle, 19(2), 121-158. doi:10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0121
Bolt, B. (2012). Introduction. Toward a “new materialism” through the arts. In E. Barrett & B. Bolt (Eds.), Carnal knowledge: Towards a ‘new materialism’ through the arts (pp. 1–14). London: I.B. Tauris.
Cher Hill (2018) “More-than-reflective practice: Becoming a diffractive practitioner” http://journals.sfu.ca/tlpd/index.php/tlpd/article/viewFile/28/pdf
Edwards, R., & Fenwick, T. (2010). Actor-network theory in education Taylor and Francis. doi:10.4324/9780203849088
Jennifer Charterisa, Dianne Smardona and Emily Nelson (2017) Innovative learning environments and new materialism: A conjunctural analysis of pedagogic spaces. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49, No. 8, pp. 808–821 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2017.1298035
Toohey, Kelleen (2018) “New materialism and language learning”, Ch. 2 in Learning English at School (2nd edition) Multilingual Matters: Bristol