Ways of knowing: Anthropological Approaches to crafting experience and knowledge – book overview

Ways of knowing: Anthropological Approaches to crafting experience and knowledge - Edited by Mark Harris (2007) published by Berghahn Books.

Brief summary in previous blog but now undertaking a deeper read into pertinent chapters for several articles I am working on.

The book has 14 chapter. The 3 chapter summarized in greater detail here are all from Part 3 – the rethinking embodiment section.

Chapter 8 by Professor T.Marchand ‘crafting knowledge: the role of ‘parsing and production’ in the communication of skilled-based knowledge among masons. The proposal in this chapter is the concept of embodied practice and manual movement as a form of communication. Hence, to study how trades people work, there is a need to understand how they go about doing work, often with very little verbal interaction. Yet, a multitude of nuanced activity is ‘parsed’ between workers. Activity includes how ‘assistants’ anticipate the needs of masons as they go about building structures and how groups of masons, working on one section of a building, coordinate activity to contribute to the final objective. Each goes about their activity individually but each is also cognizant to what other workers are up to. Therefore, the activity is choreographed without verbal interaction but communication through body language, task completion and shared understandings of the quality and functional objectives.

Chapter 9 with Dr. C.Grasseni on ‘communities of practice (CoP) and forms of life: towards the rehabilitation of vision? Grasseni uses ethnographical studies with farmers to understand the importance of vision in judging the characteristics of beef cattle and dairy cows. Grasseni’s thesis is how vision of quality indicators in animals, is learnt mainly, through long engagement with farming practice. The children of farmers are theorized as being submerged into farming CoPs from a young age and are able to recognize the physical characteristics of the animals under their care. The term ‘skilled vision’ is used to encompass the range of farming visual skills. These skills are used not only with animal husbandry but across the various farming work tasks. Many tasks include sociomaterial interactions, for instance with the landscape, weather and tools / machinery of farming. 

Chapter 10 by Associate Professor G.Downey presents ‘seeing with a ‘sideways glance’: visuomotor ‘knowing’ and the plasticity of perception. This interesting chapter, uses the ethnography of the Brazilian martial art, capoeira, to argue the thesis that expertise in martial arts, goes beyond the physical actions when ‘fighting’ occurs. There are other physical skills (gaze, walk, balance) and dispositions (tenacity, resilience, patience) learnt as practitioners hone their fighting skills.

These 3 chapters contribute to understanding the aspects of learning which have been difficult to pin down and describe. In particular, the role of observation in learning physical skills and judgement related to specialised activities. Also, the unspoken communications of skilled practice and how learners have to learn the 'language' if they hope to make progress. 

Convergence culture & the rise of visual intelligence

Finally finished this post! Over the mid-year break, I caught up with a couple of interesting books. I travelled across the ditch, first to Perth to catch up with family and then to Alice Springs for the annual NCVER conference on vocational education research.

Serendipitously, both the books I took along had a common thread. This being that technology is changing our society in the way people, organisations, governments etc. behave, relate to each other, go about with their lives etc.

The first book was Convergence culture :- where old and new media collide by Henry Jenkins. A good read too. The first chapter is quite hilarious in places. It covers how hard core fans of the TV programme Survivor, go to extreme lengths to try to find out who is left as the final survivor in each series. The fans, known as ‘spoilers’ post their detective work (which is often very sophisticated) on a web site / discussion forum. This forms the collective knowledge that all the fans registered on the website are able to access and build on. The goal of the intelligence gathering is to be able to work out who the last survivor is, before the end of the series. What caught me was the engagement the fans had with this process. If only we are able to replicate this with online learning!

Chapter five on media literacy and the Harry Potter Wars was also another chapter full of insightful findings for the educationalist. This chapter centres on a homeschooled13 year old who started up a web based ‘school newsletter’ for the fictional Hogwarts called the Daily Prophet. This publication has a staff of 102 children from all over the world! The website became an ‘affinity space’ whereby children could immerse themselves wholeheartedly into the Harry Potter universe.

The other book, is In a Mind’s Eye: Visual thinkers, gifted people with dyslexia and other difficulties, computer images and the ironies of creativity by Thomas G. West. A bit heavier reading, but worth the effort. The book looks at why gifted people like Einstein, Rodin, Lewis Carroll, Edison, Patton etc. had learning difficulties. The author argues that even though these people have made major contributions to science, art etc. they usually struggled at school and yet they blossomed in their careers, going on to become leaders in their field. For instance, Einstein struggled with arithmetic but excelled at the higher levels of maths.

The book then goes on to explore the ‘new’ literacy, that of ‘visual literacy’ that the information age has brought about. This ‘visual literacy’ advantages the lateral thinkers who do not fit into the factory schooling model. This is especially important now that we are on the cusp of the ‘knowledge revolution’, we need people who are able to find out, intuit about and learn things that were never known before.

From a tertiary teaching point of view, we need to provide advantages for all potential students into our programmes. When re-documenting our one year full time programme, we were asked to look at raising our entry requirements. I resisted this because from experience, school results bore little correlation to future success in baking. What mattered most was aptitude for the trade and an interest in learning about baking. I have learnt from many experiences, NEVER to write off a student at the start of the programme (or at the end of it!). Making a change during the programme is something I continually work at but sometimes, that change in an individual comes later in life. We therefore need to continue sowing the seeds so that when the time is right those seeds will germinate.