Abstract :
Traditionally, at least according to popular wisdom, learning took place in
venues that were custom-designed for the purpose. The purpose, given the
evidence of the artefacts withwhichwe are confronted, seems to have been the
educational equivalent of the production line that so succinctly characterised
the industrialisation of society. One consequence of this design logic, however,
is that learning is defined as something that is married to a ‘place’. This paper
will argue that the conceptual ‘slippage’ that characterises the disappearing
differences between ‘learning spaces’ and ‘learning environments’, coupled
with the further ‘displacement’ of the learner (turned avatar) in virtual spaces
such as Facebook and Second Life, serves to ‘displace’ learning itself. The paper
argues further that we have failed to recognise the primacy of ‘physical situatedness’
to our conceptions of learning itself. In short, our difficulty in understanding
and articulating the nature of learning is partly brought about by our
inability to articulate where learning takes place—in a world characterised by
virtual space and electronic selves. If we are to articulate the nature of learning
in our age, then we need to articulate the nature of the real and virtual
spaces and bodies that we inhabit.
