Stanley Frielick
Northland Polytechnic, New Zealand

de-learning: ecological ideas in cyberspace

Ecological ideas are surfacing in e-learning literature, emerging from earlier concepts of information ecology (Nardi & O'Day 1999), learning ecology (Brown 2000), communities of practice (Wenger 1998; Barab et al. 1999), networks as ecosystems (Kelly 1994), and evident in texts such as Deep Learning for a Digital Age (Weigel 2001) and e-Learning for the 21st Century (Garrison and Anderson 2003). There are however different flavours of ecological approaches, and it is important to critique these emerging perspectives in the light of a more authentic mode of thinking ecologically about education and reality. Much of the information technology and e-learning literature that claims an ecological approach (e.g. McCalla 2004) either ignores or is unaware of this paradigm. A more authentic approach requires a process of de-learning.

In de-learning, we enter the zone of confluence between the emergent ecological idea and networked information technologies. Turkle has pointed out that on the internet, 'we are encouraged to think of ourselves as fluid, emergent, decentralized, multiplicious, flexible, and forever in process.' (Turkle 1995:263). The internet thus concretises the Lacanian notion that identity is constituted in language, or in other words, a new technology gives form to an abstract psychological theory. In the same way, networked information technologies can be seen as the physical manifestation of an ecological epistemology, most clearly stated by Bateson (1972, 1979).

Perhaps the most important implication here is that the teaching/learning setting (the classroom, the lecture theatre, the e-learning environment, the department, and even the institution itself) can be viewed as a system that is characterised by mental events. The dialogical processes of language and communication between teachers, students and the subject within these nested contexts can be seen as the pathways in which the processes of information exchange and transformation occur. Learning and the development of knowledge and understanding emerge from the complex interactions between the different parts as information travels around the physical and mental pathways that constitute the total ecology of mind or mental system.

The central question for exploring this relationship is: in what ways do ecological systems and mental systems share the same characteristics? How can we conceive of a teaching/learning setting as an ecosystem? Is ecology just a metaphor for thinking about a process or does a networked learning environment function like an ecosystem? These questions have been explored in more detail in Frielick (2004). In summary, the key idea is that teaching/learning is an ecosystemic process of transforming information into knowledge, in which teacher-subject-student relationships are embedded or situated in a context where complex interacting influences shape the quality of learning outcomes. This perspective goes beyond constructivism, into a new ecology of cognition and learning known as enactivism (Varela, Thompson & Roche 1991; Davis, Sumara & Kieren 1996).

To understand this new ecology of learning, we have to 'de-learn'. De-learning is a dual, synchronous process of deconstruction and enacting new understandings. It is important to deconstruct the assumptions underlying popular approaches to e-learning and develop a new set of principles that are appropriate for education in a connected, complex, and rapidly changing world. The paper examines some recent evidence on the shortcomings of e-learning and situates this within the broader genre of critical discourse on the uses of technology in education and society. It proposes a new framework for developing e-learning based on emerging ecological ideas about teaching and learning in cyberspace.

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