Some extracts from Estrid Sørensen's book Materiality of Learning
"... instead of predefining the specific ways in which humans and materials relate to one another, I analyse the particular forms of technology, knowledge and presence that are performed out of particular socio-material arrangements.The question of how parts relate to one another is an empirical question."
"a minimal methodology, which applies the theoretical technologies of imaginaries, performance and participation. I develop the notion of spatial imaginaries as a sensitivity to describing how participants relate and what spatial formation is thereby created. The spatial imaginary of a socio-material arrangement describes the pattern, landscape, or shape that is formed spatially by and through relations and the parts they connect.
It is a methodology that attempts to know as little as possible in advance.
Definitions are results, not beginnings."
"Spatial metaphors, suggested by Mol and Law (2001), help characterize the different patterns of relation in which the computer program and other materials participated in practice.
1. the metaphor of network indicates the connectedness
2. fluid, the varying character of the ways in which components are related
3. region, the grouping of elements in containers.
One particular aspect of spatial imaginaries is that they enable us to describe how one technology participates in different ways, forming different patterns of relations. "
"
Participation: is the concept that allows us to ask how material and other participants participate in practice. We should not focus on participants; instead we should follow participation, which is the way in which components take part in practice. Is the relationship between the pupil and the room really "noticing"?
Performance: allows us to ask what is achieved through an arrangement of interrelating parts, of participations. If the relationship between the boy and the room is of "noticing", we may say that through this relationship he is performed as "observer" and his knowledge of the room is performed as "impression."
Imaginary: Concepts and sensitivities are thus developed in the course of research process, not as representational knowledge about the empirical practice but as methodological concepts that embody and translate the empirical experiences. .. appreciation for the materiality of doing research
"
