Situated learning and practices procomunals

Abstract

Education is standardized, hierarchical and homogeneous, while learning is always embodied, situated and local. Education evokes the imperatives of the evaluation, discipline and textbook. Learning, however, has to be written in plural (Education vs. Learnings), it has to be thought as emerging (Horizontal vs. Distributed) and has to be lived as concrete (vs. Plans vs. Practices). Our work aims to show, through the analysis of a few representative cases, how to change our image of education when viewed from the perspective of the commons. The commons is a concept that opens our minds to different ways of managing shared resources. When we refer it to learning processes we evoke extramural processes, horizontal behaviors, open organizations, recursive structures and inalienable knowledges. The examples we bring here make these differences more evident and show theire relevance for the world we inhabit. We also want to emphasize its special relationship with the new technologies, because not everything that has been written about the School 2.0 is synonymous of commons. In short, our aim is to turn the notion of commons on a experimental area, an area that helps us to understand the importance of informal structures, extitutionals practices, p2p culture, DIY behaviors, hacking proposals, collaborative environments and emerging communities for regenerating the education.