From Learning Machines to Learning Humans: How Cybernetic Machine Models Inspired Experimental Pedagogies

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

This article analyses how Heinz von Foerster’s Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) translated cybernetic concepts into an experimental pedagogy tailored to the interests of the youth of the American intellectual counterculture. The existing research literature assumes that the opening of BCL to the counterculture in the early 1970s was the result of a radical shift from first- to second-order cybernetic theory; in other words, the result of a new epistemological position. This article instead attempts to identify similarities between the design of cybernetic ‘learning machines’ in the early 1960s and Foerster’s teaching methods that characterised BCL between 1968 and 1976. The article will show that Foerster’s pedagogy was inspired by a specific style of thinking that can already be found in earlier cybernetic research practices. Concerning both the early and the late phase of the BCL, oral history sources, as well as original publications and archival material, were used.
Original languageEnglish
JournalHistory of Education
Volume50
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)112-133
Number of pages22
ISSN0046-760X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 02.01.2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Reducing problematic alcohol use in employees: economic evaluation of guided and unguided web-based interventions alongside a three-arm randomized controlled trial
  2. Logical-Rollenspiele
  3. Aboveground overyielding in grassland mixtures is associated with reduced biomass partitioning to belowground organs
  4. Green your community click by click
  5. "Introduction," communication +1
  6. On-board pneumatic pressure generation methods for soft robotics applications
  7. Degrees of Integration
  8. Does online-delivered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia improve insomnia severity in nurses working shifts? Protocol for a randomised-controlled trial
  9. Europe and the media: Changing structures in a changing context
  10. How do distinct facets of tree diversity and community assembly respond to environmental variables in the subtropical Atlantic Forest?
  11. When Do Pictures Help Learning from Expository Text? Multimedia and Modality Effects in Primary Schools
  12. Subsistence and substitutability in consumer preferences
  13. Probing turbulent superstructures in Rayleigh-Bénard convection by Lagrangian trajectory clusters
  14. Digital Seriality as Structure and Process
  15. Development of a robust classifier of freshwater residence in barramundi (Lates calcarifer) life histories using elemental ratios in scales and boosted regression trees
  16. Narrative dialogic reading with wordless picture books
  17. Extrusion Benchmark 2009 – A Step Ahead in Virtual Process Optimization
  18. How to assess transformative performance towards sustainable development in higher education institutions
  19. Introduction: The representative turn in EU Studies
  20. Learning linear classifiers sensitive to example dependent and noisy costs
  21. Swarm Robotics, or: the smartness of 'a bunch of cheap dumb things'
  22. Repeated sampling detects gene flow in a flightless ground beetle in a fragmented landscape
  23. Digital language teaching after COVID-19: what can we learn from the crisis?
  24. Credit constraints and exports: A survey of empirical studies using firm level data
  25. The Role of Public Participation in Managing Uncertainty in the Implementation of the Water Framework Directive
  26. A Soft Alignment Model for Bug Deduplication
  27. Model-based estimation of pesticides and transformation products and their export pathways in a headwater catchment