**6. Distributed cognition and school – Environments of learning**

The Distributed Cognition Hypothesis proposes the agency of the environment in meaning construction and the detection of what is meaningful and important for fulfilling action goals in a given setting. These ideas provoke methodological changes in cognitive investigation (Clark and Chalmers, 1998, p. 10), as elicits new and fresh comprehensions about facts and phenomena relating cognitive actions and behaviours – learning, and also memory, language acquisition, beliefs, intersubjectivity, cognitive development, psychomotor abilities. It means that the idea of learning in cognitive niches cannot be the same as the one put by traditional theories of cognition, which usually does not consider the situated identity of the learner in educational contexts. Learning in cognitive niches, as we see, is an agentic, dynamic and creative cognitive action which includes the appropriation of institutional practices, norms, instruments and behaviours (Wertsch, 1998; Sawyer & Greeno, 2009).

Consequently, in the classroom cognitive niche, with its variety of material and symbolic artefacts, we can expect a set of cognitive behaviours and the emergence of a given kind of affordances which are specific of that niche, and are not found anywhere else – as we could testify in the observation of the History lesson depicted in this chapter.

Studies on Evolutionary Psychology corroborate the idea that the cognitive actions and behaviours identified in the classroom niche can be described as a phylogenetic achievement, due to the Developmental Psychology supposition for the phylogenetic basis for constructing and understanding cognitive behaviours related to specific settings for pedagogical actions (Premack and Premack, 1996; Csibra and Gergely, 2006). These studies favour the definition of the proper nature of pedagogy and teaching and learning actions as cognitive systems. So all people involved in teaching and learning activities are operating cognitively in a way which is specific for pedagogic purpose, and not for any other one.

Assuming these postulations, we advocate that the classroom is a delimited universe where learners, at the same time, are affecting and being affected by its structural organization, which includes the contents to be taught and the material and symbolic artefacts chosen to instrumentalize learning. They construct (= act meaningfully) over the symbolic and material artefacts offered by the teacher and the courseware, and turn them into things that they can understand, utilize. In this structured setting, any semiotic object posited as a public use is an object of negotiation, so material and symbolic artefacts are part of the intersubjective negotiation and normative regulations in the classroom.

Learning in Cognitive Niches 15

of the dynamics in the niche (Franks, 2011, p. 174). They do that by observing, before properly beginning the activity, what the students by themselves recognize as affordances in the classroom setting, and what artefacts and previous knowledge they bring to the classroom. In doing so, teachers will be identifying and eliciting the internal domains of the students which might be blended to the external ones in order for the students to detect all suitable affordances which will help them learning contents in a particular activity (Tomasello, 1999).

But teachers can only do this after having established to themselves and to the students the learning goals intended through that activity, and must be sensible to detect whether the students are keeping or not these goals in mind. This is necessary because the learners will only perceive what is important and useful for them to perform a specific activity in a given context if they know what they are performing that activity for. These actions can provide the students with more possibilities to act semiotically over the artefacts, and these behaviours are linked to their stronger singularization in the classroom, and to more possibilities of effective learning. During the years, the recurrence of this kind of action can help learners develop metacognitively (Perfect and Schwartz, 2002; Israel et al, 2005; Waters and Schneider, 2010), or, in other words, to construct their autonomy as learners, from the establishment of their own goals to accomplish a specific activity, and from the conscious

But obviously several factors can jeopardize the success in these actions, and they can be related to problems in the detection of affordances in a given environment. Bardone (2011) presents some of them, showing that these problems can be either in the person, or in the environment. Difficulties in the detection of affordances due to problems of the person are called "hidden affordances": they occur, according to Bardone, when the person cannot make use of the signals because either he/she is not enabled to detect affordances, or he/she does not see the clues for recognizing them. Difficulties in the detection of affordances for environmental problems are called "failed affordances", and occur when the affordances are

Hidden and failed affordances can occur (at the same time, in some occasions) when the student does not bring to the classroom the previous knowledge enough to be articulated to the goals of action and cognitive behaviour specific of the learning task. They also occur when there is ambiguity in the configuration of the available signs, and this problem it not solved by the teacher. It also occurs when there is no clear definition of the goals to undertake a specific task in the classroom, or these goals are not offered as they should be.

Moreover, taken the asymmetrical nature of the relationship between students and teacher, the problems in the detection of affordances emerge when the teacher does not establishes himself/herself as the "triggerer" of the students' learning process, does not elicit the students' previous knowledge, and does not act upon the tasks in the classroom in order to adapt their structure to help the students detect by themselves the affordances as situated

That's what happened to Acerola's teacher: she was not sensitive to perceive that her students' were not aware of the time and space of the events that she was describing; that's

employment of the resources for the established aims.

badly offered or elaborated, and this impedes their identification.

guides for learning.

These regulations are institutional: the school as an institution structures the way people cognize in the niche: the process of institutionalization is a specific case of conceptualization of an entity in the world; it establishes a code which specifies how an action in a certain context should be interpreted, or, similarly, establishes the sufficient conditions for the application of institutional concepts (Tummolini and Castelfranchi, 2006). Even in classrooms of different Disciplines, their common normative regulations and intersubjectivity conditions lead people to assume functionally similar cognitive behaviours, recognizing themselves as situated subjects, and to tackle with material and symbolic objects in a functionally similar fashion as well.

These assumptions, together with the observation of the meaningful acts of Acerola in his role of teacher-learner, bring the importance of taking into account the importance of the students as cognoscent agents in the classroom semiotic construction, as well as the artefacts they interact with. Both need to be framed in the classroom as an institutional space. The quality of joint conceptualization from these artefacts, which includes the way they are seen by teachers and students, is an important variable for achieving the quality of interlocution, and learning, ultimately.

One of the consequences of this perspective is establishing the student as an agent of his own learning enterprise, although the asymmetric intersubjectivity condition is one of the classroom institutional patterns: teachers must assist students in the task of turning the classroom environment in a source of affordances. The duty of the one who searches for understanding and creating good learning environments and conditions is to define the bases from which this essential task can be accomplished, and how all important features of teaching and learning must be idealized and situated towards it.

About this concern, some initial points are already established: we know that learning occours with an improvement of our capacity of observing and detecting affordances in the niches where we are settled, relatively to our goals of cognizing. We also know that the previous knowledge of a person is pivotal for him/her to detect affordances. Therefore, the more previous knowledge he/she fits to the niche, the more useful affordances he/she will be able to capture. As a matter of fact, we could see, from the cognitive actions of Acerola, that his previous knowledge and the employment of the knowledge common to all the students in the classroom structured the creation of an affordance which could help him give more understandable information to his colleagues.

Therefore, teachers need to help students detect the affordances needed for the activity at issue, having in mind that the ability of perceiving affordances is directly related to the quality of the dynamics in the niche (Franks, 2011, p. 174). They do that by observing, before properly beginning the activity, what the students by themselves recognize as affordances in the classroom setting, and what artefacts and previous knowledge they bring to the classroom. In doing so, teachers will be identifying and eliciting the internal domains of the students which might be blended to the external ones in order for the students to detect all suitable affordances which will help them learning contents in a particular activity (Tomasello, 1999).

14 Current Topics in Children's Learning and Cognition

in a functionally similar fashion as well.

and learning, ultimately.

Assuming these postulations, we advocate that the classroom is a delimited universe where learners, at the same time, are affecting and being affected by its structural organization, which includes the contents to be taught and the material and symbolic artefacts chosen to instrumentalize learning. They construct (= act meaningfully) over the symbolic and material artefacts offered by the teacher and the courseware, and turn them into things that they can understand, utilize. In this structured setting, any semiotic object posited as a public use is an object of negotiation, so material and symbolic artefacts are part of the

These regulations are institutional: the school as an institution structures the way people cognize in the niche: the process of institutionalization is a specific case of conceptualization of an entity in the world; it establishes a code which specifies how an action in a certain context should be interpreted, or, similarly, establishes the sufficient conditions for the application of institutional concepts (Tummolini and Castelfranchi, 2006). Even in classrooms of different Disciplines, their common normative regulations and intersubjectivity conditions lead people to assume functionally similar cognitive behaviours, recognizing themselves as situated subjects, and to tackle with material and symbolic objects

These assumptions, together with the observation of the meaningful acts of Acerola in his role of teacher-learner, bring the importance of taking into account the importance of the students as cognoscent agents in the classroom semiotic construction, as well as the artefacts they interact with. Both need to be framed in the classroom as an institutional space. The quality of joint conceptualization from these artefacts, which includes the way they are seen by teachers and students, is an important variable for achieving the quality of interlocution,

One of the consequences of this perspective is establishing the student as an agent of his own learning enterprise, although the asymmetric intersubjectivity condition is one of the classroom institutional patterns: teachers must assist students in the task of turning the classroom environment in a source of affordances. The duty of the one who searches for understanding and creating good learning environments and conditions is to define the bases from which this essential task can be accomplished, and how all important features of

About this concern, some initial points are already established: we know that learning occours with an improvement of our capacity of observing and detecting affordances in the niches where we are settled, relatively to our goals of cognizing. We also know that the previous knowledge of a person is pivotal for him/her to detect affordances. Therefore, the more previous knowledge he/she fits to the niche, the more useful affordances he/she will be able to capture. As a matter of fact, we could see, from the cognitive actions of Acerola, that his previous knowledge and the employment of the knowledge common to all the students in the classroom structured the creation of an affordance which could help him give more

Therefore, teachers need to help students detect the affordances needed for the activity at issue, having in mind that the ability of perceiving affordances is directly related to the quality

teaching and learning must be idealized and situated towards it.

understandable information to his colleagues.

intersubjective negotiation and normative regulations in the classroom.

But teachers can only do this after having established to themselves and to the students the learning goals intended through that activity, and must be sensible to detect whether the students are keeping or not these goals in mind. This is necessary because the learners will only perceive what is important and useful for them to perform a specific activity in a given context if they know what they are performing that activity for. These actions can provide the students with more possibilities to act semiotically over the artefacts, and these behaviours are linked to their stronger singularization in the classroom, and to more possibilities of effective learning. During the years, the recurrence of this kind of action can help learners develop metacognitively (Perfect and Schwartz, 2002; Israel et al, 2005; Waters and Schneider, 2010), or, in other words, to construct their autonomy as learners, from the establishment of their own goals to accomplish a specific activity, and from the conscious employment of the resources for the established aims.

But obviously several factors can jeopardize the success in these actions, and they can be related to problems in the detection of affordances in a given environment. Bardone (2011) presents some of them, showing that these problems can be either in the person, or in the environment. Difficulties in the detection of affordances due to problems of the person are called "hidden affordances": they occur, according to Bardone, when the person cannot make use of the signals because either he/she is not enabled to detect affordances, or he/she does not see the clues for recognizing them. Difficulties in the detection of affordances for environmental problems are called "failed affordances", and occur when the affordances are badly offered or elaborated, and this impedes their identification.

Hidden and failed affordances can occur (at the same time, in some occasions) when the student does not bring to the classroom the previous knowledge enough to be articulated to the goals of action and cognitive behaviour specific of the learning task. They also occur when there is ambiguity in the configuration of the available signs, and this problem it not solved by the teacher. It also occurs when there is no clear definition of the goals to undertake a specific task in the classroom, or these goals are not offered as they should be.

Moreover, taken the asymmetrical nature of the relationship between students and teacher, the problems in the detection of affordances emerge when the teacher does not establishes himself/herself as the "triggerer" of the students' learning process, does not elicit the students' previous knowledge, and does not act upon the tasks in the classroom in order to adapt their structure to help the students detect by themselves the affordances as situated guides for learning.

That's what happened to Acerola's teacher: she was not sensitive to perceive that her students' were not aware of the time and space of the events that she was describing; that's

why she heard questions about Ancient Romans and modern weapons, but didn't bother of them. The result was that the map that she was using as a possible affordance has failed in its aim to help students construct a conceptual view of past and elsewhere events.

Learning in Cognitive Niches 17

This possibilities bring the task to improve didactic practices and pedagogic projects not only from a better understanding about learning as a cognitive accomplishment, but also from comprehending how it is possible to construct a better institutional structure for this aim. To face this challenge, the body of research in Cognitive Science, especially in distributed cognition, can bring resources for a wide and necessary institutional discussion about learning processes. And the assumption of the classroom as a cognitive niche can materialize the necessary interchange between cognitive and social sciences, because its complete comprehension demands the articulation of cognitive and cultural

However, we must say that the non-autonomist and non-essentialist perspective of cognition, in which we are inscribed, is not turned to define *a priori* how people cognize in a given context. But the fact that the classroom is a normatized space, i.e., a space regulated by social and cultural constraints, elicits an attempt to establish some parameters of the way the students deal with symbolic and material artefacts, and deliver possible understandings about the intersubjective structures that can be found in the classroom. Keeping these purposes in mind, the studies on distributed cognition can ally to other achievements which have pointed to the need to problematize school as an institution – its alleged aims and the historical and ideological basis upon which it is funded, in order to provide the students

This text results from research performed during the Post-doctoral term on Cognitive Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom, granted by CAPES

Anderson, M., and Chemero, A. (2009). Affordances and intentionality: reply to Roberts.

Bardone, E. (2011). *Seeking chances*: from biased rationality to distributed cognition. Berlin:

Bardone, E., Magnani, L. (2007). Sharing representations through cognitive niche

Carassa, A.; Colombetti, M.; Morganti, F. The role of joint commitment in intersubjectivity. In: F. Morganti, A. Carassa, G. Riva (Eds.). *Enacting intersubjectivity:* a cognitive and social perspective on the study of interactions. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2008, p.187-201.

with a better quality of work and learning, during the time that they are there.

(Coordination For the Improvement of Senior Staff) – Brazil.

*Journal of Mind and Behavior*, 30-4, p. 301-312.

construction. *Data Science Journal,* 6-9, p.87-91.

systems.

**Author details** 

**Acknowledgement** 

Springer-Verlag.

**8. References** 

Ana Flávia Lopes Magela Gerhardt *Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil* 
