If the title of this post has an Enlightenment ring, it’s deliberate.  This second visit I came equipped with a modest knowledge of Japanese history, which is utterly fascinating; but it’s the social habitus that seizes you.  

In Schiphol airport waiting for the Glasgow flight, still thinking on the experience of the seminars.  A lot of what we talked about was grounded in Dewey’s educational pragmatism (more of Dewey & Japan in another post).  For Dewey, learning is a social process primarily.  As he points out in Experience and Nature, the achievement of social ends cannot be reduced to prior…

Vygotsky's notion of intellectual development was based on the idea of 'emergence or transformation of forms of mediation' (Wertsch, 1985, 15).  Certain intellectual tools, in other words (ie 'forms of mediation'), give rise to certain forms of thinking.  The remarkable thing about Vygotsky's formulation is how it liberates our thinking about culture, and particularly educational…

I missed the first panel session.  Later in the morning Gillian Calder from the University of Victoria, BC facilitated an excellent session where she showed us aspects of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques, and his Tree of Theatre.  And she did so by getting us to do it – experiential learning.  

We re-convened for the final session of this project in the David Hume Tower, Edinburgh University (see here for posting on one of the early sessions last year).  Zen and Maks introduced the two-day conference, then their key papers were briefly summarized and commented upon by Julian Webb and Tony Bradney. Interesting comments on fine papers.  Wished there…

At Fiona Cownie's invitation I gave a paper at the Oñati Workshop on Values in Legal Education, 23-24 April.  First day, first session was my paper: '"Associated thought"': social software, professional relationships and democratic professionalism'.  Slides here, draft paper here.  Discussion on the issues of technocratic vs democratic professionalism was fairly extended.  

  Cartoon courtesy of toothpastefordinner.com.   It’s been a l-o-n-g time but [terminator voice] I’m back.  No excuses, just life & writing got in the way of blogging.

Some very good sessions – of the ones I went to, Paul Catley's work on MCQs and their effect on student learning deserves a mention. Follow his work if you're interested in the use of quizzes, etc. Caroline Maughan's session with Jonathan Tecks on simulation, though I didn't attend it, looked excellent from the paper they produced.…

Am blogging (not quite live — not enough laptops for the presenters so mine had to be borrowed) the ALT conference organised by Hugo de Rijke here at the Tropenmuseum.  Hugo has recently re-organized the ALT web site, which is now hugely improved, and will be a real resource for law academics in the UK…

Great session by Paulo Lopes on Managing Inerpersonal situations' — so interactive that I cdn't live-blog it, so utterly engaging it was.  Learned a lot re facilitation from this. Presented SIMPLE, and felt once again, as after ANU, that a quick canter around the theory and practice is just not useful any more.  But perceptive…