From March 5 to 9, Alin Olteanu will give a guest lecture course "Semiotic approaches to learning and education"

27.02.2018

Participation 1 ECTS. SIS code is FLSE.00.305. Jakobi 2-306

The aim of this course is to offer students an insight into the main, current positions in semiotics in regard to learning and education, in a set of five (crash course) seminars. Traditional learning and educational theories will be compared to semiotic approaches, focusing on the cornerstone novelty that semiotics can offer to educational practice and research, namely its non-anthropocentric grounding of learning in embodied modelling, and not in an assumed specifically human reason or a peculiar feature, such as linguistic articulation. The main semiotic theories of learning, used for founding a semiotic philosophy of education will be explored. Particularly, the course will offer a review of the recent edusemiotic framework, which recently refreshed educational research in a few concerns and illustrated novel applications of semiotic theory. The implications of such a perspective on education for several domains, such as the environment, literacy and digitalization will be discussed.

Following this course, students should:

- Acquire a general understanding of literature within the edusemiotic framework;

- Acquire an understanding of recent literature on how biosemiotic theory can offer a non-dualist educational model;

- Discover new avenues for research in digital media, ecology and literacy, in a semiotic perspective;

Traditional learning and educational theories will be compared to semiotic approaches, focusing on the cornerstone novelty that semiotics can offer to educational practice and research, namely its non-anthropocentric grounding of learning in embodied modelling, and not in an assumed specifically human reason or a peculiar feature, such as linguistic articulation. The main semiotic theories of learning, used for founding a semiotic philosophy of education will be explored. Particularly, the course will offer a review of the recent edusemiotic framework, which recently refreshed educational research in a few concerns and illustrated novel applications of semiotic theory. The implications of such a perspective on education for several domains, such as the environment, literacy and digitalization will be discussed.

Participation will be credited 1 ECTS. 

Lectures will be held in English.

Monday 14.15-15.45;

Tuesday 18.15-19.45;

Wednesday 18.15-19.45;

Thursday 16.15-17.45;

Friday 12.14-13.45

Literature

a. Mandatory (available at Study Information System)

Sebeok, T. A. 1991. The doctrine of signs. In A sign is just a sign. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Lotman, Y. M. 1994. The text within the text. PMLA 103(3): 377-384.

Stables, A. 2007. Sign(al)s: living and learning as semiotic engagement. Journal of Curriculum Studies. 38(4): 373-387.

Cobley, P., Stjernfelt, F. 2015. Scaffolding Development as the Human Condition. Biosemiotics 8:291-304.

b. Additionally recommended

Marrone, G. Farewell to representation: text and society. In Bankov, Kristian, Cobley, Paul (eds.). Semiotics and Its Masters: Volume 1, p. 105-120. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.

Ciula, A., Eide, Ø. 2017. Modelling in digital humanities: signs in context. Digital scholarship in the humanities, 32 (1). i33-i46.

Ciula, A., Marras, C. 2016. Circling around text and language: towards “pragmatic modelling” in Digital Humanities. DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly. 10(3).

Danesi, Marcel. 2008. The medium is the sign: was McLuhan a semiotician? Media Tropes 1: 113-126.

Davydov, Vasilii Vasil’evich. 2008. Problems of Developmental Instruction: A Theoretical and Experimental Psychological Study. New York: Nova Science Publishers.

Dewey, John. 1997 [1938]. Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone.

Hoffmeyer, Jesper. 2008a. Semiotic scaffolding of living systems. in Introduction to biosemiotics: the new biological synthesis, ed. Barbieri, M. Dordrecht: Springer.

Hoffmeyer. 2008b. The biosemiotic body. Biosemiotics 1: 169-190.

Hoffmeyer, Jesper. 2015. Introduction: Semiotic Scaffolding. Biosemiotics 8:153-158.

Kralemann. B., Lattmann, C. 2011. The semantics of models: a semiotic philosophy of science approach. In Semantics in data and knowledge bases, eds. Shewe, K., Thalheim, B., 50-69. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

Kralemann, B., Lattmann, C. 2013. Models as icons: modeling models in the semiotic framework of Peirce’s theory of signs. Synthese 190: 3397–3420.

Kress, G., Leeuwen, T. van. 2001. Multimodal Discourse: the Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.

Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London: Routledge.

Lankshear, C., Knobel, M. (eds.). 2008. Digital literacies: concepts, policies and practices. Bern: Peter Lang.

Maran, Timo, Kull, Kalevi. 2014. Ecosemiotics: main principles and current developments, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 96 (1): 41–50.

Moxey, Keith. 2008. Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn. Journal of Visual Culture 7(2): 131-146.

Nöth, Winfried. 1998. Ecosemiotics, Sign Systems Studies 26, (pp. 332-343)

Nöth, W. 2014. The semiotics of learning new words. Journal of Philosophy of Education 48(3): 446-456.

Sebeok, Thomas A. 2001. Signs: An introduction to semiotics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Stables, Andrew. 2005. Living and Learning as Semiotic Engagement: A New Theory of Education. Lewiston, NY: Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.

Stables, Andrew. 2008. Can Humanism be Environmentalism? The Tumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 86–95. Published online at http://trumpeter.athabscau.ca

Stables, Andrew. 2012. Be(com)ing Human: Semiosis and the Myth of Reason. Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense Publishers.

Stables, A., and S. Semetsky. 2015. Edusemiotics: Semiotic Philosophy as Educational Foundation. New York: Routledge.

Stjernfelt, Frederik. 2007. Diagrammatology. An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology and Semiotics. Dordrecht: Springer.

Stjernfelt, Frederik. 2014. Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce’s Doctrine of Dicisigns. Boston: Docent Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. 1978 [1930]. Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.