Jeremy Hunsinger, Wilfrid Laurier University; Zachary J McDowell, University of Illinois at Chicago
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês
Learning infrastructures entail multiple meanings. On the one hand, it is the infrastructures that support learning, and on the other, it is also how we learn about infrastructures (writ large). First, exploring the infrastructures of learning helps to develop answers to the question, “what infrastructures do learning require in our contemporary world?” The second inquires how we learn about infrastructures and all that they entail.
The tension between these meanings highlights one of the central problems of infrastructure studies – Infrastructure studies as a field has the thesis of Invisibility. Infrastructure fades from our vision and memories, and accordingly fades as a research topic as it becomes naturalized and culturalized to become part of the background operations of our everyday life; simply put, infrastructure becomes invisible in everyday life. We all face the duty of making infrastructures visible and concrete to our respective audiences in order to legitimize the infrastructures and our practices surrounding them.
For over 20 years, learning infrastructures have transformed dramatically toward a more plural set of practices, methods, systems, and tools. Some more liberatory, and some not – some democratic, others lean authoritarian. The accidental experience of learning infrastructures is that like everything else they are part of the technical/social/hidden/etc. curriculum and students learn them as much or more than the stated curriculum itself.’
We want papers that engage questions of learning infrastructures, not only in the meanings that we provide but across all valences of the topic.
