4E Cognition is a developing branch of perspectives within cognitive science (Newen et al. 2018) that present new and exciting ideas about how cognition and related cognitive processes might work.
There are 4 major "branches" to 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended. Importantly, while they are often discussed independently from each other, they all blend and relate together in complex and dynamic ways (Newen et al. 2018).
The 4E approach gives us some interesting ways to explore learning. If cognition is embodied, then how can we design learning to involve the body? If cognition is embedded within socio-cultural contexts, how can we design learning to teach within that context? If cognition is concerned with recognizing and acting upon opportunities, how can we design learning to explicitly showcase those opportunities? If cognition can involve technology tools, how do we design learning to teach our students the appropriate use of those tools?
Interestingly, there are foundational works within and adjacent to our field that align with the different branches of 4E cognition. Not all align with the branch by name, though some explicitly do.
Embodied
Embedded
Enactive
Extended
Embodied cognition rejects the mind-body duality, and believes that cognitive information is stored modally. Cognition is inexplicably influenced by the body in which the mind inhabits.
Embedded cognition explains how cognition might be embedded within a larger socio-cultural or material ecosystem. In this branch, the individual is inseparably embedded in the environment and the context.
Enactive cognition deals with how a person sees affordances in their environment, and how they respond to those affordances. This branch suggests that we should explicitly teach both learner attentions and intentions.
Extended cognition suggests that cognition involves tools and artifacts outside of the mind and body itself. This branch implies that teaching should address how to orchestrate and navigate essential external tools and resources.
I conducted a grounded theory study to analyze the structure of video game tutorials. The goal was to explore how these tutorial experiences were designed from a pedagogical lens and to consider how any emerging patterns, trends, or elements could be applied to serious software training.
Research Questions:
I recorded gameplay footage from seven different, popular video games from different genres. Analyzing the footage, I broke down the structure of each tutorial into "discreet instructional units." Using the constant comparative method, these DIUs were qualitatively coded through open coding. Afterward, I went through stages of axial and selective coding to cluster and group toward larger, more unifying trends.
Ultimately, we found 269 DIUs, 13 axial codes, and a single selective theme of "designed situatedness." This selective theme also resulted in the proposal of 3 design principles used in video game tutorials that could be applied to software training. These design principles align with enactive cognition, embedded cognition, and cognitive apprenticeships. The results were presented at AECT's 2023 International Conference, and a larger paper that ties the results of the study into my developing theoretical framework is under development.
I am developing an immersive, 180-degree stereoscopic VR video learning experience for pre-service music teachers. The goal is to create a unique learning experience that is rooted in 4E principles to support pre-service music teachers to better recognize educational affordances in the rehearsal environment and to take more skilled action in response to those affordances.
Research Questions:
An iterative design process is being used to create the IVR learning experience. Footage of a music rehearsal was recorded using a stereoscopic video camera, capturing a 180-degree field of view from the perspective of the ensemble director. This footage was intentionally edited to facilitate a learning experience rooted in 4E cognition, with an emphasis on enactive cognition and the skilled intentionality framework. The participant experiences the rehearsal from the perspective of a more expert director, is supported with visual cues to indicate potential affordances in the environment, and learns more about the expert's perspective and actions similar to a cognitive apprenticeship approach.
A pre-service music teacher engaged in the learning experience. Footage of the participant's first-person view within the VR headset was captured, and their entire experience was also filmed in third-person from a separate camera. Audio of their spoken dialogue during the experience was recorded, as were their responses to a semi-structured interview at the end of the experience.
The data gathered during this session is currently under analysis. Findings from this "tech demo" will be used to further iterate on the learning experience, improve the instructional flow of the design, and to guide further development of this research project.
As a long-term goal, I want to develop a new theory or framework that synthesize the branches of 4E and centers on authentic teaching and learning for pre-professional students.
The idea is that authenticity is not merely replicating the tasks of practitioners for learners in a classroom. According to enactive cognition, this alone would be ineffective because novices and experts are different. They view the environment differently, recognize different opportunities, and take different actions in response.
Instead, authenticity could serve as a central anchor, around which the branches and perspectives of 4E are situated. Authentic teaching would necessarily involve explicit teaching of attention and intention. It would explicitly teach learners to orchestrate networks of information nodes that include their internal knowledge and external sources to better discriminate between environmental affordances and better select effective actions and responses. All of this decision-making process needs to be taught within a sociomaterial lens, embedded within the specific discipline that is relevant to the pre-professional student.
This would be accomplished through a potentially career-long grounded theory approach. I can continue to implement smaller, targeted studies and designs that help to better uncover aspects of learning from different branches of 4E. A meta-level grounded theory study of my body of work would potentially yield trends, patterns, and themes that could be used to redefine authentic teaching and learning from the 4E perspective.
