Changing Subjectivities,New Learning

In this article I argue that today's social transformations are of such depth and significance that they demand a fundamental rethinking of the nature of pedagogy. I address 3 closely interwoven facets of change: the nature of subjectivity, where as citizens, workers, and cultural beings, we are more and more required to be users and players rather than spectators or delegates; the growing intensity and significance of lifeworld diversity in which the local is more multifarious and the global more proximate; and the changing means of production of meaning where the semantic web is increasingly ubiquitous and its meanings multimodal. The response of a New Learning must be multifaceted and holistic. More than reactive, the New Learning must be creative, itself an agent of change rather than merely reflective of change. The transformations wrought by the New Learning must be systemic, rhetorical, and evident in the everyday practices of teaching and learning. In the article I highlight just one of a number of possible pathways, and that is the shift from a psychological/cognitivist view of learning to an epistemological one.