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The paper contrasts two different approaches to the educational challenges of the ubiquitous, rapidly developing information and communication technologies (ICT). The first is the constructivist "knowledge building" theory spearheaded by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia and recently further developed by Kai Hakkarainen and Sami Paavola; the second is a pragmatist standpoint drawing in particular from John Dewey's ideas about learning as a natural part of human social actions and transactions. The knowledge builders have set their approach out as a suitable answer to the challenges of the present-day, ICT-characterised "Knowledge Age". But here it is argued that a pragmatist approach can be advanced that avoids the over-intellectualisation of education characteristic of knowledge builders and thereby offers a viable alternative for improving present-day educational practices in ways that promote appropriate utilisation of ICT in schools in particular.

In accordance with the education policy which puts human capital at its heart, higher education is expected to produce marketable competent professionals in response to the needs of an expansive knowledge-based economy. In one reading, to support competitive knowledge-based economy, higher education students should graduate as young and fast as possible. The article asks whether it is credible that the "young & fast" principle as an objective for university education would provide a feasible way of enhancing professional labour force to serve knowledge economies. The analysis of study careers of 17,000 European second cycle university graduates shows that transitions from school to higher education to professional employment vary considerably in the 12 countries. The key finding is that countries with rather slow progression in the initial part of the transition tend to do better in the end, and vice versa. Belgium (Flanders) is the most obvious example of young and fast-graduating students that need a relatively long period after graduation to start their professional careers. In Finland, Austria, and Norway, relatively old and experienced graduates are employed rapidly. The time before professional employment after graduation is short for students who have acquired relevant work experience and acquainted themselves with professional fields. The youngest professionals are found in France where they tend to have access to opportunities for professionally relevant training. However, professional employment cannot be fostered by simply trying to recruit student populations as young as possible, but rather by enriching the labour market relevance of their student careers.

This paper applies methodological relationalism, leaning on a pragmatist theory of action of classical Deweyan origin, supplemented among other things with Alva Noë's enactivism, to analyze the development of communication technologies as a part of human cultural evolution. Tool‐use and technologies are understood as skillful human activities that form hubs of organized activity in developed human communities. Appreciating the quite slow pace of evolution, the article adopts, all told, a two million year time frame. Six epochs of cultural evolution are distinguished, linked to the introduction of communication tools and technologies as skillful human activities that serve the members of growing communities in the ecological niche at hand. The first two epochs arose from forms of communication serving local, small‐sized hunter‐gatherer bands; the second couple arose with technologies apt for building nation‐wide communities and culture; and the latest two have been propelled by global communication networks, having an impact on billions of people. Finally, certain peculiarities of the presently unfolding World Wide Web epoch, connected in particular to this era's exceptionally efficient behavior modification, are compared with earlier epochs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article takes an evolutionary “reverse engineering” standpoint on Homo discens, learning man, to track down the (learning) mechanisms that played a pivotal role in the natural selection of human being. The approach is “evolutionary sociological”—as opposed to gene‐centred or psychologising—and utilises notions of co‐evolutionary organism–environment transactions and niche construction. These are compatible with a Deweyan theory of action, which entails that in action one cannot but learn and one can only learn in action. Special attention is paid to apprentice‐like learning‐by‐doing peculiar to human socio‐cultural niches since the Pleistocene, which has permitted each subsequent generation to learn the many habits and skills needed in utilising the affordances of action that constitute their ecological niche. Affordances and actions have changed over the history of human–environment transactions, but the core mechanisms of human learning have not changed much. It is increasingly important to appreciate these mechanisms now in the global age “knowledge society,” which is in a way similar to the Pleistocene era: characterised by uncertainty and life‐determining problem‐situations without any ready‐made solutions, it calls for capacities to adapt to changing circumstances, and thus apprentice‐like learning in action supported by savvy epistemological engineering of learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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