This anthology’s articles and their lengthy introduction have been written over the course of a decade. This time frame spans two research visits abroad as Research Scholar, one to the Department of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley (July 2009 – January 2010), and one to the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney (July 2013 – January 2014). It spans a fusion of departments at my home university, University of Southern Denmark, and a corresponding shift of official departmental research focus, upon which I became head of the research program Learning, design, and digitalization from January 2014. It spans my increasing engagement with the Networked Learning community where I have now become part of the organizing committee for the biannual International Conference on Networked Learning and in general my participation in more conferences, seminars, and workshops than I could possibly list (and probably than I could recall). At the level of practice, these developments in affiliations and commitments signifies exceedingly many engaged colleagues and students who have been kind enough to spend time on discussing my views, criticizing my ideas, and pointing out ways in which I needed to sharpen my arguments. I thank them all for their time and help. Space limitations bar that I do this by individual name, though. I have to restrict myself to thanking by name the following groups and colleagues: At the University of California, Berkeley, I wish to thank Hubert Dreyfus for many inspiring conversations. Likewise, at the University of Sydney, I would like to thank Peter Goodyear’s Australian Laureate Fellowship group Learning, technology and design: architectures for productive networked learning and in particular Peter Goodyear, Lucila Carvalho, and Lina Markauskaite, for all their thoughtful comments and for making me feel so very welcome at the University of Sydney. At my home department, Department of Design and Communication, I thank all my colleagues over the years for innumerable discussions in formal and informal settings and for their patience with the speed and amount of words that I produce. In particular, I wish to thank my colleagues within the research program Learning, design, and digitalization as well as my colleagues – within and outside the department – in the project Designing for Situated Knowledge in a World of Change, funded by The Danish Council for Independent Research, Humanities. Their many concise remarks on knowledge, learning, educational design, and ICT have influenced my thinking in more ways than I can account for. First and last I wish to thank Steen Wackerhausen whose inspiration and support led me initially into the field of knowledge and learning and helped keep me on track within the field at times where I doubted where I was going.
A different kind of gratitude goes to my family whose encouragement and confidence in me has supported me invaluably in my project of writing a professorial thesis. I thank my parents, Gerda and Ejvind, and my parents-in-law, Else and Michael. I thank also my three sons, Andreas, Rasmus, and Simon, who have matured from small children into teenagers and young men at roughly the same pace as my thinking has matured from the first drafts of articles into a finalized thesis. Most of all I thank my husband, Niels, for not only fully accepting the periods of long working hours and absentmindedness on my part connected with writing the thesis, but for reacting to this by actively engaging with me on the topics stealing my time and attention (thus making working hours even longer). His empirical science education research perspective has supplied a testbed for my philosophical investigations. The role of philosophy vis-à-vis other sciences as dialogue partner with a voice of its own, for which I wish to argue in theory and practice with this thesis, has thus been played out at home over countless dinner tables and Sunday breakfasts. And if my ideas could not hold up against his practice perspective, there was nothing for it but to think again.
My research has been funded in part by grants. Thus, my stay as Research Scholar at University of California, Berkeley, was supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research, Humanities, Grant No. 09-066464. My stay as Visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney was supported by the Lundbeck Foundation, Grant No. 97-641-16769. The thesis as such and in particular Article 2 contributes to the ongoing project Designing for Situated Knowledge in a World of Change which is supported by The Danish Council for Independent Research, Humanities, Grant No. DFF-4180-00062.