A live online conversation about "Creative Pragmatics: Learning in the Making"
A recording of the online conversation on how knowledge can be understood as something alive, situated, and spatially mediated. The conversation also celebrates the publication of the book Creative Pragmatics for Active Learning in STEM Education (Springer, 2025). The conversation was recorded on October 8, 2025.
How can education feel alive, situated, and relational? And how can learning be understood as something that emerges through making, designing, and being in the world — rather than something transmitted from one mind to another?
These were the guiding questions behind the live online conversation Creative Pragmatics: Learning in the Making, held on October 8, 2025. The event marked the publication of the new book Creative Pragmatics for Active Learning in STEM Education (Springer, 2025) and brought together educators, artists, designers, architects, and researchers to explore new ways of thinking about knowledge and education.
– One of the aims of the book is to relate practices and insights from art and design to educational practice, with a particular focus on STEM, said Professor Connie Svabo, Head of the STEM Education Research Center at the University of Southern Denmark, as she welcomed the webinar participants.
– We are asking how education can become alive through creative and pragmatic practices — how design itself can be a way of thinking and knowing.
The discussion featured contributions from Andrew Pickering, Michael Shanks, Mads Høbye, Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen, and Michael Bell, who each approached the theme from their own disciplinary perspectives — from philosophy of science and archaeology to design research and education.
”We are asking how education can become alive through creative and pragmatic practices — how design itself can be a way of thinking and knowing
Pickering opened with the question, “Why this book now?”, pointing to the need for educational models that can navigate complexity and suggesting that STEM education needs creative pragmatics both in ways of teaching and in content.
Shanks reflected on knowing in a complex world, while Høbye shared practice-based insights into learning through making. Svendsen and Bell contributed perspectives on assessment as performative practice and design studios for active learning, respectively.
A joint discussion followed, weaving together the book’s themes of creative pragmatics, negotiations about educational design, and the importance of open, transdisciplinary learning environments.
The full conversation can be viewed here:
The book Creative Pragmatics for Active Learning in STEM Education is published by Springer and can be purchased here. The first chapter is open access.
Read more about Creative Pragmatics for Active Learning in STEM Education here.
Andrew Pickering
Professor Emeritus, University of Exeter, PhD (Physics), PhD (Science Studies), has written the foreword to "Creative Pragmatics for Active Learning in STEM Education". Introduction: “Why this book now?
Connie Svabo
Head of the STEM Education Research Center – FNUG, University of Southern Denmark.
Michael Shanks
Professor of Classics at Stanford University, USA. Presentation: “Knowing in a Complex World”.
Mads Høbye
Associate Professor, Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University. Presentation: “Learning through Making”.
Michael Bell
Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Presentation: “Design Studio for Active Learning".
Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen
PhD Student, STEM Education Research Center – FNUG, University of Southern Denmark. Presentation: “Assessment as Performative Educational Practice”.