School Didactics And Learning

A School Didactic Model Framing An Analysis Of Pedagogical Implications Of learning theory

Michael Uljens

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135481193
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Psicología educativa

In this book a new theory on instruction is presented - a reflective theory of school didactics - uniquely incorporating continental German and Nordic research traditions in the theory of didactics (Didaktik), together with Anglo-American research on teaching (instructional research) and cognitivist theory. School didactics is defined as a field of research within general education. This field is limited to research and theory aiming at understanding the pedagogical practice which takes place in institutionalized educational settings guided by a curriculum collectively agreed upon. As the theory is designed to be valid for institutionalized education framed by a politically accepted curriculum, it is a culturally seen regional theory of education, not a universal one. According to this school theory the fundamental features of an institutionalized pedagogical process consist in the intentional, interactional, teaching-studying-learning process that is culturally and historically developed and situated. However, the present model does not explicitly formulate goals nor the means of educational practice. Rather, the model emphasizes the teacher and student as reflective and intentional subjects where the teacher is acting as the representative of the collective but also as the learners' advocate. Because of this the theory presented is not a normative or prescriptive theory, instead it is a reflective theory.

I
TOWARDS A MODEL OF SCHOOL DIDACTICS

1
Introduction

FIG. 1.1 Four interrelated factors of importance in specifying the relation between educational theory and learning.

BACKGROUND AND AIM

Institutional education is an intentional and interactive process through which individuals become encultured into the complex web of human competence and social networks constituting societies. Becoming encultured requires the student’s intentional development of competence and personal identity.

The human ability to learn is a fundamental prerequisite for this process to occur. Without accepting this, practical educational activity is rather meaningless. However, we know well that intentional teaching does not always lead to learning. Nor does an individual’s intentional study activity necessarily lead to what was striven for. Therefore, as teaching intends to support the student’s activities aiming at learning, it may be asked how teaching and learning are related more precisely.

If pedagogical practice aims at supporting learning, then it is also relevant to ask how educational theory is related to learning. One reason why this question is important is that insights into teaching and learning are considered to constitute aspects of a teacher’s professional competence (Francis, 1985).

Individual teachers’ understanding of teaching and learning varies considerably (Pratt, 1992; Prawat, 1992; Prosser, Trigwell, & Taylor, 1994). Also, educational theories relate differently to learning theory. Yet educational or instructional theory should be quite explicit with respect to how learning is dealt with (Diederich, 1988, p. 34).

In order to explain how educational theory is related to learning, it is useful to discriminate between the theory of learning and learning as an empirical phenomenon. Similarly we may discriminate between educational theory and pedagogical practice. We thus have four interrelated factors—learning, theory of learning, pedagogical practice and educational theory (see Fig. 1.1).

The following comments may be made in relation to the figure presented above:

1. Pedagogical practice aims at facilitating learning;
2. Educational theory aims at providing conceptual structures by which pedagogical practice may be described, analysed, understood and, sometimes, guided;
3. Pedagogical principles are often developed on the basis of learning theory. In a narrower sense, teachers’ understanding (or personal theories) of learning may affect their way of teaching. These principles should not be equated with the concept of “educational theory”;
4. Educational theory is indirectly related to learning as an empirical phenomenon since pedagogical practice aims at facilitating the individual’s learning process;
5. The theory of learning aims at providing a conceptual framework by means of which learning may be described and understood;
6. Learning theory is related to educational theory as the pedagogical process aims at facilitating learning, and as it is possible to develop prescriptive pedagogical principles guiding practice on the basis of learning theory.

Of the relations described above, that between learning theory and pedagogical practice (c) is the most extensively developed. A traditional position concerning this relation is that knowledge of human learning may be useful in decision-making in pedagogical practice or in order to develop instructional materials or methods (e.g. Rein, 1912).

The object of this study is not, however, limited to the relation between pedagogical practice and learning theory. The aim is also to try to determine the relation between educational theory and learning theory (f). The reason is that both educational theory and theory of learning are important to pedagogical practice, but in different ways. While learning theory can be prescriptively related to pedagogical practice in that principles for teaching may be developed starting from learning theory, this is not necessarily the case with educational theory. Educational theory may also be related to pedagogical practice in a descriptive or analytic way, and does not necessarily state how teaching should be carried out. It can be delimited to pointing out fundamental constituents of pedagogical practice and it may actualize questions requiring prescriptive or normative decisions.

As educational theory may be related to pedagogical practice in different ways, we can see that the specification of the relation between theory of learning and educational theory is dependent on the nature of educational theory. Therefore the primary aim of this study is to outline a didactic model valid for the pedagogical reality in schools, which in turn gives us the possibility of specifying how learning is dealt with.

THE PROBLEMS

Granted that prescriptive pedagogical assumptions, developed on the basis of learning theory, are too narrow to enable us to fully understand the complexity of pedagogical reality, we must try to define the relation between learning theory and educational theory in some other way.

A fundamental starting-point is that learning must be of interest to educational theory (Hollo, 1927, p. 119). The primary argument for this is that the aim of educational practice is to support the individual’s attainment of competence. As an increase or change of competence is often thought to be reached through learning, it is argued that teachers may use knowledge of the process of human learning when organizing situations facilitating the attainment of competence. If this position which should not be regarded as self-evident, is accepted (cf. Bannister, 1982; Desforges, 1985), then a theory that purports to be valid for pedagogical practice must acknowledge the fact. The question then is how educational theory or theory of didactics acknowledges learning theory in offering a conceptual system supposed to be valid for pedagogical practice.

The First Problem

The first problem in this study is to reflect on what questions educational theory should answer in order to be suitable for pedagogical purposes, i.e. relevant in terms of offering instruments by which we can handle the complexity of pedagogical reality in a satisfying way. Part one of this study is devoted to that problem.

As a result of this part of the study, a didactic model is outlined. The model developed is identified as a model of “school didactics”. School didactics is defined as a field of research within general education. This field is limited to research and theory aiming at understanding the pedagogical practice (Erziehung and Bildung) which takes place in institutionalized educational settings guided by a curriculum collectively agreed upon. A conceptual structure within the school didactic field of research is thus not to be understood as a general theory of education or teaching.

The aim of presenting this descriptive model is twofold. First, it may be viewed as an effort to contribute to the development of didactic theory. Second, the model also offers a framework for the following investigation into pedagogical implications emanating from learning theory. It is considered valuable that the solution offered concerning the first problem, i.e. the didactic model presented, offers the framework for analysing learning theory in the second part of this study.

The Second Problem

The second problem in this study is to investigate the pedagogical implications of the cognitivist theory of learning. This part of the study is to be conceived as a clarification of the pedagogical model presented; if pedagogical practice aims at affecting an individual’s possibilities of reaching competence through the process of learning, then it is reasonable to expect that the theory of didactics recognizes learning theory. The answer to this problem offered by the model presented here is that learning theory is accepted as having a prescriptive function in two different but related ways.

Firstly, learning theory is assumed to play a role in pedagogical practice since a teacher may reflect analytically on theories of learning, i.e. what it means to attain a certain degree of competence and further that the teacher, on the basis of such reflection, makes decisions on how to organize and carry out the teaching-studying-learning process. (The expression “teaching-studying-learning process” is shortened to the acronym TSL process in this study.) In doing this the teacher reflects analytically and acts in a normative or prescriptive fashion; if acquiring competence “X” means “Y” then one should do “Z”.

Secondly, precisely because of this it is important to investigate what kind of pedagogical implications different theories of learning have. Therefore the second part of this study is devoted to an analysis of cognitivist learning theory. Prescriptive propositions may thus be handled within the framework of an otherwise descriptive didactic model. Yet, even though we may use descriptive didactic theory as a general frame of reference in this study, it does not offer us the instruments to analyse theories of learning themselves. Rather, the didactic frame of reference shows us why and how learning as a phenomenon is important in the theory of didactics and in pedagogical practice.

The chosen level of analysis, when the cognitivist theory of learning is investigated, is the philosophy of mind. This was considered a reasonable level since it contained problems that every learning theory deals with in one way or another. Two problems were chosen. Firstly, the relation between an individual’s conceptual knowledge and external reality, and, secondly, the problem of how to describe this conceptual knowledge.

The first problem deals with what it is to have knowledge of the world. Since teaching and education often aim at increasing, developing or changing an individual’s knowledge, the question of what it means to possess knowledge is naturally a fundamental one from a pedagogical perspective. This is identified as the epistemological mind-world problem.

The second question deals with the problem of how to describe an individual’s understanding of the world, his knowledge, mental representation, conceptual structure, etc. In order to be able to change this understanding or conceptual knowledge structure, i.e. to facilitate learning, we must decide how we want to describe what it is to be aware of something. In particular, we must know how we want to describe and discuss a change in this awareness of something. This question is identified as the ontological mind-brain problem.

Having investigated how the cognitivist theory of learning appears in the light of these two problems, we are ready to return to a didactic level of reasoning. Instructional implications of cognitivist learning theory are organized on the basis of the analysis carried out on the level of the philosophy of mind.

THE APPROACH

A Phenomenological-hermeneutical Approach. In its concern with how the reality of institutionalized education is constituted and what is required in order to describe it conceptually, the approach of this study is phenomenological. If such description is taken to mean that an aspect of educational reality is described as it appears to a subject who tries to reach some kind of essence (Wesenserfassung), then parts of this study may be seen as a phenomenological investigation. In fact, this is precisely the way the school didactic model was originally developed; it was an explication of how one part of educational reality was experienced.

Phenomenologically, theoretical knowledge of the educational field was bracketed through the “epoché”. In phenomenological terms, being in the “natural attitude”, a kind of eidetic reduction was carried out; questions that had to be answered in order to reach a description of the TSL process in schools were reflected on. However, in this view of phenomenological pedagogy there was no need for a “transcendental subject” in reduction (Danner, 1989, pp. 155–156; Karlsson, 1993; Uljens, 1992a, pp. 31–37). The bracketing refers only to the developmental process through which a first version of the model was constructed (see e.g. Uljens, 1993a). This phase did not consciously have its point of departure in any specific theoretical school of thought. My personal experience in the field of education formed the basis for this first phase of reflection. However, this was considered only as a first step to be followed by a hermeneutical phase. Having reached a first delimitation and structure it was possible to investigate this model in relation to previous theory in the field. This phase was crucial since a new model gets its cultural meaning and role only in relation to previous and contemporary scientific discourse. Only by such a comparative discussion can the features of the present model be communicated.

Methodologically, this second phase does not fall within a phenomenological description. The phase of hermeneutic interpretation in the research process was reached (Dilthey, 1958). To explicitly relate the pedagogical model developed to other contemporary approaches may be characterized as a kind of historical, social and cultural reflection; the historicity of the thoughts developed was accepted. Therefore, claims and perspectives put forth are seen as regional, not universal, truths. In this matter Schleiermacher (1957, p. 20) asks about the generality of educational theory: “To what extent can our theories be regarded as generally valid? Will it be possible to devise a universal theory of education, that is, one that is valid for all times and places?”.¹ In conformity with Schleiermacher the position of this study is that a universal theory of education is not possible. This view of scientific knowledge also sees the discipline of education as a cultural science; educational theory makes sense only in a cultural and historical perspective. Analytical propositions developed should not therefore be disconnected from the culture within which they have been produced.

The hermeneutic process of relating an early version of the model (Uljens, 1993a) to previous theory led to further development of the model. As a result, some parts were emphasized more and others less. This phase of the analysis may be described by the “hermeneutic circle”; the interpreted object was the phenomenologically described model. The “hermeneutical difference” between the model and previous theory was dealt with in terms of the hermeneutic circle, and reached the position presented in this study. In Gadamer’s terms the different “horizons” were brought closer to each other, the horizons being the original model and the research tradition of didactics. The model was thus partly developed through a “discussion with the tradition” (Gadamer, 1960).

In this study Ricoeur’s (1989, pp. 114ff.) view of the relation between phenomenology and hermeneutics is also supported, i.e. a hermene...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• I. TOWARDS A MODEL OF SCHOOL DIDACTICS
• II. SCHOOL DIDACTICS AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF LEARNING THEORY
• III. DISCUSSION
• REFERENCES