STMA 03

Part A

With reference to educational contexts, Scheffler (1999, p.2) notes that knowledge is “…the whole content of our intellectual heritage…” but then alludes to the political, and selective nature of knowledge in schools by adding that education also seeks to transmit “…our manner of knowing…our approved standards…” Taking the Alexander Framework, adapted, (Study Guide p.9) as a framework for analysing educational practice, we can see that views of knowledge, and views of learning, will have a profound impact on the way we answer the two questions: “What is an educated person?” and “Why should learners be educated in this way.” Further, McCormick and Paechter (1999) state, “…it is impossible to have a view of learning without also implying a view of knowledge.” The first part of Section A of this essay deals with ideas pertaining to properties and types of knowledge. The second part of Section A deals with theories of how people come to know, with specific reference to learning contexts. The concluding section of Part A presents a brief personal view of knowledge and some tentative answers to the questions above drawn from the Alexander framework.

The common assumption that knowledge is a thing “out there” to be discovered has been reinforced in recent times by theories of knowledge based around the computational, or symbol processing (s-p) model. As explained in TMA2¹, an assumption of the s-p approach to mind is that language mirrors “reality”, which is objective and separate from the individual. Knowledge is therefore a part of this objective reality, and the mind models and processes it using symbols in the head. But is knowledge really out there? Superficially, it may appear so. Are not dictionaries, encyclopedias—indeed all books—not solid manifestations of knowledge? In one sense, yes, but the mediation of culture in the formation and use of knowledge immediately becomes apparent when you pick up a dictionary and discover a word there that is no longer in use; a once solid block of a word starts to fade into obscurity, eventually to disappear. Goodbye knowledge.

The idea that knowledge is not a solid immovable block is a theme taken up by Bruner (1999), who takes a cultural view of knowledge. According to this view, reality is mediated by symbolism, and it is an understanding of symbolism, which is itself dynamic and contested in nature, that constitutes “knowing.” Bruner states (ibid. p.151) that knowing and communicating are in their nature highly interdependent, inseparable even. Such knowing cannot be computed because of the “messy, ambiguous, and context-sensitive processes of meaning making.” Any culture tends to develop a certain way of looking at the world, however, and these “canonical ways of constructing reality” can come to be seen as taken-for-granted truths both in schools, and in society at large. The idea that learning to speak English is naturally a worthy pursuit, and that a knowledge of English will make you a more socially and economically successful person, is one such current canonical belief in Taiwan, for example. Bruner’s key point is that knowledge is always culturally mediated, and this perhaps leads Delaval (Delaval, A., E836 online conference, 29 June, 2005) to state that an educated person is a “A person who has cultural knowledge.” She goes on to state, “Society (that’s us) decides if you are educated by deciding what cultural knowledge makes you educated.” I largely agree with Delaval that society decides what cultural knowledge makes you “educated”, but the notion of society here is rather amorphous. It was South (South, G., E836 online conference, 27 June, 2005) who originally asked the critical question, “Who decides what knowledge is important and should be kept and what becomes lost?”

In education, certain forms of cultural knowledge will always be privileged over others. According to Young (1999, p.62), “those in positions of power will attempt to define what is to be taken as knowledge in society…” Moreover, it is those in positions in power that will determine access to privileged knowledge, and the relationships between different knowledge areas. In this view, knowledge is not homogenous and ubiquitous in society, but highly stratified. Young (ibid, p.67), notes that privileged types of knowledge in schools i.e. those found in academic curricula, “tend to be abstract, literate, individualistic and unrelated to non-school knowledge.” Young then makes the crucial connection between power and privileged knowledge. In an American context, Soudien (p.240) further observes, “Knowledge and culture are invariably understood as products which are already finished and complete.” This brings us back to Bruner’s constraints tenant, and the artificial “fixing” of knowledge. Young (ibid. p.62) infers that the stratification of knowledge gives it the qualities of private property, and such a propensity to see knowledge as a fixed material product reflects dominant ideas about property in capitalist society. Spruce (1999) describes both the fixing of knowledge, and the commodification of knowledge, in relation to the music curriculum in Western academe. On this reading, and on the basis of Paechter’s (1999) discussion of the relative status of subjects in the school curriculum, it is reasonable to suggest that the statuses of different types of knowledge in society are related to economic relations, social formation, and political power.

If we broadly accept that knowledge is cultural, stratified, and politically implicated, how then how does an individual come to know, or engage in knowing? Tensions are present in the individual/social dichotomy reflected in epistemological theories about how people come to know, or how they engage in knowing. Sfard (1998) analyses two salient metaphors that reflect these tensions, and that have driven recent discourse on how learners come to know/engage in knowledge: the Acquisition Metaphor (AM), and the Participation Metaphor (PM). Obviously, the AM fits more closely with the s-p type theories, and with the ideology of Individualism that tends to view knowledge as a commodity. Meanwhile, the PM covers a broad spectrum of situated theories. We will refer to both the AM and the PM in the discussion below.

Radical constructivists accept the premise that there is no objective, independent ontological world out there to be known. They posit the idea that individuals build up there own version of knowledge based on their mediated experience of reality. As Roth (1999, p.7) notes, according to radical constructivism, “we live forever in our own, self-constructed worlds.” Knowledge is constructed by individuals, but constrained by experience, which tells the individual knower what knowledge” fits”, and what doesn’t. Although radical constructivism lends itself in some ways to the AM, it does not discount the influence of social interaction in knowledge formation, but rather chooses to background this social dimension. Radical constructivism focuses on the individual. For example, Glaser (1999) treats experts as individuals with certain characteristics of thought, thinking and behaviour, the inference being that such qualities may be emulated and encouraged by, for instance, organizing a sequence of tasks of increasing complexity for learners. Interestingly, Glaser, like the social constructivists, sees a clear need for “guided practice”, i.e. for intervention by an instructor. Boshuizen (1999), develops constructivism in the context of medical education, for example, and elucidates further on expertise and the individual, focusing illuminatingly on the concept of scripts. Along with McCormick (1999), Boshuizen makes the case for focusing on problem solving to build individual practical knowledge, (though both are careful not to dismiss the teaching of theory.) As Greeno et al (1999) summarise, what the constructivist/cognitivist theorists share in terms of education theory is a focus on the individual, on basic skills and facts, on strategies for dealing with problems, on performance, on individual persistence, and on individual metacognitive awareness. Radical constructivists talk vaguely of mediation by social interactions, but in Piagetian fashion treat these interactions as being outside of the cognizing individual. In this view, knowledge is something you make up mostly on your own, albeit with the intrusion of some social influences.

Like the radical constructivists, social constructivists discount the notion of there being an objective reality. Where they differ is in the fact that the latter group of theorists regards social interaction as integral, indeed inseparable, to knowing. In Thought and Language Vygotsky (1986) convincingly challenges Piaget’s theory of the constructing individual. For example, he demonstrates empirically that egocentric speech is essentially social speech, and not some mysterious individual outpouring. According to Vygotsky, the origins of thought and behaviour are social, mediated through the sociocultural environment. As Roth (ibid.11) comments, Vygotsky’s theory implies that culture and cognition create one another—they are in a dialectical relationship—and that crucially the higher cognitive skills of individuals are developed through participation in socially and culturally organized activity, and this is obviously where the PM comes in. Vygotsky’s theories have been developed and applied to educational contexts where the mediation of activity and language is believed to be central to knowing, and hence the considered centrality of participation in the development of cognitive skills.

Social constructivism has spored in different directions; on the one hand it has been absorbed into “mainstream” constructivism (e.g. Greeno), and in the other direction it has led to theories that aggressively adapt the PM, to the total exclusion of the AM. One example of the latter is Lave and Wenger’s (1999) notion of Legitimate Peripheral Participation. A full accounting of this subtle analytical framework would require a separate paper, but one important concept to come out of their theory is the “community of practice.” As Roth (ibid. p.16) states, “From a community of social practice perspective, learning is squarely located in the processes of social coparticipation, not in the heads of individuals…meaning, understanding, and learning are all defined in relation to actional contexts.” Williams (1999) sketches recent developments in mathematics education that have been influenced by social constructivism. The changed perspective requires students of mathematics to learn by doing, and to question the assumptions of the discipline. Healy’s (1993, cited by Roth, ibid.p.208) creation of a geometry community of practice in a school classroom provides an intriguing example of how PM-orientated learning can be realised in a subject traditionally presented in s-p mode. In what Greeno et al (ibid.) term the situative perspective, participation in practice is central to educational achievement, and this participation involves becoming a member of a group, participating in the formulation of goals, and being able to construct meaning. The last element involves some of the skills and tools that form the focus of the constructive/cognitive perspective, the difference being that in social constructivism such skills and tools are called upon when needed to achieve a socially orientated goal.

Theoretically speaking, I lean toward the view that knowledge is socially constructed, and extending the logic of social constructivism in line with post-modern philosophy, relative in nature. I base these judgements not just on the theory, but also on everyday life experience, and on a good deal of professional teaching experience. Relativism is not to say anything goes. As even a radical educator like Freire (1990, p.108) concedes, “…the teacher of something has to teach something.” As the parameters of what we teach will largely be decided for us by the specified curriculum, the question then becomes how we teach.

I see problems with the community of practice model, and in particular see problems in trying to present “authentic” problems to learners in the foreign language classroom, at least in Taiwan. In TMA2², I described my practice as ‘an example of Legitimate Peripheral Participation. However, Activity 3.8 (Study Guide, p.123) made me realise that John and I are somewhat on the far reaches of legitimate participation in any community of practice, except perhaps for the local library-using community. Having said this, I definitely prefer the PM to the AM I think it is more democratic, and because I believe learners learn best by doing, a position reflected in our TMA2 activities. Although I would describe myself as a PM kind of guy (never used the AM in my life), I would not abandon the theoretical underpinnings of the AM entirely—as Sfard (ibid.p.10) comments on transfer, should not a satisfactory account of learning take into account an actor’s previous experience?

Returning to the Alexander framework in conclusion, and borrowing heavily from Vygotsky (1984, pp. 146-210), my emerging view of what constitutes an educated person, or a formally educated person at least, includes, in addition to what one might call the conventional focus on numeric skills and literacy, the ability to move between every day concepts and scientific (abstract) concepts with ease and with critical self-awareness. Put in terms of my current practice, the learner must be able to use the foreign language to communicate, as well as develop a conscious awareness of phonetic, grammatical, and syntactic forms. My view of learning a foreign language assumes that these goals can best be achieved through immersing the learner in guided tasks, emphasising learning through the mediation of activity and language.