Changing views of knowledge and their impact on educational research and practice (Case, 1996)

Case, R. (1996) Changing views of knowledge and their impact on educational research and practice. In D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.) The handbook of education and human development (pp.75-99). Oxford: Blackwell.

Epistemological positions have practical consequences that are of great concern to psychologists and educators. The way we view knowledge and its acquisition is likely to have an increasingly large impact as scientific and technical knowledge are likely to play a more central role in the future than they have in the past. and to become increasingly central to our economic, social, and physical well being.

Three general conceptual frameworks have contributed to our understanding of knowledge and its acquisition during this century: (1) the empiricist, (2) the rationalist and (3) the sociohistoric

Views of Knowledge
Empiricist position: knowledge of the world is acquired by a process in which the sensory organs first detect stimuli in the external world, and the mind then detects the customary patterns or "conjunctions" in these stimuli (David Hume, 1748). Our knowledge of the world is a repertoire of patterns that we have learned to detect and operations that we can execute on these patterns;

Rationalist position: Kant suggested that knowledge is acquired by a process in which order is imposed by the human mind on the data that the senses provide, not merely detected in them. Knowledge is seen as something that is constructed by the mind, and evaluated according to rational criteria such as coherence, consistency, and parsimony.

Socio-historic position: knowledge does not have its primary origin in the structure of the objective world. Rather, it has its primary origin in the social and material history of the culture of which the subject is a part. If we want to understand the knowledge that children acquire in the course or their development. then, we must first examine the technology that the culture has evolved in the course of its history, and the use to which that technology has been put. (Hegel and Marx) Knowledge is seen as the creation of a social group, as it engages in its daily interaction and praxis, and both adapts to and transforms the environment around it

Views of Learning
Empiricists: learning is the process that generates knowledge: it begins when we are exposed to a new pattern, continues as we learn to recognize and respond to that pattern in an efficient manner, and does not end until we can recognize the new pattern in other contexts. and generalize our response in an appropriate manner

Rationalists: learning is seen as the process that takes place when the mind applies an existing structure to new experience in order to understand it

Socio-cultural view: learning is seen as the process of being initiated in to the life of a group, so that one can assume a role in its dally praxis (technologies that a culture has evolved in the course of its history)

For rationalists, the fundamental problem with the empiricist tradition is that it views human knowledge in a fashion that is far too atomistic, and far too rooted in external as opposed to internal processes.

For socio-historic theorists, the fundamental problem with the rationalist tradition is that it locates human knowledge in the cognitive processes of the individual, rather than the patterns of activity of the human group.

Four main perspectives on learning

Gurney, B. F. (1995). Tugboats and tennis games: Preservice conceptions of teaching and learning revealed through metaphors. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 32(6), 569-583.

Davis, E.A., Petish, D. & Smithey, J. (2006). Challenges new science teachers face. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 607–651.

Gurney investigated 151 preservice secondary teachers and identified four main perspectives on learning, which can be seen as  

1) a process of delivery (in which learners receive a message),

2) change (in which learners become different as a result of learning),

3) enlightenment (in which the hidden potential of students is revealed through learning), or

4) humanics (in which learning involves interaction, struggle, and persistence).  

Overall, the papers in this set conform to Gurney’s overarching finding and indicate that preservice teachers hold varied perspectives on learners and learning; no single, consistent perspective emerged.  

Some studies characterize not the extent of but the nature of preservice elementary and secondary teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about students as learners. Southerland and Gess-Newsome (1999) studied 22 preservice elementary teachers and found that they tended to believe that learners have fixed abilities, which led them to place students in categories (e.g., high and low ability), tailor instruction to those perceived abilities (e.g., students who are perceived as high-ability might be permitted to engage in research projects), and not revisit the categorization, so that categories were possibly reinforced over time (see also Geddis & Roberts, 1998, for another example of student categorization). Other studies describe the varied nature of teachers’ views of learning (Abell et al., 1998; Gurney, 1995; Lemberger et al., 1999; Meyer et al., 1999).  

The Learning Theory of Piaget and Inhelder

Gallagher, J. and Reid, D. (1981). Genetic epistemology as a learning theory. In The Learning Theory of Piaget and Inhelder, Chapter 1, pp. 1-11. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

Summary

• Unlike most learning theorists, Piagetians do not explain learning as a reording of facts that are internalized through frequency and contiguity. Instead, they argue that a learner always makes inferences that go beyond the observable aspects of the world
• Piagetians claim that what children are able to observe about the world is more dependent on what they already know than what actually exists.
• The theory developed by Piaget and Inhelder is more than a theory of development. It also offers us a great deal of understanding about how children learn.

Six principles of learning derived from Piaget and Inhelder's genetic epistemology are:
1. Learning is an internal process of construction; that is, children's own activities determine their reactions to environmental stimulation.
2. Learning is subordinated to development; that is, competence is a precondition for learning.
3. Children learn not only by observing objects but also by reorganizing on a higher mental level what they learn from coordinating their activities.
4. Growth in knowledge is often sparked by a feedback process that proceeds from questions, contradictions, and consequent mental reorganization.
5. Questions, contradictions, and the consequent reorganization of thought are often stimulated by social interaction.
6. Since awareness (or conscious realization) is a process of reconstruction rather than sudden insight, understanding often lags behind action.

Other ideas and points:

• Learning does not stem from observation or experience alone
• Children are sensitive to stimuli only when they have the competence to understand
• To grow in knowledge, children must both discover and invent.
• Genetic epistemology differs from the more traditional approaches to learning in that it does not postulate that growth in knowledge is only the "result of experience." Instead, genetic epistemology emphasizes the active role of the person.