Session Information
Session 5A, Education Policy, Social Pedagogy and Curriculum Development in the Knowledge Society (1)
Papers
Time:
2005-09-08
13:00-14:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
David Bridges
Contribution
This paper begins to explore the implications for educational policy and practice of a view of living (and therefore learning) as semiotic engagement. Such a view, it is argued, has the potential to displace, or circumvent, essentially Cartesian models currently dominant within learning theory (cognitivism and responses to it) and within neo-classical economics (rational choice and responses to it). It also has the potential to form greater synergies between theories of learning and of economic behaviour, thus allowing for greater consistency in thinking about (but not necessarily prescribing for) the often separately-regarded areas of educational policy and provision on the one hand, and curriculum and pedagogy on the other. Giving semiotics a foundational role in educational thinking also, it is claimed, provides a basis for the development of liberal political thought within a postmodern cultural context.In this paper, we begin to speculate on the consequences of regarding semiotic engagement (response to signs) as primal, and thus as foundational to our understanding of educational processes and policies. This marks a step beyond existing work that tends to study 'discourse' as the expression of underlying social-structural realities. It posits not only language but all signifying systems as elements within semiotically functioning organisms rather than as merely representations, means of expression or 'tools'. Through a reconceptualisation of signs and signals as 'sign(al)s', it also circumvents the realism-relativism and mind-body dualisms that continue to frame, inter alia, mainstream thinking about learning, choice and language.Theories of choice and of learning generally belong to different literatures, the former principally to economics and the latter to psychology and education. This bifurcation can be seen as symptomatic of mind-body dualism: that is to say, the assumed separation of a thinking, autonomous (or quasi- autonomous) immaterial 'self', using language and other 'means of expression', from material, unthinking and mechanical nature. This 'self' is imbued with certain empirically unidentifiable characteristics, including freedom of the will (manifested as choice) and access to transcendent rationality (via the power to learn). Such a scheme underpins both neo-classical economics, which attempts to explain market forces as rational, and cognitive psychology, which imbues the learner with innate capacity to make sense of the world. Both sets of theories affect education: the former mainly with respect to policy and the latter to curriculum and pedagogy.
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