A Pragmatist Approach to the Dialectic Between Educational Practices and Knowledge Practices. Case Studies in Sports and Geosciences.

Author(s):

Jerome Santini(presenting / submitting)Monique Loquet(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 03 A, Approaches Towards Pedagogy

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-13

17:15-18:45

Room:

K 29/204,1 FL., 20

Chair:

Bernard Schneuwly

Contribution

This contribution aims at characterizing the knowledge practices that might be learned by the students through the effective course of educational practices. Our goal is then to produce an account for the habits of action that the students might acquire during classroom sequences. We do so following a pragmatist approach in education (Dewey, 1938) and using Peirce’s principle of individuation (Peirce, 1878). With this principle, Peirce stated that different knowledges are actualized in different habits of action. Reciprocally, we consider that different habits of action will lead to different knowledges. We then try to specify which habits of action are supported in situ by the didactic action.

To do so, we analyze our data within the Joint Action Theory in Didactics or JATD (Sensevy & Mercier, 2007; Sensevy, under publication). The main statement of this theoretical framework is to claim that teaching and learning are a joint action, cooperative and asymmetric, between the teacher and the students. Moreover, this joint action is conceptualized as a language game (Wittgenstein, 1997) specific to the didactic systems. Such learning games (Sensevy et al., 2005; Sensevy, op. cit.) are described using a system of theoretical categories (Brousseau, 1997; Chevallard, 1992; Sensevy, op. cit.). We then analyze these learning games so as to characterize epistemic games (Loquet, 2009; Santini, 2009). These analyses allow us to specify the dialectic between educational practices and knowledge practices.

We analyze this dialectic in two case studies. The first case study is an educational sequence for toddlers (two years old) with aquatic motor awakening activities, commonly referred to as “swimming babies”. The second case study is composed of geosciences sequences in four French fifth grade classes that are videotaped during the study of volcanoes and earthquakes. At first, these two case studies may seem to be odd to each other. In fact, we consider this oddness as an advantage since it will allow us to scrutinize furthermore the generic and the specific of our claims regarding the didactic situations we study. Under such a perspective, our work is situated in the field of comparative didactics.

Method

We collect a corpus of data composed of videotaped teaching-learning sequences. We analyze them following a clinical approach to ordinary classes (Schubauer-Leoni & Leutenegger, 2002). Prior to the analyses of the sequences, we proceed to an analysis of the knowledges at stake. We transcribe and analyze our video data using the software Transana (2010). Using this software allows us to delimit learning games by inserting time codes in our recordings. We specify these learning games by defining the knowledges at stake, the components of their didactical milieu (Brousseau, op. cit.), their definitory rules and strategic rules (in the sense of Hintikka, 1999). Once we have specified the learning games, we work to characterize the enacted epistemic games they support. To characterize an enacted epistemic game, we describe the winning strategies to a learning game and define the knowledge practice it actualizes. In our analyzes, we rely on the works, and the taxonomies, of Ohlsson (1996) and Tiberghien, Buty & Le Marechal (2005).

Expected Outcomes

Our two case studies show how we produce an account for the knowledge practices embedded in the educational practices. In our analyses, we describe the teaching-learning processes as a succession of games and rules giving meaning to these games. This leads us to characterize the dialectic between learning games and epistemic games enacted from the learning games. We then are able to compare these enacted epistemic games with the source epistemic games, i.e. the effective cultural practices with the knowledges at stake. Our analyses result in a foliation of layers of knowledge games: learning games, enacted epistemic games and source epistemic games. Finally, we address the issue of the efficiency of the teaching practices by analyzing the convergent elements and the divergent elements between these different layers. We conclude that this qualitative distance between the different levels of knowledges games is a determination of the efficiency of the teaching practices.

References

Brousseau, G. (1997). Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Chevallard, Y. (1992). Fundamental concepts in didactics. In Douady R. & Mercier A. (Eds), Research in Didactique of Mathematics (pp. 131-168), Grenoble: La Pensée Sauvage. Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York : Collier Books. Hintikka, J. (1999). Inquiry as inquiry: a logic of scientific discovery. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Loquet, M. (2009). Jeu épistémique et jeu d’apprentissage dans les activités physique, sportive et artistique. Note de synthèse pour l’HDR. Université Rennes 2. Ohlsson, S. (1996). Learning to do and learning to understand. In P. Reiman & H. Spada (Eds.), Learning in Humans and Machine (pp. 37-62). Oxford : Pergamon. Peirce, C. S. (1878). How to Make Our Ideas Clear. Popular Science Monthly, 12, 286-302. Santini, J. (2009). Caractérisation de l’élaboration conjointe de la compréhension conceptuelle et des performances associées. Thèse de Sciences de l’Education, Université Rennes 2. Schubauer-Leoni, M.L., & Leutenegger, F. (2002). Expliquer, comprendre dans une approche clinique/expérimentale du didactique ordinaire. In Leutenegger F. & Saada-Robert M. (Eds), Expliquer, comprendre en sciences de l'éducation (pp. 227-251). Bruxelles: De Boeck. Sensevy, G., Mercier, A., Schubauer-Leoni, M-L., Ligozat, F. & Perrot, G. (2005). An attempt to model the teacher’s action in mathematics, Educational Studies in mathematics, 59(1), 153-181. Sensevy, G. & Mercier, A. (Eds) (2007). Agir ensemble. Rennes: PUR. Sensevy, G. (under publication). Overcoming Fragmentation: Towards a Joint Action Theory in Didactics. In Hudson B. & Meinert A. (eds.), Beyond Fragmentation: Didactics, Learning and Teaching in Europe. Tiberghien, A., Buty, C., & Le Maréchal, J. F. (2005). Physics teaching sequences and students’ learning. The second Conference of EDIFE and the Second IOSTE Symposium in Southern Europe. Athens, Greece. Transana (2010). Qualitative analysis software for video and audio data. Retrieved from http://www.transana.org. Wittgenstein, L. (1997). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

Author Information

Jerome Santini (presenting / submitting)

University of Nice, France

DATIEF

Toulon

Monique Loquet (presenting)

European University of Brittany

Rennes 2 University - STAPS

Rennes

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