Andrew Stables

3The End(s) of Learning and the Role of Instruction: Shaping the Debate

Abstract: Learning is a term applied to certain instances of change, often retrospectively. It is not possible to draw scientifically verifiable conclusions about the nature of learning from what is conventionally regarded as empirical evidence. There can be no direct observational test of learning. Furthermore, learning cannot be divorced from practices, so it takes as many forms as there are forms of activity; learning is not a form of life. It is therefore inevitable that it should be a contested term. Instruction (cf. the broader term teaching) serves whatever purposes are ascribed to learning, on whatever account. The contours of a practice shape the demands of teaching it. Instructors can tell students about a practice, show them how they themselves practise, and practise with them. For instructional purposes, practices can be grouped according to subject form and content or in relation to the human being under development; this in turn rests on conceptions of human progress. Taking all the above into account, the argument is made for moving from a performative to an adaptive model of teaching/instruction, acknowledging that instruction affects learning outcomes but does not directly cause them. This entails discarding certain myths that can repress effective instruction and learning.

Keywords: learning, instruction, teaching, practices, Wittgenstein, semiotics, performativity

Learning is a broader concept than instruction. Whereas instruction is intended as a means towards learning, not all learning requires instruction. Similarly, not all instruction requires instructors. Consider the contrast between “I learnt that World War 2 ended in 1945” and “I learnt to cope on my own.” Learning implies change – some say merely positive change, but not all change (positive or otherwise) is learning.

Philosophical perspectives contextualise approaches to communication science. This chapter will not use philosophy merely to develop any one version or aspect of communication science; it will, however, invite consideration of the grounding principles of the discipline and explore the implications of a particular set of such principles that derive from such a consideration. Those who see communication science as an unproblematic and fast-progressing discipline may therefore be disappointed by what follows. The philosopher’s task is both to clarify and problematise the concepts that underpin both empirical research and professional practice. This chapter will therefore discuss first learning and second instruction as a servant of learning, employing resources from Aristotle, ordinary language philosophy and deconstruction. It will argue that learning is an empty concept when divorced from contexts of practice, and that there are no solid grounds for regarding it as a purely mental construct. The chapter will conclude with a perspective on learning and instruction as semiotic engagement, characterised by unpredictability of outcomes, openness of systems, and ubiquity of interpretation: an approach that opposes simplistic linear input-output models that are often implicitly supported by both policy makers and empirical researchers, but which fail to address the complexities of human interaction. The proposed approach therefore also goes beyond cybernetic accounts that operate on the basis of closed systems. The aim is to develop a theory of learning and instruction that is empirically verifiable (in a broad sense) without being cripplingly reductive, and that avoids inflexible dualisms of individual against society, mind against matter, and nature against nurture. In these latter respects, the proposed account challenges assumptions in learning theories derived from cognitive science and rhetoric.

In Search of Learning

Defining Learning

Learning has been defined in many ways, most of which postulate some kind of sustained and purposeful change. A well respected example of recent years includes that of Anne Edwards:

My understanding of learning reflects a concern with within-person changes, which modify the way in which we interpret and may act on our worlds. Learning is therefore a change in state, which alters how we act on the world and in turn change it by our actions. (Edwards, 2005, p. 50)

Any such definition is, however, in effect stipulative: it is not possible to draw scientifically verifiable conclusions about the nature of learning from what is conventionally defined as empirical evidence. Rather, we are compelled to consider how the word is deployed and to ground one’s considerations in prior usage. There can be no direct observational test of learning, as learning is always construed as a qualified version of change, and change is ubiquitous.

Learning and Context

All terms have to be understood in relation to their context of use. Broadly, in the Anglophone world, learning is commonly associated with concepts of instruction (particularly in North America) and teaching (more widely), and is widely associated with the appropriation of information or the acquiring of skill. In the German tradition, a richer conceptual framework exists, in which learning can be associated with bildung (the growth of the individual within the social and cultural context; e.g., Benner, 2005; Siljander, Kivelä, & Sutinen, 2012) and pedagogik (the science of upbringing: a much broader use of the term than pedagogy as a synonym for approaches to teaching in the Anglophone tradition). In the bildung tradition, for example, the concept of competence becomes richer than its near synonymity with skill in the Anglophone tradition (e.g., Pikkarainen, 2014). Aristotle’s ancient distinction between techne and praxis relates broadly to these two traditions of learning as instrumental or socially, and thus ethically, engaged.

The Francophone tradition offers another set of emphases, from a strong emphasis on public rationality exemplified by Condorcet, the Enlightenment, and l’Encyclopédie, to the influences of deconstruction in Derrida’s Groupe de Recherches sur L’Enseignement de la Philosophie (GREPH) and Rancière’s “ignorant schoolmaster” who, in the tradition of Socrates (a tradition respected but rarely emulated by latter-day pedagogues) teaches most by knowing least (Rancière, 1991).

Thinkers in the Russian tradition have been particularly powerful in challenging the individualistic theories of mind dominant in the Western tradition and manifested to some degree in Piagetian learning theory, and the emphasis on autonomous rational agency that has dominated Anglophone philosophy of education from Locke (1692) to Peters (Cuypers, 2010) and beyond. Key figures here include Leontiev, Luria, and Davydov, but the most influential has undoubtedly been Vygotsky (particularly 1978) whose work was not widely discovered in the West for several decades after its emergence, but who now has significant Anglophone following (e.g., Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1988). In many educational institutions, Vygotsky’s concept of social mental development, including the Zone of Proximal Development, has become more influential than Piaget’s (1973) biologically driven developmental stages, and the whole, often vaguely defined field of social constructionism/constructivism seems reliant on the Vygotskian heritage.

Nature and Nurture

The differences between individual/biological and social approaches to learning can be very profound. Where Nature is deemed the cause, the specific causal factors include inheritance, hormones, body and brain structure and mechanics, and the effects are understood in terms of learning speed, capacity, and complexity, as measured on standard intelligence tests. Here the factors affecting success stress appropriateness of input in relation to readiness of learner. Where Society is deemed the cause, as in sociocultural theories (e.g., Daniels, 2001), the causal factors include hierarchies, traditions, and the division of labour, and the effects can be understood with respect to appropriation of object relations, induction into practices, and social positioning (see also Harré, 2004). Here, factors affecting success stress the utilisation of methods, tasks and artefacts as mediating tools, and interiorisation of social relations in ways that empower. On both these accounts, outcomes can seem quite highly predictable; there is a strong element of determinism in each, whether biological or sociological. Later in this chapter, a semiotic model will be suggested that avoids the sharp distinctions between these approaches but also offers less in terms of predictability of outcomes.

Learning vis-à-vis Change

In short, with so many influences and construals, it is very difficult to generalise about learning. However, we might draw the following conclusions from the various attempts there have been to define it, given that it is inevitably a matter for interpretation.

First, all learning is change, but not all change is learning; all definitions seem to accept this proposition. For example, not every change in brain state is likely to be accepted as an example of learning, even at the level of the creation of new synapses. Self-evidently, certain changes are symptoms of decline, whereas others may be pathological.

Second, learning is often associated with positive change, but not all positive change is regarded as learning, and there are situations in which we commonly speak of learning from negative experience; the potential here for definition is problematised by value judgments relating to positive and negative experience.

Third, learning involves elements of both biological inheritance and social context, can be conscious or unconscious, and can be identified either by the learner or by others; what we have learnt can comprise more than what we know we know.

Learning, Experience and Practices

Objectively, then, learning is ultimately unverifiable. It must refer to something more specific than merely change, which is a fundamental universal condition, yet attempts to define it further are subject to contestable value judgments. Agreement about learning must therefore be based on inter-subjective judgments rather than objective empirical evidence. We may ground such agreement in experience (that is, empirically in the broadest sense) but not in the narrow sense associated with empirical science (that is, observation-based data collection). For a fuller discussion of the differences between “thick” or “rich” and “thin” empiricism, see Stables (2013).

Given the inextricability of culture from considerations of learning, there cannot be learning without reference to human practices, intentions and purposes. In short, we cannot separate what learning is from what it is for. Learning is thus largely a concept realised and validated teleologically. We do not merely learn: we always learn something. When we use the term “a good learner,” we base this on evidence that the person in question has learnt many things. Ludwig Wittgenstein made the case in stark terms that understanding (widely accepted as one of the ends of learning) is not best construed in terms of brain states, but rather as induction into practices:

Try not to think of understanding as a “mental process” at all. – For that is the expression which confuses you. But ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what kind of circumstances, do we say, “Now I know how to go on …” (Wittgenstein, 1967, p. 154)

If learning is a concept realised teleologically, and if also it is impossible to separate objective discovery of learning from human talk about learning, then we should also be sensitive to uses of the term in unreflexive everyday speech as well as more formal contexts such as policy statements. Originally, “ordinary language” philosophy tended to focus on relatively expert and formal construals of a term, but an interesting distinction arises in the case of learning. It is common for professional educators to talk about learning as an ongoing process: a junior colleague might be praised, for example, on the grounds that “There is good learning going on in your classroom.” Similarly, if one is attending French speaking classes, one is likely to say, “I am learning French.”

However, these uses are rather more conventional than defensible under investigation. The young teacher’s class may be attentive, involved, and happy, but it can only be assumed that they are learning. By the same token, I may attend French classes but be learning very little, although I might have learnt quite a lot about the journey to the classes (perhaps I had to negotiate a difficult drive to get there) but do not stop to articulate this as something I have learnt. In other words, sometimes we talk about learning largely just as a marker of some formal contexts.

On the other hand, when we feel we have learnt something of significance, we tend to talk about it in the past tense. Rather like choices and decisions, significant learning experiences are things we tend to have recognised as having happened rather than as happening. We might say, “I learnt something today,” or, deeper in the past, “I learnt a lot from moving to the United States.” In these cases, the attribution is rather more solidly grounded in empirical evidence: we have reasons for claiming we have learnt that go beyond mere convention. If this argument is accepted, learning is best understood as a concept realised retrospectively as well as teleologically: whether I, or you, have learnt is a retrospective judgment dependent on teleological validation.

Learning as (not) a Form of Life

On this account, learning has a somewhat empty, merely conventional status as a discrete form of life. Generalised statements such as “You go to school to learn” derive their salience from the assumptions that certain things are learnt (both practices – learning how, and knowledge – learning that) and that the fruits of this learning are evident later. It may be the intention that schooling produces learning (that is to say, learning may be construed as a necessary condition of schooling), but only certain kinds of things are likely to be learnt at and from school; there is no guarantee that they will be learnt thoroughly, and many things will be learnt from other contexts. Research shows that concepts are not in any case acquired on a simple on-off basis, but are rather developed with experience. Thus Tillman and Barner (2015) show that time concepts are early acquired by young children, who quickly learn that, for example, an hour is longer than a minute, but take some years to understand just how long a minute or an hour is as measured by clock time. Thus, it is not valid to make a clear-cut judgment about the point at which a typical child learns what an hour or a minute “is.”

This argument can be further extended to the denial of learning as a discrete form of life at all. After all (as argued in Stables, 2006, for example), if all living entails semiotic engagement with aspects of the environment, and if all living results in change, then all learning also entails such semiotic engagement that results in change; there is no clearly identifiable form of life (to use Wittgenstein’s term) that is learning. Some cybernetic models also acknowledge this. There will be some further consideration of cybernetic vis-à-vis semiotic approaches below.

That which we call “learning” happens to each of us in the same way all of the time. Learning is change; change learning. “Teacher” and “Learner” change (learn) together in a constant feedback network of communication. (Murray, 2006, p. 215)

However, as noted above, we do not ascribe the category “learning” to all change, nor would we have any use for the category were it a pure synonym for change. On the present account, learning is best understood as (inter)subjective judgment on significant change, where “significant change” means “change worth mentioning.” Note that this is far from a simple materialist/physicalist explanation of learning as a change in brain states involving the creation of new or strengthened synaptic connections. (See Geinisman [2000] for research evidence linking synaptic strengthening and creation to memory and learning, though without imputation of direct cause.) It does not deny that learning produces such brain states; rather that the former can simply be read off from the latter. Surely not every change in brain state can validly be construed as learning; the judgment of which changes can be so construed is a matter of interpretive judgment and is thus not finally resolvable through pure data analysis.

Lest this argument seem whimsical and arbitrary, let us consider the nature of learning from a classical philosophical perspective, utilising Aristotle’s diagnosis of the Four Causes, as this will serve to strengthen the argument that “learning” is empty without practices.

Learning and Philosophy: Aristotle

In Physics, Aristotle argues that the nature of anything (alive or otherwise) can be understood with respect to four criteria, conventionally construed as the Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final Causes. A human being, for example, is composed of flesh and bone, has a human form, indulges in characteristically human behaviour, and has a certain function or role as a citizen (Aristotle, 350 BCE).

Let us apply this to learning. Aristotle argues that we learn by doing, through mimesis (imitation in all its forms, from mimicry to representation). Like Wittgenstein so much later, he argues that we learn through induction into practices. Learning a practice is therefore synonymous with becoming a practitioner, with all that implies, and the contours of a practice will be the contours of the actions involved in learning it. Even in Aristotle there is an implicit warning against reifying and mystifying learning as a form of life in its own right, through abstracting it entirely from context. One always learns something, and learning something is always connected to learning to do something.

This notwithstanding, this discussion concerns the philosophy of learning as if it were abstractable. On this questionable basis, how might Aristotle construe it? Learning’s Material Cause might be the physically identifiable changes that are associated with it: the creation of new connections in the brain, and also certain other physical changes, such as the building of certain muscles through training in a particular sport. Learning also takes certain forms, these being broadly the forms of the practices into which the learner is being inducted: one learns to think mathematically, historically, and so on. It is hard to identify forms of learning other than those of the practices that are learnt, however. In terms of the Efficient Cause, students tend to behave in certain ways, but it is never entirely clear how much of the student lifestyle is driven by pure learning in the abstract sense, and how much by a conventionalised cultural context. Finally, students are always learning something; learning cannot take place without a learning object, even though what is learnt may not be entirely synonymous with what the teacher (for example) intended, as the student interprets the material from her own perspective.

Aristotle’s typology has some value here, but it may be misleading to consider these aspects of learning as “causes.” It would be strange to speak of the brain changes that accompany learning as preceding, or causing, learning, for example, even though it can be shown that insights are often registered in the brain before they are consciously articulated (Velmans, 1990). The form of the subject matter will certainly, at least in part, determine the form of the learning, but the subject matter per se is not the learning. As to what learners do, much of this can be dismissed as merely conventional behaviour, associated by context with learning: aspects of the student life, if you will. Finally, learning is indeed always directed, or at least appears directed in retrospect, but this insight in a way diminishes rather than increases the status of learning. If learning is (no more than) getting better at doing certain things, the scope for a specialist science and craft of education seems limited: one might as well merely join in with things until one gets better at them.

Learning and Philosophy: Empiricism and the Question of Mind

Aristotle underpins learning theory in the Western tradition, as he underpins the development of empirical science, in contradiction to his tutor, Plato, who seems to teach us that sensory environmental response is no sound basis for learning, as in the Myth of the Cave, in the Republic, for example, in which prisoners take shadows on the cave wall as reality (Plato, 360 BCE). The empirical tradition is developed through the impressions vs. ideas approach of Locke (1690), who sees learning as always beginning in sense impressions, out of which the mind forms ideas.

While the rationalist, idealist tradition associated with Plato has, of course, also been developed since the Enlightenment (via Kant and Hegel), modern experimental psychology and empirical communication science are still strongly grounded in Enlightenment empiricism, at levels of both theory and method. Thus, recent studies of memory formation construe early memories as episodic (the child remembers the word ball when it is associated with a rolling object), while conceptual knowledge inheres in semantic memories and arises from generalisation across a number of instances (so mature understanding of a ball comes from encounters across a number of contexts; e.g., Conway, 2001; Mastin, 2010). It is firm conceptual knowledge that enables us to claim we know something, other than merely recall or recognise it. People suffering various forms of mental decline lose the capacity to lay down new episodic memories, even though they may retain much conceptual memory. Dementia patients, for example, can often remember much from their youth, but nothing about what has happened recently.

Although these contemporary studies offer much more sophisticated explanations than that of Locke and include direct monitoring of brain states and other physical responses, a case can be made that a fundamental problem with Locke’s explanation remains unresolved in contemporary accounts: that of the dualism of mind and body. A problem with Locke’s account is that all learning starts with sense impression, yet the mind forms ideas. This does not account for how the mind arises in order to form ideas. Is the mind itself (merely) an idea, for example? If so, ideas are formed by an idea. Locke seems to argue that the mind pre-exists but is empty of knowledge. Although Locke is commonly regarded as in opposition to Descartes’ subjective rationalism (cogito ergo sum: Descartes, 1998), there is clearly a Cartesian (and Platonic) legacy here, demanding an acceptance that mind is of a different substantial nature from body/ matter.

A century after Locke, Hume was the first great empiricist to question whether mind may have any validity as a concept at all, suggesting that people are “bundle[s] of perceptions” (Hume, 1739–40). Such a response, while admirably sceptical and certainly free of Cartesian dualism, does little to help us discuss how we learn, or, indeed, to talk of us as persons at all. More recent scientists and philosophers have, of course, continued to grapple with the problem of mind, but Descartes’ legacy still haunts the debate. For example, the Twentieth Century’s strong distinction between behaviourist and cognitivist approaches to learning rests on, rather than bypasses, the mind-body problem: it merely emphasises one side or the other. Depending on its interpretation, even the distinction between episodic and conceptual memory may fall prey to it. For example, conceptual memories are only prompted by certain contexts and are themselves therefore narratively dependent. The distinction between knowledge and recollection need not be seen as absolute either. It may be that we claim we know something when we are not aware of the likelihood of competing recollections. We make softer claims when we feel others may have different construals. Contrast, for example, “I know it was last Thursday” with “I think it was last Thursday” or “It may have been last Thursday.” The latter two cases anticipate or invite reappraisal from other parties. Although the concept ball may arise from a composite of experiences, it may be regarded as more of a shorthand than a mental construct.

Much rests on whether these distinctions are matters of degree or of kind. If the latter, then the human mind is qualitatively distinct from that of any other sentient natural being, and on this rests an entire worldview (one that effectively treats animals as machines, for example). If the former, then central Enlightenment assumptions, grounded in the fundamental tenets of Descartes and Newton, need to be overturned, including with respect to our relations with the non-human world.

Breaks from Cartesian Dualism

The past century has witnessed many attempts at a more radical break from this Cartesian substance-dualist legacy. Sometimes these attempts do not effect the escape as successfully as they aim to; sometimes the escape leaves us at a loss about where to go next. An example of the former may be the attempts of philosophers including Sellars, Davidson, McDowell, and Brandom to explain the relationship between the causal laws governing the natural world and the space of reasons (see Scharp & Brandom, 2007) that defines the human realm, with differing emphases put on the degree to which reasons may be effectively causal. This debate is grounded in a Cartesian, Newtonian, and humanist distinction between human and non-human survival, accepting the mechanical causal model for the non-human and assuming (rather than inferring) that humans operate with the “space of reasons.” McDowell (1996) attempts to resolve the problems associated with this dualism by suggesting a conception of Second Nature, that naturalises the human without descending into “brute naturalism”: that is, the “givenism” of Locke’s conception of the sense impression allied to Hume’s nascent rejection of mind.

It can be argued that an alternative, and perhaps more thoroughgoing antidualism might be ascribed to John Dewey, whose pragmatist conative learning theory discusses the development of “body-mind” as an integrated cognitive-be-havioural enterprise understood as a form of biological adaptation realised socially, and whose work McDowell does not address (Dewey, 1928; Stables, 2010). Dewey will be a major influence on the semiotic perspective detailed in the concluding remarks of this chapter, as semiotics is a movement strongly allied to pragmatism.

Learning and the Linguistic Turn

Learning therefore is context dependent (as in Aristotle) and is not simply “there” to be discovered, as naïve empiricism might assume (though Locke himself stressed the importance of habit and training in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1692). It is manifested by change yet does not account for all change; rather, there is an element of retrospective judgment in whether change is deemed to have qualified as learning. In turn, judgment is interpretive and therefore always culture- and language-dependent. The past century has embraced a strong linguistic turn in philosophy, though in two very different incarnations. The mainstream linguistic turn in Anglophone philosophy has concerned the role of usage in concept clarification. Frege instigated a renewed philosophical interest in relative roles of formal and everyday perception of language (Rein, 1985). A later instantiation of this movement is the “ordinary language” philosophy of J. L. Austin and others in the mid-Twentieth Century (Austin, 1962). On this account, learning should be understood with respect to its use in the everyday world of relative experts (which in the case of learning, might be considered to be a great many people). If educators commonly refer to certain kinds of behaviour as learning, we should therefore accept it as learning. Of course, this approach simultaneously accepts and denies cultural context, for what might be seen as a consensus at one time and in one part of the world might not hold, and the assumed definition may soon no longer reflect widespread views. Furthermore, giving the definition no more hold than consensual usage (in one context, however broad), makes difficult any use of the concept in a science of communication, as normally understood. “If we call this learning, then it is” does not seem a firm basis for scientific inquiry, whereas “This is what we call learning” clearly can be the basis of, at least, comparative anthropological or sociological enquiry.

The Continental, largely Francophone version of the linguistic turn is often more radical and also more interdisciplinary, grounded as much in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure (2013, first published 1916) as the process philosophy of Bergson and the phenomenology of Heidegger (Bergson, 2014, first published 1911; Heidegger, 1978, first published 1927). Structuralism (after Saussure) understands languages and, in the work of Levi-Strauss and others, whole cultures in terms of underlying codes (rather like cultural DNA) that drive surface utterances and practices. Thus, everything operates on the basis of a socially accepted system of signs, rather than as a simple “reading off” of the material environment or as an exercise of pure rationality or innate human character. The emphasis is on the creation, rather than the clarification, of concepts (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994). Furthermore, the meaning of any one unit within such a system, such as a word, is defined by its relations to other units. In short, a term is defined in relation to what it is not, rather than chosen as a representation of an external entity. Learning, on this account, can only be understood in relation to what learning is not. The major thrust of philosophy since Plato has been on discovering essences, but this is a philosophy of difference. In the poststructuralism of Derrida and Deleuze, various conceptions of anti-humanist structuralism and post-structuralism offer insights into the nature of language and sense-making more broadly. (It should perhaps be noted that Continental philosophy can be seen as generally more Hegelian than Kantian, though there is not space to trace these legacies here.)

Deleuze, Derrida, and Philosophy of Difference

Various educators have referred to Deleuze as a useful model, including Semetsky (2006), Munday (2012), and Stables (2004). Deleuze and Guattari (2013) contrast the rationalistic arborescent model of change and development (both biophysical and cultural), in which new beginnings can always be understood as logical inferences from their immediate premises, with a rhizomatic model, in which various forms of change can arise from nodes at less predictable points in the system. In other words, cause and effect do not follow in neat succession: we cannot guarantee desired learning outputs from prescribed instructional inputs, for example. This has obvious implications that will be discussed later in this chapter. Let us simply note here that Deleuze, particularly, provides insights for educators: for example, in Difference and Repetition (Deleuze, 1994), in which he stresses the importance of engagement in problems, with its attendant unpredictability, as at the heart of learning or apprenticeship:

To learn is to enter into the universal of the relations which constitute the Idea, and into their corresponding singularities. The idea of the sea, for example, as Leibniz showed, is a system of liaisons or differential relations between particulars and singularities corresponding to the degrees of variation among these relations − the totality of the system being incarnated in the real movement of the waves. To learn to swim is to conjugate the distinctive points of our bodies with the singular points of the objective Idea in order to form a problematic field. This conjugation determines for us a threshold of consciousness at which our real acts are adjusted to our perceptions of the real relations, thereby providing a solution to the problem. Moreover, problematic Ideas are precisely the ultimate elements of nature and the subliminal objects of little perceptions. As a result, “learning” always takes place in and through the unconscious, thereby establishing the bond of a profound complicity between nature and mind. (Deleuze, 1994, p. 165)

Derrida’s philosophy of difference is encapsulated in his development of deconstruction, with its attendant concepts, including those of différance and the trace (Derrida, 1976, 1978). Derrida in effect coined the concept of poststructuralism with his 1966 essay Structure, Sign and Play in the Human Sciences (reproduced in Derrida, 1978), with its rejection of the working belief that a structure has a centre. Structures without centres are, like rhizomatic organisms, always developing new structures that are open and fluid, rather than closed and fixed, systems. New structures are not simply the offspring of older ones, though they bear their traces. Everything of significance is developed out of spatial difference and temporal deferment (hence the neologism différance.) The aim of the academic, according to Derrida, therefore becomes a quest to resist the temptation to see closure and logical clarity by deliberating seeking discordant elements within a system: that is, deconstruction. Though many, particularly outside academia, have rejected deconstruction as negative and useless (for example, see Trask [n. d.]), it can have positive educational value: for example, in delaying the rush to easy conclusions, and in coming to realise the complex nature of creation. For example, I have in the past argued for a greater emphasis on deconstruction in teaching students to become critical (Stables, 2003).

In Conclusion: Learning, Interpretation, and Judgment

With the exception of a naïve empiricism, which sees all truths as directly discoverable from (given) data, all the philosophical influences detailed here accept that learning is a matter of interpretation and judgment, employing these terms in the very broadest sense to include unconscious as well as conscious selection and adaptation. Learning demands change, but not all change is learning; that which is thus regarded is a matter of usage and reflection on usage. This premise will ground the argument of the next set of considerations, on the nature of instruction.

Before turning to a consideration of how this debate might affect theories of instruction, however, a word of warning might be sounded about the experimental method, which holds heavy sway in contemporary psychology and communication science. Experimental techniques tend to test distinctions and thereby reinforce them. To take an example from earlier, if one assumes the distinction between episodic and conceptual memories and then tests for it, one is inclined to reinforce the acceptance. Attempts to quantify the qualitative may serve to reify distinctions that were better kept fluid and under review. Experimental methods may sometimes serve to stall progress in the name of furthering it. The next section should be read with that danger in mind.

The Limits and Possibilities of Instruction

Instruction vis-à-vis Teaching

Much time has so far been spent in attempts to problematise assumptions about the empirical basis of learning. There is no clearly identifiable form of activity that is learning: for example, students in a class may or may not be learning; the activities they are engaged in are generally those of the practices they are learning, and though they may be improving at these by practice, this does not allow for the identification of a discrete learning situation because we are all undertaking practices all of the time. Note that the same is not true of teaching. Teachers managing classes are generally held to be teaching, even though it is unclear how effective their teaching is in relation to student learning. We can see teaching in a way we cannot see learning. Interestingly, however, not all teaching is instruction, at least in the direct sense. While teachers may only infrequently adopt the ironically named FOFO technique (“F*** Off and Find Out”), they often guide, motivate, attempt to persuade, or simply encourage or console their students. Teacher-as-facilitator is a well-tried formulation, and sometimes teachers’ work may seem less instrumental even than this.

Let us begin with an uncontroversial proposition. Teachers are communicators, but not all communication counts as teaching. For it to do so requires an acceptance that the teacher has a certain power or authority, vested in position and/or character and/ or knowledge. Teaching is thus a form of communication carried out under conditions of asymmetric power relations. Other such forms include those associated with policing and management, but one might argue that the emphases in the latter are on compliance rather than development (though actually this is open to some debate). Beyond this, it is difficult to offer an uncontroversial definition of teaching, though instruction can be construed as either a small or a very large part of the teacher’s role, depending on how far aspects of facilitation are considered alongside, or in opposition to, direct instruction.

Teaching, Instruction and Practices

Given all these caveats, it is nevertheless possible to draw some tentative conclusions about teaching and instruction from the argument of the previous section. The key assertion here is that instruction should serve whatever purposes/ends are ascribed to learning, on whatever account. Learning is too vague to be of much use to us in the abstract; it tends to collapse into “change” or perhaps “change for the better.” (Arguably it is synonymous with adaptation: Gough & Stables, 2012.) One is always learning something and for something. The contours of practice shape the contours of learning and therefore the demands of instruction. If there is little value in considering learning in the abstract, there is surely less in consideration of instruction, which exists to serve learning.

We shall go on to consider these ends and purposes in broad terms below. As a general rule, however, it can be argued that each will require something different from the instructor. Issues for instructors relate to the potential of instruction in relation to each practice, which in turn requires consideration of both possibilities and constraints. In what situations can instruction yield the most power, and in what ways is it always limited? The postmodern condition tends to reduce valueladen concepts such as education to matters of performativity (Lyotard, 1984), but if instruction were merely a mechanical input that always produced a regular and entirely predictable output, education and parenting would be easy: children would simply do what their parents said, and the capacity for learning in this direct way would remain undiminished until the mechanisms wore out. This is self-evidently not the case: the complexities of human learning cannot be understood in terms of very simple stimulus-response machines, even though people clearly do respond to stimuli – but stimuli are both various and variously responded to. This is not to deny the power of persuasive rhetoric (O’Keefe, 2016). How material is presented can make a difference to how it is received, including how much the addressee “buys in” to the message, but this is not to assert that any two addressees will “buy in” in the same way, or with the same consequences.

To instruct in a practice is therefore more than to implant information relating to it in the memories of learners, and it involves more than the art of persuasion. One might be persuaded to try something, but it is through the practice that the learning will come. Memories develop episodically. It follows that the instructor must be engaged in a practice herself in some way, both modelling and co-operating with students’ own engagement. In short, instructors can 1. tell students about practices, 2. show them how they practise, and 3. practise with them.

Before exploring further the implications of this, some clarification relating to practices is called for. The emphasis on practices as fundamental, and on concepts as only making sense within the context of practices, comes from Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1967), in which he refers to practices variously as “forms of life” or “language games.” The idea is a simple one and grounds the present argument: we should not distract ourselves into seeking context-free definitions. For instance (my examples), how can we know what multiplication is when it means “make bigger” in the Bible (“go forth and multiply”) but can mean “make smaller” in mathematics (multiplication by a factor less than one), and how can we know what fairness is when a fair test in science is different from fair skin or fairness in social justice talk? We simply cannot.

It is also important to note that forms of life can include preconscious elements, so not all are specifically language games. In this sense, the semiotic approach being developed here differs from one grounded in rhetoric (Rutten & Soetaert, 2014; O’Keefe, 2016), though at the level of overt linguistic and cultural interaction, semiotics and rhetoric are often effectively interchangeable.

We should not allow ourselves, however, to think that practices are windowless monads: closed systems completely separate from one another. There are clearly connections between the use of multiplication in mathematics and everyday talk, and between the use of fairness in scientific inquiry and politics. Wittgenstein refers to these overlaps as “family resemblances,” though he has little to say about how they arise or how, in general, practices affect and infect one another. Cybernetics, which generally deals with feedback loops within closed systems, has also had to tackle this issue. Murray (2006) argues that systems are always observerdependent; the observer is effectively an inside outsider, as it were. Thus, the systems in which we are engaged can be described at a number of levels. Whether or not it is valid to regard them as neatly nested, however, remains a matter of debate, as is the broader issue of whether the messiness of life can ever validly be reduced to the identifiable circuits comprising artificial systems. Despite the many overlaps between cybernetic and semiotic approaches, apparent in the work of influential thinkers such as Bateson (1991) and Brier (2013), it should not be forgotten that cybernetics has arisen more from a technologically driven desire for control than semiotics, the roots of which are more religious and philosophical, and the history of which can be said to underpin liberal education (Olteanu, 2015). Taken together, insights from these two disciplines may warrant the working hypothesis that systems/practices appear self-contained for limited periods, but are both constantly evolving internally and are periodically affected by changes originating in other practices, as actors cross practices. (This is even true of species evolution in the long run.) This explains why individuals experience Batesonian “double binds” and why learners never learn exactly what teachers teach. Even systems that should be as tightly closed as possible – one might think of aeroplanes, for example – are somewhat leaky and are always subject to change through each contextual encounter.

There are two obvious ways in which practices can be grouped for educational reasons. The first is common, the second less so. The first is to group individual subject disciplines under a broader umbrella. In some British schools, for example, history, geography and religious studies are grouped as Humanities (of course, in higher education, this term has a broader and somewhat different remit), and in North America, the term Language Arts can embrace a number of practices. Curricula are often divided along such lines. The danger with this approach is that while history, or “being a historian,” can easily be understood as a practice, “being a Humanities teacher” relates less easily to any practice recognised outside school and is much harder – perhaps impossible – to either model or develop in collaboration.

The second way of grouping practices is in relation to the conception of the human being that is under development. This approach is somewhat Aristotelian, as Aristotle understood the development of practices in relation to the development of the virtues that constitute each sort of useful citizen. Although we may not want to share Aristotle’s assumptions about the fixity of social roles, or even the sense that personal fulfilment can only come through one’s role as a citizen (though what this means is of course open to debate), we can certainly generalise about practices to some extent in terms of the kinds of human development they are engendering. Such a generalisation can be arrived at through a consideration of what we mean by human progress.

Forms of Human Progression

Stipulatively, human progress can be understood:

I have resisted the temptation to construe human progress as 6. mere compliance, though many totalitarian practices, within and beyond totalitarian states, seek mere compliance; indeed, many of the original arguments for compulsory formal education concerned the needs for a willing workforce and an unquestioning military. The motivations here for individuals are, I suppose, fear and desire for respect.

While noting that conceptions of human progress rest on metaphysical assumptions that can be challenged and are always answers to the question, “What do I mean by progress?” so are not absolute, there is one considerable advantage to approaching the challenge of instruction partly in this way. That is, it reminds us that when we teach, we teach both practices and people. We teach What and How (practices), but also Who(m) and Why. People require to make sense of individual practices in relation to their own perceived integrity as persons in relation to other persons, and their sense of motivation or alienation with respect to learning results from how this occurs. To put it crudely, our students will be either turned on or turned off by our instruction. It is certainly in part the case that merely offering opportunities to engage in a practice that proves successful is motivating in itself, but there is another element at play that is often overlooked, that relates to the learner’s predispositions and the effects of these on her orientation to the task.

Planning Instruction: “So What?” and “How?”

In summary, instructors should be as aware as possible of two sets of parameters in planning their courses. The first is the contours of the practice into which they are inducting their students (noting that philosophy is as much a practice as baseball); the second is the kind of human aspiration(s) this practice serves, and how this aspiration is likely to be manifest in the life stories of the students. In turn these parameters can be understood in terms of possibilities and constraints. Let us briefly consider these in relation to the specific challenges facing those planning a course of instruction.

I suggest that the overriding questions here are “So What?” and “How?” The So What? question addresses the motivations and expectations of the learner, and the kind of human progress furthered by mastery of the practice in question. The How? question relates to the contours of the practice itself, as well as to the rhetorical devices at a teacher’s disposal. Some elements of the So What? question can be identified. They include, “What does this have to do with me?” and “How is my life going to be better for learning this?”

Instructors/ teachers can address these issues by being aware of their students’ histories and inclinations and explaining how the practice in question serves as part of a broader offering in terms of increasing their capacities and enriching their identities. Elements of the How? question include “What do I do next?” and “How do I know if I’m getting better at this?” Instructors/teachers can address these issues by being clear about both aims and techniques engaged in a particular activity.

Note that in neither of these cases is the emphasis on an exclusive concept of intelligence, expressed in terms of cognitive ability or readiness to undertake a certain task. The emphases are rather all on motivation and accessibility. Students can show us what their levels of understanding are rather than having the instructor make assumptions about what they will and will not understand. The rule of thumb here is to help students progress as far as they can rather than limit them according to learning objectives set on the dubious understanding that their potential is known in advance.

Living and Learning as Semiotic Engagement

Performativity vs. Adaptivity

There are two fallacious ways of understanding the teaching-and-learning/learningand-instruction process on the present argument. The first is as a simple means-end, input-output model, in which pre-specified learning aims can be fulfilled as outcomes of the instructional inputs that precede them. The second is a simple (as opposed to a sophisticated) cybernetic feedback model, in which learner simply feeds back to instructor. Each of these is a closed-system model. However, neither learner, instructor, nor subject matter can validly be seen as a closed system over time, and insofar as each is self-referencing, they collide in the practice/ system of a particular form of learning-and-instruction. Each act of communication that is intended to pass on knowledge is interpreted rather than merely absorbed; it will be understood in relation to the receiver’s diachronic (life story) and synchronic (present) context. Consider how different your reaction to a lesson on the Second World War would be if you had recently discovered important facts about your grandparent, in terms of his ethnicity perhaps, or role at that time. Your learning experience might prove much richer, perhaps much more painful, than your teacher could ever imagine. The learning experience can be much richer than the teaching experience, and vice versa. The factors responsible for these reactions can never be fully known in advance.

All forms of life, including those related to teaching and instruction, and those classified as learning, can be understood as forms of semiotic engagement, of response to various kinds of stimuli (including the linguistic and conceptual) in the light of habitual responses filtered and distorted by the demands of the present context. All our changes, including those we ascribe to learning, are in effect adaptations of habitual responses to new conditions. We are neither autonomous in these responses nor culturally determined, but both immured in received responses and distinct from others in our responses to new conditions.

Simple means-ends and feedback models fail to take into account two important factors. One is learner identity and aspiration. The strong drive to survive and prosper operates slightly differently in each individual, and each individual therefore makes more or less, but always distinct, use of the course of instruction. The second is the ubiquity of practice. Instruction is never in isolation. It is always instruction in something. Taking these two considerations together, we can see how both individuals and practices are modified over time through use and communication, in ways that are beyond the fully conscious control of any individual or even expert group. Indeed, it can be argued that every communication about and in a practice has a tiny effect on the development of that practice: nobody is ever merely passing things on.

The present argument calls for a shift from a performative to an adaptive model of teaching/ instruction and learning. On the performative account, instruction causes specific learning outcomes; on the adaptive, instruction affects learning outcomes. The performative model assumes closed systems; the adaptive, open. Furthermore, both the cognitive and behaviourist traditions that dominated Twentieth Century learning theory are restricted by the legacy of Cartesian mind-body dualism. In the cognitive tradition, it is assumed that minds learn while bodies merely react; in the behaviourist, that bodies react, causing mind(sets) to change. Each rests on the assumption of the mechanical body. Following Dewey, however, as well as his pragmatist predecessor, Peirce, we should consider the person as body-mind, as complex organism attempting to thrive in a shifting environment. Policy-makers might not like this model, as it removes the illusion that predetermined teaching objectives can produce highly predictable outcomes, if only the best approaches are used. However, perceived usefulness can be bought at the cost of reductionism. In the long run, the performative model is doomed, as its aims are never fully realised in practice. Whatever the intentions of those who have influence over our instructional systems, they exist ultimately for the somewhat unpredictable learners rather than the planners, with their understandable desire for neatness and efficiency.

Learning as Challenge

It is time to be more sceptical about the simplistic positivistic agenda that has dominated the educational policy debate for some time. Not only are learners’ responses somewhat unpredictable: learning is also not necessarily always a happy event. The granddaughter of a Holocaust victim who learns about Auschwitz in school is not going to enjoy this experience. In a very real sense, all learning is a matter of dis-illusionment, in the sense of realising that the world is not quite as it was imagined to me; it is a matter of realising relative weakness as well as relative strength. Even the most inspiring experience, such as hearing Mozart and suddenly “getting it” for the first time, entails an element of loss and dislocation as one realises that one’s previous prejudices have been rendered invalid. On this account, all instruction is a form of more or less controlled identity disruption: however the learner takes on board the instruction, it will change something about her, in a way that may be experienced as positive or negative, and this reaction cannot be known in advance by the instructor. Further than this, all instruction is induction into practices that are imperceptibly modified by the intervention. The combination of naïve sentimentality with a simple linear model of learning and instruction diminishes us all, however strong its sway in the current policy context.

Activity-Centredness and Learner-Awareness

Should instruction therefore be content- or learner-centred? Neither of these is enough. The preceding arguments suggest that instruction should be activity-centred and as learner-aware as possible. Teachers should be engaging learners in practices in ways that challenge but do not inhibit them, involving their distinctive concepts-in-use, choosing the appropriate mode of engagement on the basis of the best knowledge of their learners they can possibly have, though this knowledge will never be complete. Whether direct instruction occurs in a formal classroom in the presence of a teacher, in a laboratory, on a sports field, or in private engagement with an electronic device, this principle remains the same.

To enact this principle entails discarding certain myths that can repress effective instruction and learning:

On the other hand, as John Dewey argued so forcefully in Democracy and Education (Dewey, 1916), effective communication is both effective education and effective democracy – though it can be argued that even Dewey, especially in the early writings, made some naïve assumptions about the predictability of outcomes (Stables, 2008). Consideration of the limitations above should never blind us to the immense potential of fruitful teacher-student relationships, well enacted. It is through learning and instruction in various forms that the practices that define human life are renewed and revised.

Concluding Remarks

In summary, the arguments presented in this chapter lead to the conclusion that, instructors/ teachers might most productively focus on the following:

A major thrust of the argument is that there is far more to instruction than passing on or feeding in information. On a simple linear input-output model, it is impossible to instruct, for there are always reasons why information cannot simply be transported from an instructor’s head into a learner’s. However, acceptance of this critical limitation prompts much richer reflection on what instruction/ teaching can achieve, though policy-makers attached to simple linear models, or even open to circular, feedback models but within strongly demarcated closed systems, may never fully be supportive. Part of the duty of instructors, therefore, is to disabuse policy makers about learning and instruction.

This is not a flippant wish. The future prosperity of the human condition rests on succeeding generations being able to solve problems that currently seem intractable or have not yet even been formulated or recognised. Malthusian economics have been discredited on one level: the rising population of the Nineteenth Century was in the end matched by humanity’s ability to feed itself. However, the challenge remains the same for each generation. We rely on our children and grandchildren to support a level of population that seems unsustainable on present models, notwithstanding challenges other than food production such as climate change, energy security, and the misuse of technology. If all we do is pass on all the knowledge we have, the human race will quickly head towards oblivion. Thankfully, however, all our attempts to pass on knowledge are tempered by the realisation that succeeding generations will interpret anew and eventually reach conclusions different from our own. It will be through our partially failing attempts to convey what we know that succeeding generations will make possible some of what is now impossible as they develop the practices they inherit, sometimes in surprising ways.

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