Ference Marton

Learning and awareness

Contents: Prologue. Acknowledgements. What Does It Take to Learn? Qualitative Differences in Learning. The Experience of Learning. Revealing Educationally Critical Differences in Our Understanding of the World Around Us. The Anatomy of Awareness. The Idea of Phenomenography. Learning to Experience. A Pedagogy of Awareness. Epilogue.

Phenomenography — Describing conceptions of the world around us

Arguments are put forward in this paper in favour of research which has as its aim the finding and systematizing of forms of thought in terms of which people interpret significant aspects of reality. The kind of research argued for is complementary to other kinds of research; it aims at description, analysis and understanding of experiences. The relatively distinct field of inquiry indicated by such an orientation is labelled phenomenography.A fundamental distinction is made between two perspectives. From the first-order perspective we aim at describing various aspects of the world and from the second-order perspective (for which a case is made in this paper) we aim at describing peoples experience of various aspects of the world.Research in a variety of disciplines, sub-disciplines and “schools of thought” has provided us with experiential descriptions, that is, content-oriented and interpretative descriptions of the qualitatively different ways in which people perceive and understand their reality. It has, however, seldom been recognized that these various research efforts share a common perspective in their view of phenomena and a unifying scientific identity has in consequence not been attained. The focussing on the apprehended (experienced, conceptualized,) content as a point of departure for carrying out research and as a basis for integrating the findings is seen as the most distinctive feature of the domain indicated.Conceptions and ways of understanding are not seen as individual qualities. Conceptions of reality are considered rather as categories of description to be used in facilitating the grasp of concrete cases of human functioning. Since the same categories of description appear in different situations, the set of categories is thus stable and generalizable between the situations even if individuals move from one category to another on different occasions. The totality of such categories of description denotes a kind of collective intellect, an evolutionary tool in continual development.

On the unit of description in phenomenography

‘Conception’ is the unit of description in Phenomenography. It has two intertwined aspects: the referential aspect, which denotes the global meaning of the object conceptualized; and the structural aspect, which shows the specific combination of features that have been discerned and focused on. We define a feature of an object as a way in which the object appears to be different from other objects, and argue that the discernment of a feature is a function of the variation experienced by the subject. The purpose of the paper is to empirically illustrate the intertwined nature of the referential and structural aspects of a conception on the one hand, and the variational origin of the discernment of features, on the other hand.

Discontinuities and Continuities in the Experience of Learning: An Interview Study of High-School Students in Hong Kong.

Abstract An interview study was carried out with 43 high-school students with the dual aim of: (a) exploring the dimensionality of learning; and (b) investigating the nature of the relationship between memorisation and understanding as experienced by Chinese learners. The different ways of experiencing learning found in the group participating in the investigation are described within a two-dimensional outcome space. There is a temporal dimension of variation, comprised of “acquiring”, “knowing” and “making use of”. The other dimension is that of depth, ranging over seeing learning as “committing words to memory”, “committing meaning to memory”, “understanding meaning” and “understanding phenomena”. Concerning the second question this study sets out to illuminate some of our findings point to the possibility of the experience of understanding being developmentally preceded by, and differentiated from, the experience of committing to memory. In the context of similar studies carried out in other cultures, this investigation contributes to our understanding of an evolving culturally distributed universal structure of conceptions of learning grounded in overlapping and complementary views.

Describing and Improving Learning

Any description of differences between people in how they learn and any attempt to improve their ways of learning is contingent by logical necessity on what counts as learning. In both cases, what we mean by learning in terms of the description of outcome is frequently taken for granted. An alternative way of thinking about learning is to realize that what is learned (the outcome or the result) and how it is learned (the act or the process) are two inseparable aspects of learning. In the first part of this chapter, one sense of this relational nature of learning is illuminated. By means of some examples it is shown that the description of certain differences in how people learn corresponds to a given, in this case explicit, meaning of learning, reflected in the way in which differences in the outcome of learning are characterized. When it comes to the question of how learning is or should be described, the relational character of learning has, however, implications not only for the researcher but also for the educators who want to go about improving learning in real-life educational settings. In the second part of the chapter, another sense of the relational nature of learning is commented on. It is argued that as people’s ways of learning represent relations between them and certain aspects of the world around them, any attempt to improve learning has to focus on the relationships as a whole and not on the individuals alone.

Sameness and Difference in Transfer

Discussions about transfer have mainly dealt with how people manage to do something in a situation thanks to having done something similar in a previous situation. From an educational point of view, however, it appears more fruitful to consider the case when the learner, having learned to do something in 1 situation, might be able to do something different in other situations, thanks to perceived differences (and similarities) between situations. The case is made for widening the focus of attention to how situations are related through differences (and similarities).

Variatio Est Mater Studiorum

There is no learning without discernment. And there is no discernment without variation. If good teaching is about making learning possible, how do good teachers help students experience variation? In this paper, we argue that they constitute a space of learning which contains those aspects of the object of learning that are subject to variation simultaneously. For learning to occur, whether it be in the formal learning contexts established by these teachers, or in the less formal contexts of participation in social practices, there must necessarily be a certain pattern of variation present to experience, and this pattern must be experienced.

Students' conceptions of matter

The aim of this study was to reveal how upper level compulsory school students (13 to 16 years old) conceptualize matter

Conceptions of Research in Student Learning.

Differences in approaches to research into student learning are analyzed in terms of differences in the conception of six aspects of the research process. It is argued that underlying various research strategies there is a variation in perspective (experiental or observational), description (qualitative or quantitative), conceptualization (contextual or generalized), relations of categories (internal or external), comprehension (understanding or explaining) and application of findings (technical or emancipatory). The recent quantitative increase in research on student learning is seen as being paralleled by a tendency towards a paradigmatic shift in approach.

Learning Theory as Teaching Resource: Enhancing Students’ Understanding of Economic Concepts

A group of experienced secondary school teachers used a novel learning theory as a resource for planning and carrying out their teaching of a difficult economic concept. Their students’ mastery of this concept after a series of three lessons was compared with the mastery of the same concept by students who were taught by another group of teachers under the same conditions except for the use of the theory. The difference in learning outcomes was extreme. Observations of what was happening in the classrooms showed subtle but decisive differences correlated with the differences in outcome. These differences were interpreted in terms of the theory used by the first group, and the results seem to give support to the theoretical claim that for any specific object of learning there is a necessary pattern of variation and invariance that the learners must experience in order to appropriate the object of learning in question and thus by bringing out that pattern in the learning situation, the likelihood of that object of learning being appropriated is enhanced. Furthermore, this study shows how the understanding of the simultaneous change in the supply of and the demand for a certain good affects its market price can be brought about in a powerful way.