Toward a semiotic theory of choice and of learning

Educational Theory

Volumn 56, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 271-285

  Stables, Andrew ^a   Gough, Stephen ^a  

^a University of Bath   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 65249153659     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00226.x     Document Type: Review

References (42)

1. A much fuller exploration of this can be found in Andrew Stables, Living and Learning as Semiotic Engagement: A New Theory of Education (Lewiston, New York, and Lampeter: Mellen Press, 2006).
2. As in much of the current plethora of "sociocultural" approaches and in critical discourse analysis. See, for example, Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis (London: Longman, 1995).
3. We appreciate that, here, we are using a post-Pavlovian, mid- to late-twentieth century working definition of behaviorism. In contrast, Watsonian behaviorism implied more than merely response to immediate external stimuli on a case-by-case basis, instead referring to something nearer the semiosis described in this essay - that is, the general habitual patterning of human behavior by externalities without recourse to cognition. Behaviorism first emerged in a largely liberal, as opposed to an authoritarian, intellectual milieu. This was the cultural environment in which John Dewey, for example, developed his learning theory.
4. As, of course, have many philosophers, but with limited effect to date on mainstream thinking about education.
5. The following definition of semiosis suits the purposes of this essay pretty well, given some latitude in accepting the concept of "free energy": "Semiosis refers to the generation and usage of signs. What is a sign? A sign is the means by which free energy is transformed by codification into constrained matter or information. Semiosis transforms energy from states of thermal and kinetic potentiality to spatio-temporal instantiations within multiple processes of codal constraints of organized relations. Codification is the formation of organized connections or relations with other forms of energy organization. Semiosis, then, is a relational process of codification by means of which networks of codification develop to transform energy into spatiotemporal instantiations of matter or information. Semiosis has been trapped within a semiological or linguistic and psychological definition which sets up a simple dyadic descriptive framework of a >this = substituting for a >that = . This nominalist understanding sees reality as Cartesian inanimates, made up of things and their associated images, which must be related to each other by the mechanical intervention of an external agent, who carries out this act of the representational substitution of one image with another image. This is a degenerate semiosis which locates information within an agential consciousness and sets up a framework confined to iso-morphic descriptions which are therefore incapable of developing emergent or novel properties." Edwina Taborsky, "Semiosis" (definition provided at the Semiosis, Evolution, Energy Web site), http://www. library.utoronto.ca/see/ pages/semiosisdef.html.
6. This is our point of departure from Dewey, who did not explain how (or even that) people would approach educationally desirable tasks from different perspectives. Arguably, this omission in Dewey helps to explain the numerous examples of "bad Deweyan practice" that have resulted from the view that educators can give students personally and socially useful things to do and expect pleasing outcomes, without sufficient attention (we would argue) to action as interpretation.
7. For example, the common distinction in the disciplinary practice and theory of semiotics between signs that are denotative and connotative (that is, between those that do and do not invite us to "read between the lines") is similarly problematized by a view of the sign(al) as both unit of meaning and prompt to action.
8. Charles S. Peirce, Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982). See especially the introduction and numerous references in "On the Logic of Science: Harvard Lectures of 1865," 162ff.
9. See, for example, Jonathan Culler, Saussure (London: Fontana, 1976).
10. See, for example, the discussion of pain in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967).
11. In Living and Learning as Semiotic Engagement, Stables explores the potential for process philosophy (as expressed in the work of Alfred North Whitehead) in relation to this. See Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929; repr. New York: The Free Press, 1978).
12. See also, for example, Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992). Consciousness, according to Dennett, is connected to brain states, but it is not the result of singular responses to stimuli operating discretely.
13. Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971).
14. See, for example, Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980);
15. and Louise M. Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1995).
16. In Is There a Text in This Class? Fish talks of "interpretive communities" in relation to literary texts. Commentators who seek to employ a semiotic perspective in the service of communitarian objectives should note, however, that an interpretive community is never fixed.
17. The Wikipedia site describes Derrida and the concept of différance as follows: "Différance is a pun in French, used in the context of deconstruction. The pun arises out of two meanings of the French word différer: "to defer" (in the sense of to postpone) and "to differ." In the thought of Jacques Derrida, différance refers roughly to the fact that words and signs can never summon forth what they mean (the absent signified," which Derrida called the trace) but can only be defined or explained in other words. Therefore, words and signs are always different from what they mean, and the actual things they refer to are always postponed by human language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff%C3%A9rance (accessed April 29, 2006).
18. John L. Austin, How To Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). Perhaps all statements are performative, though this was not Austin's original position.
19. It would be possible to reverse the order here and refer to communities before individuals. Again, a more communitarian interpretation of semiotic learning theory than we offer might be possible, but such an interpretation would require acknowledging that these communities are never, ultimately, fluid or stable.
20. See, for example, Paul MacLean's Triune Brain Theory (as put forward in Paul D. MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions [New York: Springer, 1991]). For a discussion of brain-based theories of teaching and learning,
21. see Renate Numella Caine and Geoffrey Caine, Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain (Nashville, Tennessee: Incentive Publications, 1990). This school offers a strongly biological explanation of how learning occurs, prescribing measures for promoting learning that are culture- and interpretation-free. See also Dennett, who is neither a poststructuralist nor a mentalist but has drawn on the cognitive tradition to develop an explanation of how consciousness relates to content but is not merely a collection of content-responses in the brain.
22. One might say conditioning, but this goes beyond the common use of the term in the behaviorist literature.
23. There are many general and specific uses of the term equality." While we do not object to its use as a general aim in opposition to repression, and we positively support measures to promote political equality, we do believe that a fully semiotic perspective problematizes specific forms of thoroughgoing, outcome egalitarianism.
24. A county in southern England, west of London.
25. In fact, at the time of this writing, local councils were considering more extensive recycling schemes alongside less frequent household collections.
26. Geoff Whitty, Making Sense of Education Policy (London: Paul Chapman, 2002), 92-93.
27. See Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000);
28. and James Tooley, Reclaiming Education (London: Cassell, 2000).
29. Robert Nozick, Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 107-108.
30. Much of the debate around the feasibility of the notion of the "ideal interpreter" (who can give objective validity to intersubjective judgment) makes use of the work of Donald Davidson. See, for example, Donald Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001).
31. Recently adopted in the United Kingdom, the tables usually chart differential school performance assessed at National Curriculum "Key Stages" (including ages 7, 11, 14, and 16), taking the previous end-of-stage test results as the baseline.
32. For more on this initiative, see Sustainable Procurement Task, The Government's Approach: Delivering UK Sustainable Development Together (2006), http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk/ government/task-forces/ procurement/index.htm.
33. To date this work has included research and development funded by the Purchasing and Supply Agency of the UK National Health Service (NHS PASA); the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA); and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Australia. Both NHS PASA and DEFRA are collaborations between the Centre for Research in Education and the Environment (CREE) and the Centre for Research in Strategic Purchasing and Supply (CRiSPS), at the University of Bath. RMIT's involvement is a collaboration between its School of Management and CREE.
34. Amartya K. Sen, Rationality and Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).
35. Note how children in the United Kingdom now use the term gay" to mean stupid" without any homophobic intent. Such iconoclasm is inevitable. Language, like all forms of cultural practice, subverts itself through the accretion of nuance and the endless need for individuals and groups to mark out new identities. See, for example, Rom Harré's work on positioning, including Rom Harré, Luk Van Langen-hove, and L. Berman, eds., Positioning Theory: Moral Contexts of Intentional Action (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
36. Acceptable difference" refers to difference that is not strongly unacceptable. Policymakers will not enjoy long-term success by imposing their preferences on others.
37. Compare with Fukuyama's end of history" thesis, the relation to which is not fully worked through here. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992).
38. For a much fuller discussion of this point, see Stables's Living and Learning as Semiotic Engagement.
39. Taking this point one step further, one might ask whether a broad and balanced" curriculum produces people who are any more broad and balanced" than one that follows narrower lines of interest in great depth.
40. (Justice) conceived as a deferring to the Other, as in the works of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas. For more on this, see Denise Egéa-Kuhne, ed., Levinas and Education: At the Intersection of Faith and Reason (London: Routledge, 2006);
41. and Gert J.J. Biesta and Denise Egéa-Kuhne, eds., Derrida and Education (London: Routledge, 2001).
42. Broadly conceived, a market is a site (real or virtual) for the transaction of human wishes, whether or not money changes hands."