Change

Socio-Cultural-Focused Discourses tend to operate from the assumption that collective knowing unfolds from and is enfolded in individual knowers. Consequently, most of these discourses attend the situated learner and/or the collective learning system – rather than the individual learner. Matters that figure prominently include context, participation, collaboration, ethics, democratic obligation, and tacit norms.

There are a few metaphors that pop up everywhere on the map – that is, some metaphors are invoked by discourses in every single region, and so they’re impossible to locate using the map we’ve devised. This map-wide cluster is used to collect those metaphors.

Collectivist Learning Theories are concerned with emergence and maintenance of both individual knowing and collective knowledge, recognizing these dynamic phenomena to be inextricably intertwined and continuously co-emergent. In general, collectively constituted knowledge is seen to frame individual interpretive possibilities – in effect, formatting possible worlds through specifying what is knowable, doable, and be-able.

Most, but not all Emergent Complexity Discourses are explicitly aligned with Complex Systems Research – that is, they are concerned with understanding systems that transcend their parts. A uniting theme of Emergent Complexity Discourses is that global behaviors cannot be predicted on the basis of the rules governing the individual agents.

The Association-Making metaphor has to do with linking – experiences, interpretations, agents, systems, and so on. The metaphor is invoked in multiple ways, from the very static and mechanical to the more dynamic and organic.

Non-Trivial Constructivisms encompass a range of learning theories that invoke a “learning as construing” – vs. a “learning as constructing” – metaphor. The construing–constructing distinction is critical, and it became an issue because the French verb construire can be translated as either “to construe” (i.e., to integrate elements to make sense of) or “to construct” (i.e., to build something).

Postcognitivist Discourses reject those discourses that frame cognition in terms of symbolic manipulation and information processing. Postcognitivist Discourses include a wide range of perspectives and foci, but they are united in at least two important grounding assumptions. Firstly, they invoke evolutionary dynamics to describe and explain learning. Secondly, all are compatible with Complex Systems Research.

Correspondence Discourses are perspectives on learning that assume a radical separation of mental (or internal, or brain-based) and physical (or external, or body-based). That separation sets up the need for a correspondence between what’s happening in the real, objective world and what’s happening in one’s inner, subjective world. Most assume object-based metaphors, linear/direct imagery, and Newtonian mechanics, thus framing learning in terms of acquiring, attaining, inputting, and/or linking.

Complex Systems Research focuses on systems comprising sets of agents that form unified wholes in their interactions, relationships, or dependencies. Their emergent, global behaviors cannot be predicted on the basis of the rules governing the individual agents. Definitions and descriptions of complex systems revolve around such terms as emergent, adaptive, nonlinear, irreducible, noncompressible, non-decomposable, multi-level, self-organizing, context-sensitive, and adaptive.

Within Developmental Discourses, learning is understood as a recursively elaborative process rather than a linear accumulative one. Most Developmental Discourses focus on how learners’ key habits of perception and interpretation change amid predictable sequences of biological, psychological, and emotional transformation.

Neuro-Focused Discourses frame brain function and thought in terms of vibrant complex systems that arise in, are coupled to, and are elements of many and varied other complex forms. Researchers have been seeking to understand educational implications of the brain’s networked structure, its lifelong plasticity, and many other emerging insights.

Organizational Learning attends to the creation, maintenance, and movement of knowledge in an organization. These dynamics are understood to occur across four distinct levels simultaneously: individual, team, organizational, and interorganizational.

The Path-Following metaphor is pervasive, both across discourses on learning and within the defining structures of modern schooling. It is invoked, for example, in such phrases as “moving along,” “making progress,” “getting somewhere,” “setting goals,” and “looking ahead." And it is evident is such formal educational structures as curriculum, grading, and progress reports.

Transformative Learning is concerned with the expansion of consciousness through critical reflection on beliefs and experiences. It focuses on three sites of “perspective transformation”: psychological (self), convictional (beliefs), and behavioral (lifestyle). Transformative Learning involves rational efforts to analyze and reformulate habits of action and deep-seated assumptions.

Standardized Education includes those approaches to schooling that emphasize common programs of study, age-based grade levels, and uniform performance outcomes. The movement drew much of its inspiration and content from ancient traditions and religion, but its main influences have been industry and the physical sciences.

Ecology is the domain of science focused on the relationships of living things to their environments. As is frequently noted, the word is derived from the Greek for “house, dwelling place,” highlighting a simultaneous attentiveness to both the individual elements and to the system that comprises and transcends those elements. In education, proponents drawing on Ecological Discourses typically foreground multiple forms of relationship (e.g., biological, social, epistemological) while frequently situating discussions in relation to environmental well-being.

The Illumination Metaphor frames knowledge and learning in terms of visibility and clarity. Perhaps most commonly encountered in phrases such as “I see” – meaning, “I understand” – the Illumination Metaphor tends to be coupled with either the Acquisition Metaphor’s version of knowledge (i.e., there’s an object to be seen) or the Nativism’s version of knowledge (i.e., there’s an inner truth to be pulled into the light).

Coherence Discourses regard distinctions and descriptions as useful devices to make sense of the complex dynamics of learning, but they caution that such devices are mere heuristic conveniences. Coherence Discourses suggest that truths do not exist independently or outside of a system – which is a commentary on humans’ understanding of reality, not a commentary on reality. Most Coherence Discourses employ biological and ecological metaphors, with dynamics framed in evolutionary terms.

Identity Discourses do not separate one’s knowing, one’s doing, and one’s being. Consequently, “learning” is tied to all aspects of one’s ever-evolving identity. How and what is learned, then, is not shaped by pre-given and measurable personal traits (compare: Learner Trait Discourses); rather, how and what is learned has everything to do with how and what has been learned.

Behaviorisms reject the notion that knowledge is some sort of external, stable, and context-free form. Rejecting attempts to explain learning in terms of unobservable mental processes, Behaviorisms focus instead on observable and measurable phenomena – thus operationally defining learning in terms of changes in behavior that are attributable to environmental factors.

Mentalisms reach across any theory that (1) assumes a separation of mental from physical (inner from outer, subjective from objective, etc.) and (2) casts learning in terms of mental images, models, encodings, or other inner representations of the existing world. Some sort of barrier – typically the body, or fallible senses, or faulty subjective interpretations – is seen to prevent direct, first-hand knowledge of reality.