ABSTRACT
The central purpose of any education or training is the achievement of some state of greater awareness, or knowing. Whether it is the kind described as conceptual awareness or as competence, the state of knowing is reached through some process of acquiring some form of knowledge. But knowing, in the fullest sense of the term, entails understanding and that, in turn, requires that the learner locates what they know not only within wider conceptual networks but also within the context of its own production. They must know where their knowledge has come from, and how. ‘Forgetting this, one is in constant danger of confusing the possession of blobs of so-called knowledge with knowing itself (Pring, 1987:286).
