ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that ideas from different strands or psychoanalysis can provide the basis for new kinds of research into learning. Although a vast array of literature purports to be about 'learning' or about 'teaching and learning', it rarely attempts to grapple with the nature or processes of learning. In educational literature one rarely finds anything approach mg a discussion which examines the actual process of learning. Rote-learning in particular, with its reliance upon repetition, concentration and mental rigour, employed methods designed to shield the potential sinner from mental wandering. In 1916, however, John Dewey proposed a pragmatic approach, which envisaged learning as composed of four components: 'experience', 'data for reflection', 'ideas' and 'fixing what has been learned'. If education and learning are indeed functions of the circulation of signifiers, then pedagogical research might be undertaken to demonstrate—through case studies—how the triggering effect of signifiers constitutes or produces learning.
