ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION There is a many-to-one relationship between where students are at the start of a course, and where teachers want them to be by the end, not because teachers want to turn out identical replicas of themselves, but because there is a consensual aspect to the didactic process without which academic life fails in its responsibility to progress knowledge. We expect students to use their knowledge in a variety of ways, and to contribute personal and even original ways of thinking about their subject, but we expect them also to exhibit some point of contact with the consensus view of a subject: if they cannot agree on the substantive content, then they must be able to provide an acceptable argument for the opposing point of view. It follows from this combined personal and consensual character of academic knowledge that there are many ways of knowing a topic, and also that there are many ways of failing to know it.
