ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the consideration of an analytical framework for the teaching-and-learning encounter. To understand the teaching–learning event in semiotic terms is not simply a matter of applying a form of semiotics to education, for there are differing approaches to the sign and semiosis at a foundational level much depends on how the sign is conceptualised. The chapter argues that a fully semiotic account is impeded by representationalism. It presents a metaphysical choice underpinning conceptions of teaching, between classical ontological realism and a form of fully semiotic realism, that recognises the sign as really existing, but inessential, external relation: the sign as feature, or aspect, of the event where the event is process as experienced. In mainstream post-Enlightenment philosophy, ontological realism is bifurcated through the classical Idealist and Empiricist traditions. This has certain implications for the aims, dynamics and responsibilities of teaching that contrast with those derived from a fully semiotic perspective.
