ABSTRACT
As Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky insightfully remarked from studying childhood cognitive development, the “very essence of human memory is that human beings actively remember with the help of signs.” Semiotics is the study of how humans shape raw sensory information into knowledge-based cultural categories through sign-creation, that is, through the use of forms that stand for the categories, from words and symbols to diagrams and even entire theories. The distinction between semiosis and representation is perhaps the most important one for translating semiotic ideas into educational practices. Problems in learning occur not in the domain of semiosis but in the realm of representation. The human infant’s first attempts to know constitutes an instinctive knowing strategy based on the sensible properties of things that serves to enhance recognition of the same things without any further processing of sensory input. Over the last 150 years, education has been influenced mainly by theories and findings coming out of psychology.
