ABSTRACT
We shall begin this final chapter by summarizing the main points we have made in the book so far.
We have adopted a perspective on human thought and understanding which emphasizes their basis in social relations and communication. Knowledge and thought are not just to do with how individuals think, but are intrinsically social and cultural. We have therefore focused on what we call ‘common knowledge’, looking at how this is constructed through joint activity and discourse.
Through discourse and joint action, two or more people build a body of common knowledge which becomes the contextual basis for further communication. Overt messages, things actually said, are only a small part of the total communication. They are only the tips of icebergs, in which the great hidden mass beneath is essential to the nature of what is openly visible above the waterline. This is why context and continuity are essential considerations in the analysis of discourse.
’Context’ is essentially a mental phenomenon. Things ‘out there’ become contextual only when they are invoked - that is, referred to, assumed or implied in what is communicated. The very act of naming things, or of assuming shared understandings of them, makes their reality for communicators a social and conceptual one, rather than one of simple physical existence in the surrounding world. Context is the common knowledge of the speakers invoked by the discourse. It is problematical both for the participants and for any observing investigator. Participants’ conceptions of each other’s mental contexts may be wrong or, more likely, only partially right. The investigators similarly have the problem of determining what is contextual. Any physical set of circumstances could lend itself to an infinity of possible shared conceptions and relevances, and, in any case, the mental contexts of conversational communication are by no means restricted to the physical circumstances of acts of speech. ‘Continuity’ is likewise problematical because it too is mental (or, more accurately, inter-mental). Continuity is a characteristic of context, being context as it develops through time in the process of joint talk and action. It exists as shared memory and intention, the conceptions and assumptions that participants hold, of what they have done and said, of its significance, of what the interaction is all about and of where it is going.
One important function of education may be described as cognitive socialization. The particular research that we have discussed in this book has examined some features of this process within one particular cultural setting, that of some English primary classrooms. Within a society the education system has its own epistemological culture. This culture, and the institutional framework within which children are educated, are what distinguish education from other kinds of cultural learning. Teachers have the task of ‘scaffolding’ children’s first steps towards and into this culture, of supervising their entry into the universe of educational discourse. This is done by creating, through joint action and talk with the child, a contextual framework for educational activities. One of the main purposes of education is thus to develop a common knowledge. This is a problematical process, not only because the creation of successful discourse is in itself problematical (involving as it does the development of adequate context and continuity), but also because education is necessarily ideological and predicated upon social relations in which power and control figure largely. The extent to which educational knowledge is made ‘common’ through classroom discourse is one measure of the effectiveness of the educational process. The importance of a teacher-child asymmetry of power also makes problematical one of the major goals of education - the eventual ‘handover’ of control over knowledge and learning from the teacher to the child, whereby the pupil achieves autonomy.
Educated discourse is not talk which is ‘disembedded’ from context and which differs from less elevated forms of discourse by being more explicit. On the contrary, it is talk which relies for its intelligibility on speakers’ access to particular, implicit contextual frameworks. The discourse of educated people conversing about their specialism -mathematics, philosophy, literary criticism or whatever - is explicit only to the initiated.
An important part of the contextual basis of classroom discourse is a body of rules which define educational activities and which are required for successful participation in educational discourse. These educational ground-rules have both social and cognitive functions. They represent both a set of social conventions for presenting knowledge in school, and also a set (or sets) of cognitive procedures for defining and solving problems. These rules are problematical for both teachers and pupils, for reasons which stem from the fact that they normally remain implicit. They form part of the ‘hidden agenda’ of school work which is rarely, if ever, available for scrutiny and discussion by teachers and children together. This means that they are tacitly contextual, and participants in education rarely check the adequacy of their assumed shared understanding of the requirements or purpose of their mutual pursuit. It is also difficult for teachers, or pupils, to judge the educational value of these rules in any general sense, or to assess the appropriateness of applying any particular rule or subset of rules to a particular activity or problem. Furthermore, we have argued that the maintenance of the tacit/implicit status of these rules is itself a tenet of the dominant pedagogy or educational ideology.
We have drawn a rather simple, but useful distinction between different kinds of educational knowledge. There is knowledge which is essentially procedural, routinized, expedient; we have called this ritual knowledge. There is also knowledge which is explanatory and reflective, which is not tied to specific courses of action; we have called this principled knowledge. A problematical aspect of education is that even well-intentioned joint action and discourse will not necessarily ensure that teachers and pupils establish a common understanding of both procedures and principles. The ritual-principle distinction is also one that we have tried to relate to matters of educational ideology and the practices that derive from it.
