Nedenfor kan man læse mit abstract til NERA’s konference til marts i Lillehammer. NERA står for Nordic Educational Research Association. Paperet indgår som en del af et såkaldt symposium, hvor forskellige nordiske forskere drøfter forholdet mellem læring og undervisning. De forskellige bidrag kommenteres af den hollandske uddannelsesfilosof Gert Biesta, der i 2004 startede den kritiske diskussion af læringsbegrebets magtfulde ekspansion i sin artikel “against learning”, der senere indgik i en bog, der udkom på Unge Pædagogers forlag med titlen “Læring retur”.
Title: Are teaching and learning causally or internally connected? (ændret til: The Oblique Teacher)
I argue that a pupil only becomes a pupil when he has found himself a teacher who only becomes a teacher when he has found himself a pupil. Thus, learning and teaching is internally connected activities instead of just isolated elements to be causally connected.
First, I briefly point to an empirical instance of the relationship between learning and teaching, as it currently can be observed in official Danish school policy: “Learning” is reduced to quantitative test-targets, while “teaching” is a technique implemented by a “teaching-expert”, and designed to meet the learning-targets. This instrumental relationship radicalizes the conceptual separation of teaching and learning and reduces education to purely a technical matter.
Next, I investigate two understandings of the relationship between teacher and student that both look at it as being internally rather than causally connected: First as an emotional, social or rational relationship within a specific professional or disciplinary frame. This will lead to principles of apprenticeship or didactics. Secondly, I look at learning as an activity that takes place inside teaching, as a work of art, a dance, a work or a building that contains pairs of meaning such as remoteness/nearness and discipline/kindness, gathering cultural things into its nestling ring; a gathering that makes everybody feel both at home and attentive to the voice of things. In this sense, learning is inside teaching.
If such a view is accepted, it will mean a complete reordering of most existing educational policies.
PS På konferencen er dette oplæg ændret til et paper med titlen: “The Oblique Teacher” (En skrå lærer), der både indeholder og udvider ovenstående emner.