Learning as a Merged Phenomenon of the Learner and the Content to Be Learned

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to knowledge of education based on a non-dualistic perspective on learning, by considering how a variation theoretical perspective seeing learning as a merged phenomenon of the learner and the object to be learnt affects instruction. In this project, teachers’ theoretical non-dualistic awareness was developed through the introduction of variation theory as a guiding principle during a school-based research project. Based on a non-dualistic epistemological standpoint, the analysis focuses on the characteristics of instruction and learning from an assumption that the learner and the content learned cannot be separated. The data used for the analysis is from an example of instruction on learning to communicate in a foreign language. The analysis aimed to answer the questions: How do teachers orientate learners, carry out teaching and consolidate learners’ knowledge? And how does this non-dualistic standpoint affect assessment? The results show in what way teachers transform and enact the curriculum objectives in teaching activities based on the learners’ perspectives, which in turn describes how they change their way of assessing the students’ learning in line with the theoretical assumptions by testing context-situated video-recorded group assessment, which are individually analysed.