A Three-Level Model for Conceptual Framing of the Educational Process as Knowledge Creation:

A Critical Analysis of the Theories of L. Vygotsky, B. Bernstein and F. Varela

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

“DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY”

by

Arkady Tsypkine

Submitted to the Senate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

6, March, 2012

Beer-Sheva

ii

A Three-Level Model for Conceptual Framing of the Educational Process as Knowledge Creation:

A Critical Analysis of the Theories of L. Vygotsky, B. Bernstein and F. Varela

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

“DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY”

by

Arkady Tsypkine

Submitted to the Senate of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Approved by the advisor

Approved by the Dean of the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies

6, March, 2012

Beer-Sheva

iii

This work has begun under the supervision of

Prof. David Gordon, of blessed memory;

and it was completed under the supervision of

Dr. Shoshana Keiny, of blessed memory and

Prof. Haim Marantz

In the Department of Education

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

1

Acknowledgements I express my gratitude to all my teachers, who have helped me to become who I

am. I also want to thank all my students who presented me with their problems and who

by their persistence and devotion have motivated me to seek for the solutions. I also am

grateful to my colleagues who provided me with many ideas and insights. To my regret, I

cannot mention every one of them by name.

I am grateful to the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev for enabling me to

undergo a wonderful learning and research experience, as well as for supporting me with

a scholarship for a large part of my prolonged research. Had I not received this

scholarship, I could not have begun this whole enterprise.

I am thankful to my family for being at my side all this time.

I sincerely appreciate the patient and brilliant editing of the editor of this thesis,

Dr. Merrie Bergmann.

I want to thank all the members of the academic staff of the Department of

Education, and particularly, Prof. M. Gorodetsky, Prof. R. Hoz, Prof. A. Aviram, Prof. Y.

Yona, Prof. T. Horowitz, Dr. D. Tubin, Dr. G. Alexander, Dr. I. Tabak, and Dr. M.

Levin-Rozalis, for their words of support, for their insightful discussions as well as for

introducing me to new ideas. I am especially indebted to Prof. Y. Neuman who

introduced me to quite a number of the theories and to many of the ideas that I discussed

and developed in this thesis.

And most of all, I want to thank my supervisors. There are no words that would

adequately express my feelings to Prof. David Gordon, of blessed memory, a person of so

much erudition, insight and knowledge in so many realms, who could see the

worthwhileness of me undertaking this research in my inarticulate mumblings when I

first came to him, and who believed in me and enabled me to begin this research project.

I am extremely fortunate that I had a chance to be his student before he passed away. I

shall always remember him. I am also very grateful to Dr. Shoshana Keiny and Prof.

Haim Marantz who took up the torch and who taught me so much, and who were ready to

learn together with me and who helped me to express my own thoughts, even when we

disagreed.

2

Unfortunately, when I finished the final version of this thesis, I did not have the

opportunity of showing it to Dr. Keyny, as she passed away last Rosh Hashana. However,

although I did not have the opportunity of getting her comments on this last revision, her

fingerprints are visible on every page of it. She was more than academic supervisor to

me; she was also a mixture of friend, constructive critic and aunt who looked out for me

and gave me much encouragement. I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to

have been supervised by her and have got to know her. She was, and will always be

remembered as a person who was dedicated to improving the Israeli educational system,

and as a very dedicated, thoughtful and knowledgeable teacher who knew how to enthuse

her students, many of whom she treated as part of her extended family in the sense that

she opened her house to them. She will be missed by all who had the good fortune to get

know her.

3

It is the theory that defines what we see (A. Einstein)

There is no educational fate: no pupil is destined to succeed or to fail

4

Table of Content

Acknowledgements............................................................................................................. 1

Table of Content ................................................................................................................. 4

List of Illustrations.............................................................................................................. 5

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 6

Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................................. 19

Part I: Presentation of the Basic Theories......................................................................... 30

Chapter 2. Lev Vygotsky .......................................................................................... 30

Chapter 3. Basil Bernstein’s Sociological Theory.................................................... 65

Chapter 4. The General Complexity Theory............................................................. 98

Chapter 5. Varela .................................................................................................... 134

Part II: The Model and its Implications .......................................................................... 180

Chapter 6. The Three-Level Model: General Aspects ............................................ 180

Chapter 7. Physiological level ................................................................................ 190

Chapter 8. Societal Level........................................................................................ 209

Chapter 9. Phenomenological Level ....................................................................... 236

Chapter 10. The Practical Implications of My Model and My Answer

to the Focal Question ............................................................................................. 266

References....................................................................................................................... 310

Acknowledgements in Hebrew ........................................................................................... א

Abstract in Hebrew ב..............................................................................................................

5

List of Illustrations

1 Direct and Mediated Actions ..........................................................................................39

2 Fitness Landscape .........................................................................................................118

3 Fitness Landscape in Relation to Educational Career...................................................129

4 Relations between Levels .............................................................................................186

5 Mutual Specification of the Next State of the System..................................................187

6 Reflex Response and Intentional Action.......................................................................205

6

Abstract My present thesis was inspired by my wide and varied personal experience as a

student and as a teacher in drastically different cultures of Russia and Israel, in settings of

a conservatoire of music, individually and in ensembles, and of teaching music in the

regular public schools’ enrichment projects. In this thesis I try to make sense of my

experience and to provide a frame for rational thinking about teaching and learning.

In my introductory chapter I state my focal question: Why do different individuals

learn different lessons while attending the same class and participating in the same

activities in the same place and at the same time? I explain why I am not satisfied with

the existing answers to this question. I am dissatisfied with the answers provided by

statistical research as differences within sample groups are usually more significant than

those between the groups. The best predictor of educational career of an individual found

so far is that of number of years of formal learning of his or her parents. This accounts for

about of one-third of variance, but it expresses a social pre-determination of the person’s

success, which I want to find ways to overcome.

I am also not satisfied by answers supplied by psychological theories that assume

the existence of in-born differences between individuals, as these are essentially oriented

towards “diagnosing problems” and defining students’ success “ceilings”. In relation to

the educational process, these psychological theories essentially propose different kinds

of “fitting” or “matching” teaching to “objective” abilities of students, and end up

suggesting that students who deviate from the standard (like slow learners, etc.) follow

less enriched teaching programs. Such psychological theories hold essentially that a

person develops sui generis, and that the educational process drags after this “natural”

development and only supplies the content (specific knowledge) to “storage shelves” of

psychological structures after these structures become developed.

My introductory chapter ends with a discussion about what an acceptable answer

to my focal question should look like. I emphasize that it must point to a way that the

divergence in students’ learning can be overcome and this implies that it must not assume

that students are born with abilities that predetermine their success or failure in the

educational system.

7

In my second chapter I attempt to answer my focal question with the help of

psychological theory of Lev Vygotsky, which he developed as an attempt to overcome

the in-born pre-determination of educational development and so he concentrated on

ontogenetic development of an individual in his/her physical and social environment.

Moreover, Vygotsky does not think that education “fills-in” content into psychological

structures of an individual. He believes that education can influence the psychological

development of students. In this chapter I outline a number of Vygotsky’s concepts and

argue that some his views are misconstructed as they are not seen in the context in which

Vygotsky developed them.

First, I present Vygotsky’s conception of the Zone of Proximal Development

(ZPD) that is defined as an interval between a fully independent performance and the

most difficult task the student is able to perform with external assistance. It can be said

that from one side of ZPD there are ready-to-use knowledge structures, while on the other

side there is a chaos where the person neither can see structures nor act. ZPD than can be

considered as a “knowledge production line” and be compared to the Complexity Theory

notion of the “edge of chaos”. The self evident and nearly sole application of this concept

is in the realm of assessment, which pinpoints not just the current state of development of

the student, but also offers a tentative prediction of his or her development in

approximately the next two years under normal conditions. Nevertheless, more important

and often forgotten, its implication is the conclusion that education substantially defines

the development of an individual.

Following this, I consider Vygotsky’s view of consciousness, which I refer to as

“the mirror of consciousness”. Vygotsky argued that it is impossible to study human

behavior scientifically without accounting for consciousness. Therefore, he proposes, in

Marxist natural-science-like manner, to view consciousness as a “reflex on reflexes”, as a

group of intermediate reflexes between perceptual (input) and motor (output) neural

pathways. These are considered as physiological representations of external reality and a

neural mechanism of symbolic mediation. These “intermediate reflexes” become formed

in the course of, and dependent on the actions of the individual, and he claims,

substantially influence a person’s behavior. It is clear that there is a qualitative jump from

“reflex on reflexes” to human consciousness, which was conceptualized after Vygotsky’s

8

death. It also sounds similar to mechanistic behaviorism based on reflexology.

Nevertheless, this concept, and its use by Vygotsky, is a principal step towards a

scientific view of human consciousness. It is important, that the mechanism proposed by

Vygotsky, though formulated in terms of Pavlov’s reflexology, does not contradict the

findings of later neuro-physiological theories, particularly, those of Varela, and in some

way anticipates their conclusions.

I then proceed to consider Vygotsky’s concept of mediation. I begin by presenting

the distinction between direct and mediated actions and I argue that it is improper to

confine the concept solely to the symbolic realm. Furthermore, I show that, in its external

form, mediation of an action may take the form of mediating actions of one person by

another person, which can be seen as the influence of a teacher on the development of a

student. It is understood, that while the final result of direct and mediated action may

seem to be the same, the deep structure of actions, their possibilities and limitations, and

their demands posed onto the actor, are drastically different. I also draw attention to

Vygotsky’s view that the structure of mediation (of mediated actions) and of means of

mediation (the structure of tools and symbolic language) develop in parallel in mutual

interdependence. Finally, I point to the role of mediating image (symbol) of action, on the

process of its formation and the dynamics of its place in the overall structure of an action:

from after the performance, to during the performance (e.g. in the form of egocentric

speech) to before the performance, where it performs planning function. On the basis of

this conception later in this thesis I shall develop my view of intentional acting.

I then turn to a consideration of Vygotsky’s view on the development of higher

mental (psychic) functions, which he sees in terms of combining the use of tool and

symbol (sign). I point to Vygotsky’s “bio-social” view of the development of an

individual as the result of intertwining of biological development and social intervention.

I present his view of development of hierarchical structure of activity, which later in the

thesis I compare to the processes of self-organization. I then discuss his dynamic view of

this process that I see as implying the mutual development of parts, and of the whole, and

which includes both revolutionary and evolutionary development that usually becomes

stimulated by a failure to perform a task with the help of existing knowledge (system of

higher mental functions of the given structure).

9

In the conclusion part of this chapter I state my reasons for being dissatisfied with

Vygotsky’s theory. First, it is based on an outdated physiological basis of Pavlov’s

reflexology. Second, I argue, though it proposes a way to account for consciousness in

human behavior and explicates mechanism of how one person influences development of

another, and thus explains peculiarities of development of a singular individual as a result

of his/her specific developmental history, in the end it is silent about background

differential macro-social influences of culture and of social class.

In the third chapter of my thesis I turn to the theory of B. Bernstein. I examine

Bernstein’s theory because he, like Vygotsky, concentrates on qualities which are not in-

born but acquired dependently on actual encounters with social environment, and

because, like Vygotsky, he is also a Marxist. I outline Bernstein’s theory of coding of

knowledge. I adumbrate his concepts of codes, of classification and framing and of

recognition and realization rules. Then I discuss certain aspects of his views, namely,

restricted and elaborated orientation of codes, collection and integration orientation of

codes and organic and mechanic solidarity, and relate to the concepts of positional and

individual control. I then proceed to consider the concepts of educational re-

contextualization field and of pedagogic device, which, I explain, are essentially seen by

Bernstein in the negative light of the mechanism of distributing different forms of

consciousness as a function of students’ belonging to different social classes.

According to Bernstein, the possible answer to my focal question is as follows:

Due to different codes acquired in their socio-cultural, particularly family, background,

different students “decode” differently messages of their teachers and therefore learn

different things. As the process of codes acquisition and development in ontogeny of an

individual is not dealt with by Bernstein’s theory, and so it does not provide the teacher

in a classroom with means to help a specific student to overcome educational failure.

Finally I summarize Bernstein’s theory as it is applied of into the field of “hidden

curriculum”.

I then show that Bernstein’s theory supplies an inadequate answer to my focal

question. First, I argue that it is unable to account for the fact that different students of the

same social class often learn different things while attending the same lesson. I also point

out that his theory only recognizes two socio-economic classes, which is clearly

10

inadequate. I also argue that Bernstein’s theory is largely static and that he plays down

the influence of the school on the development of the child, as he finds the differences in

what students learn in codes they acquired outside of school and what they do learn in

school is “tainted” by the codes of their teachers. I conclude this chapter with the claim

that Bernstein’s theory can be strengthened by combining it with Vygotsky’s. Yet, I

argue that this combined theory is still unsatisfactory as it would still be largely

deterministic, and any difference in knowledge acquired by pupils would be considered

to be a personal deficiency and/or a personal inferiority.

In my fourth chapter I turn to general Complexity Theory to find a satisfactory

answer to my focal question. I begin by explicating its central concepts. Then I show how

it can be used to make sense of the educational process by providing a framework in

which the dynamic acquisition of knowledge of individuals can be accounted for in terms

of self-organization of knowledge. The use of general Complexity Theory, I argue, while

an improvement on the two previous theories, also fails to supply a satisfactory answer to

my focal question, as it implies that chance and uncontrollable aspects play too great a

role in the educational development of students, and underestimates the role teachers can

play in this process. This theory answers my focal question by stating that divergence of

knowledge of students of the same school class is a result of chance, unpredictable and

uncontrollable character of the process of self-organization.

In my fifth chapter I turn to a special instantiation of Complexity Theory as it was

applied to living systems by F. Varela and his co-researchers. I introduce Varela’s

research by presenting the Theory of Autopoietic (living) Systems as adumbrated by

Maturana and Varela. Autopoietic systems, they claim, are self-producing, self-referential

and self-defining. I then turn to Varela’s application of his Theory of Autopoietic

Systems in the realm of cognition, which he labels a theory of Embodied Cognition. This

view presupposes that cognition is not some “absolute and objective” abstract activity,

but closely depends on the embodiment of a living system, which, in and by its actions in

its own particular environment, brings about its own world. In the process of its acting,

which is limited by the demand to maintain its life and identity, the system changes itself

according to the specific character of these actions, i.e. it learns and becomes able to

perform the needed actions readily and successfully. The criterion according to which an

11

action can be considered as a cognitive one is that the system acts successfully and keeps

on living and continues to interact with its world without losing its identity. By its actions

a living system evokes changes in its world. This reciprocal process of mutual change in

interactions Varela labels as “structural coupling”. An important aspect of this view is

that what changes happen in the system in the course of its structural coupling with the

world are related to the system’s own structure, and that external stimuli can only trigger

a change in the system that the system’s structure allows. It is clear, that as a result of

such processes, different living systems bring about different personal worlds and create

different types of knowledge. Thus, knowledge in this view is the ability to act relevantly

in one’s world; while learning is the development of this ability. Following this I

elaborate Varela’s view as to how this knowledge becomes coordinated in the process of

coordination of actions. This view, I then show, sits well with Vygotsky’s concept of

mediation.

Following this I show how Varela’s research provides an educational theory with

a physiological basis. This requires me to explicate how, on Varela’s view, neural

processes correlate to learning, to mental activity as well as to the emergence of abstract

notions. This also requires me to say something about Varela’s theory of resonant cell

assemblies. Varela presents us with a view of the neural mechanism of mental activity,

which he refers to as “languaging”, or “orienting behavior”. I complete my presentation

of Varela’s theory by outlining his view of a person as something that emerges at the

intersection of physiological and social dynamics. I also point out the similarities

between Vygotsky’s and Varela’s views: they both view the development of human

individual as a “bio-social” process.

The answer to my focal question, which follows from Varela’s theory is that

different students create different knowledge from “objectively the same” situations due

to their different cognitive structures, to their different personal histories of interactions.

As Varela says nothing about how the differences in personal histories can be overcome

or about what in them is relevant to educational process, his theory does, as it stands,

imply nothing about what can teachers can do about these differences between

knowledge created by their students. Hence, Varela’s theory does not give a satisfactory

answer to my focal question. But I argue that it supplies the material with which to build

12

a model of the educational process which will supply a satisfactory answer. And this I do

in the second part of my thesis.

I begin the second part of my thesis by adumbrating a three-level model of

learning (which is understood as creation and development of knowledge of an individual

in ontogeny) and of teaching (which is understood as a form of purposeful external

influence that affects the development of an individual’s knowledge), which together

constitute educational process. In chapter six I consider general aspects of my model. I

argue for the need for a multi-level description of the educational process and I explain

which levels I propose to distinguish and why I do so. I then show how my model can

integrate the three presented theories in the common language in the terms of fitness. I

explain how this three-level model frames both the processes within a single level and the

relationships between the levels.

In the chapter seven I explicate the physiological level of my model. First, I show

how the time perspective is in-built into the physiological processes of development of a

human individual, particularly those that correlate with the learning process. I explain

how this view of the physiology entails that mental operations are not less concrete than

motor ones and that all knowledge needs practicing. Second, I elaborate the processes of

muscular development. Then, I describe the neural processes involved in learning process

of an individual on the basis of Varela’s neuro-physiological research, which includes an

outline of the process of development of the myelin layer. Fourth, I point to the role of

hormonal modulation of neural processes. Finally, I extrapolate from Varela’s and

Vygotsky’s theories a theory of intentional acting. In contradistinction to reflex response

to immediate external stimuli, I view intentional acting as comprising an essential

component of internal stimulation that comes from inside the brain itself. More

specifically, it comes from self-arising neural formations that emerge, in Varela’s terms,

in the process of “observations over observations” (which correspond to Vygotsky’s

“intermediate reflexes”) and influence the overall further dynamics of brain working. At

the phenomenological level these neural formations are experienced as thoughts and

mental images of desired results and of the means to achieve them.

In chapter eight I explicate the societal level of my model. I adumbrate my

autopoietic view of society as it self-organizes out of the various interactions between the

13

individual persons who comprise it. Then I discuss the question, in what aspects the

working of interactional codes of a society can be paralleled to working of the DNA code

in a living organism. I conclude that the dynamic character of interactional codes that

change in the course of life of an individual implies that this parallel can not be drawn

mechanistically. This means that determination of academic careers of individuals cannot

be deduced from the facts that a person was born into a specific family with specific

social positioning and culture, in specific local context. I then proceed to elaborate on my

autopoietic view of society and conclude that educational re-contextualization field

should not be seen as a negative phenomenon per se, as it was by Bernstein. In my view

educational re-contextualization field is a necessary societal mechanism that permits to

direct specifically the dynamics of development of persons, thus in the end provides a

degree of stability and flexibility to a sophisticated societal structure. I then outline my

view of developmental dynamics of interactional codes and how the educational

influence onto this development is possible by using Vygotsky’s theory of development

of higher mental functions. I show that the adaptation of teaching to suit particular

students by lowering demands to students, according to what is taken to be their actual

level of development, will a priori lead to still fewer achievements. Then, I explain how

interactional codes bring about informal meritocratic stratification of students.

Particularly, I show how different personal codes of interactions that lead to the creation

of qualitatively different knowledge, are essentially the result of aspects left out of

official classification. The rather common tendency to view the these not included into

classification factors (“the silence between the boundaries” in Bernstein’s terms) as being

“natural” and “self-evident” invites omitting them in our talk about the teaching process.

This, I argue, leads people to adopt the informal meritocratic stratification of students

into those whose background provides them with the necessary factors to succeed in the

educational system, and those whose background does not. Finally, I discuss the issue of

the lack of so called “in-born talent” that causes some students to fail. I argue that it is not

the cause, and that students fail because of insufficient effort and/or the wrong type of

effort.

In chapter nine I adumbrate the phenomenological level of my model. I describe

the process of emergence and ontogenetic development of abstract knowledge in concrete

14

actions. I illustrate this point with two examples, the first one of learning Hebrew by

Russian immigrants in Israel and the second one of learning mathematics, which latter I

take from Brunner (1968). In doing this, I stress the importance of both motor operations

and their conceptual framing in the process of creation of abstract knowledge that is often

seen as disconnected from any motor activity. I elaborate on my view that codes

constitute superstructural constraints on individual’s actions over the basic physiological

limitations, as they stress some and rule out other options for individual’s actions

permitted by his or her physiological structure. Then I explicate my view of emotional

control, seen as a learned skill, and of the role it plays in the process of knowledge

creation. This view is based on my previous analysis of interaction between the processes

pertaining to all the three levels of my model. While doing this, I emphasize the

importance of the skills of emotional control for success in learning in contemporary

Western educational system and show how differential development of these skills, when

their development is considered to be “natural”, can serve to an informal and incorrect

stratificatory view of students’ abilities. After that, I discuss how intention should be

conceived of in the terms of phenomenological level and the potential of this view as an

aid in understanding what students are doing and what teachers should do.

Following that I describe how specific influences on the process of student’s

development can be used to bring about a convergence of their knowledge. I see the

teacher as a mediator intrinsic to the process of students acting who, by means of specific

manipulations in artificial environments used in educational process, guides specifically

the development of his or her students. The mediation in education has the specific form

of coordination of actions, in which the teacher, in Varela’s terms, closes the operational

closure of students. These common coordinated actions of teachers and students can

eventually bring about a coordination among personal cognitive domains and so of the

knowledge of different persons, but not to their absolute identity.

After describing my proposed model, in the tenth chapter I provide an answer to

my focal question in the terms of my model, and I also consider its implications for

educational practice. I begin with pointing to the main conceptual changes implied by my

model; namely the change of paradigm from knowledge transmission to that of

knowledge creation; the change of metaphor of knowledge development from collection

15

to that of guided growth; and the shift from straightforward causation to circular mutual

specification or co-determination. This view implies that the proper understanding of

educational process is that of creation of knowledge by students, under guiding influence

of teachers. The role of a teacher is seen here to be that of a mediator in the process of

knowledge creation that involves his or her holistic personality, which, thus, becomes an

essential part of curriculum. In this framework, the answer to my focal question consists

of two parts. The first part is that intrinsic properties of the process of knowledge creation

entail of necessity that different persons, even identical twins who always are together,

will inevitably create different knowledge, but this difference is not to be seen as a

negative phenomenon per se, particularly, as concepts of personality and of organic

solidarity demand this difference. The second part of my answer is that single-level

descriptions of the educational process omit important aspects of educational process.

Particularly, these descriptions are blind to relationships of influence between levels,

between different stages of development of knowledge in ontogeny, and they present

some developed and learned skills as being natural and developing sui generis personal

qualities. This, I argue, leads to augmentation of students’ failures that seem to be natural.

Moreover, the paradigm of transmission of external knowledge denies importance of

personal relationships and actual interactions in the classroom, and of personalities of

both teachers and students for the process of knowledge creation, and in this sense de-

humanizes the educational process. I then consider some characteristic omissions and

resulting confuses in understandings, and I argue that activity of any student at any stage

of his or her development should be considered as a full-fledged multi-level and

interdisciplinary research activity, and that the goal to educate an independent researcher

should be posed.

In the light of the above I argue that the focal question, which was formulated in

terms of the paradigm of knowledge transmission, is meaningless in terms of my

proposed model, which is based on the paradigm of personal knowledge creation. In

terms of my model, the new real questions are: How is it possible to induce students to

create a specific coordinated knowledge which was intended by the teacher? How is it

possible to guide students to create knowledge which is not accidental? In other words,

how is it possible to teach purposefully?

16

By answering these new questions I consider the implications that my model

bears for educational practice. First, I show how the intentional teaching and learning,

seen as specific kinds of intentional acting, in specific physiological and

phenomenological way of understanding the term “intention” in my model, are important

for the educational process, and I contrast them to the development by the “natural drift”.

Then I consider some of possibilities that formal educational settings provide for such

activities. Particularly, I argue that educational tasks should be re-contextualized in two

respects. First, it should be done with regards to their goals to bring about the specific

development of individual students. Second, educational tasks should be re-

contextualized with regard to their assessment functions, so as to provide feedback about

failure without disastrous consequences for the actors involved (both students and

teachers); and also to ensure that desirable forms of knowledge rather than undesirable

forms of knowledge are correlated with higher values, in the situation when currently

they both succeed to achieve the declared goal. As well, I argue that educational settings

should provide experiences that are not present in immediate “natural” environment of

students, thus permitting a fuller realization of their potential. I then argue the proposition

that educational process should be viewed as a multi-level and interdisciplinary one, and

that educational tasks should be identified and explicated in terms of the structure of the

process of human acting. The curriculum on this view is essentially a program of

complex research tasks, with the specific understanding that any task is complex and only

a reductionist framework influences us to see them as simple ones.

The physiological level of the task design, I argue, must take account of muscular,

neural and hormonal processes, as they are involved in the performance of the tasks in

question. The societal level relates to social conventions about goals of the activity and

acceptable ways of their achievements. It also relates to actual social interactions in the

classroom, both the immediate ones with peers and the teacher, and the remote ones in

time and space with other bearers of the culture and with wider social context, as these

interactions reflect the structure of the society and as they influence the form of the future

society the students will create. The phenomenological level refers to priorities and

values of the participants in the activity and to their decision making on both rational and

ethical grounds, and to negotiations of different aspects of the activity at hand in the

17

course of which knowledge will become inter-subjective. In sum, I argue for the

necessity to frame educational tasks at multiple levels and my aim is interdisciplinary, in

the sense that it aims to help students see “a reflection of the world in a drop of dew”

instead of giving them a puzzle-mosaic of disconnected pieces of knowledge of different

realms to be assembled. I do not reject structuring the curriculum into subjects, as

specific skills are better developed in the course of specialized lessons, but I do propose

to introduce at specific stages specific integrating tasks that demand exercise of

knowledge pertaining to different subject areas.

Finally, I consider conceptually complex actions as a kind of attractors for self-

organization of individual’s knowledge, and I argue that the knowledge of individuals

who perform together similar complex tasks with coordinated structure of symbolic and

tool mediation will tend to be coordinated. Such educational process, I argue, can lessen

alienation of students from what happens at schools and diminish students’ personal

underestimation. It can also foster amongst students a view of themselves as independent

actors and researchers who create knowledge and personal meaning, and who decide, on

the basis of rational considerations and their personal values, and who acts intentionally

in order to realize his or her decisions.

I stress that my model entails ethical decision making on behalf of both teachers

and students on the action-to-action basis, and so presents a humanistic view of the

educational process. My model implies that human action has three levels in its structure,

and that any process, which ostensibly occurs only on one single level, will nevertheless

actually influence processes at all the other levels, whether people are aware of it or not.

Therefore, I argue that ethical decisions made at one level will have consequences for

other levels and that ethical relations across levels must be taken into consideration when

making a decision concerning any aspect of educational process.

In conclusion I summarize the contribution of my model and point to further

research implied by it.

18

Keywords:

Multi-level view of human development; complex educational tasks; complex

actions; multi-level interdisciplinary curriculum design; context-embedded learning;

intentional teaching and learning; socio-cultural mediation; informal social stratification;

hidden curriculum; educational re-contextualization and artificial settings: functional

view of; overcoming educational failure; neural and physiological correlates of learning;

active learning as research activity; embodied cognition; autopoietic view of society;

societal function of school; ethical and rational decision making in educational process.