The module explores understandings about how people learn, and implications that these understandings have for how we conduct key social practices, including teaching, caring for children, assessing learning, and on educating generally.
We will also look 'beneath' understandings of learning to the worldviews on which they stand, particularly 'realist' and 'constructivist' positions. This matters because 'realism' and 'constructivism' carry implications for how we conceptualise things we take for granted: the nature of truth, the process and products of science, the basis for ethics, the outcomes of research, and assumptions about what is. The module will explore these challenging issues.