Towards a new learning science for the reinvention of education - A trans-disciplinary perspective

Abstract

At first the question will be addressed why a new learning science is needed. The field of education may be considered as an uninventive discipline, still waiting to become a real science. History has shown the general problem of social sciences to become scientific in its method and approach. Various authors have emphasized the crisis we are in as a result of this historic development. It is a crisis one seems not very much aware of. Actually it is a crisis which is neglected. To escape this situation we really have to reform our thinking (Morin, 2001). This is also true for learning and education. Actually a rethinking of educational psychology seems needed (Bruner, 1996). Only then it will be possible to get “closer to the complexity of the actual world” (Dennett, 2003). The real challenge is to escape dear old habits of thought about learning and education, and shift the focus. In trying to build a new science of learning for education it seems necessary to take a complex, trans-disciplinary approach. This approach implies a shift of paradigm. The shift needed leads to a fundamental process of rethinking: not only of interaction, but also a rethinking of the concepts of complexity and causality. Interaction, then, may be described as a complex, potential nonlinear process. All of this rethinking can lead to a fundamental reinvention of the reality of learning and education (Jörg, 2004). Learning, then, may be described and explained anew as complex, causally connected processes of inter-action between learners and intra-action within each learner. It can be shown that these connected processes, may generate potential nonlinear effects in time. Learners, then, may ‘bootstrap’ each other in time. The focus is on the ‘transitory child’, and the unexpected complex process of developing in time of that child. The new learning science may be the foundation stone for a new interactive, generative, and transformative pedagogy.