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Paper presented at John Dewey Society, AERA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, April 30–May 4 2010

A Transactional Approach to Learning

Leif Östman Department of Curriculum Studies

Uppsala University, Sweden

Johan Öhman School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (HumES)

Örebro University, Sweden

Introduction

In the last decade a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of different methodologies

for learning studies has been conducted between cognitivistic researchers and researchers

representing different sociocultural perspectives. In short, the main critique is that cognitive

research fails to account for the institutional dimension of learning, e.g. that cultural tools

(artefacts and language) mediate learning (Ivarsson, Schoultz, & Säljö, 2002; Schoultz, Säljö,

& Wyndham, 2001b). The critique of sociocultural research is that the individual dimension

of learning is overlooked, e.g. that the interpretation of cultural artefacts by the students is

crucial for how the artefacts are used (Vosniadou, Skopeliti, & Isopentaki, 2005). The critique

that the individual dimension of learning is less visible in sociocultural approaches to learning

is also delivered by Hodkinson, Biesta & James (2007), who claim that there is a “tendency

for individual differences and individual learning to disappear, with the focus on social

interactions, activities and participation” (p. 417). This critique can be boiled down to one

central question, namely how to investigate and understand individual continuity and change

in sociocultural perspectives on learning.

This question requires us to come up with methodological approaches that can provide us

with knowledge about how intrapersonal, the interpersonal, and institutional dimensions

influence and interact in the learning processes. This can only be accomplished by in situ

studies where the interplay between these dimensions in students’ and teachers’

communication in everyday classroom practice can be analysed.

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Studying learning in situ involves a number of methodological challenges, however, and is

perhaps why this goal proves to be so hard to reach. As Rogoff, already in 1995, concluded:

Even when both the individual and the environment are considered, they are often regarded as separate entities

rather than being mutually defined and interdependent in ways that preclude their separation as units or elements

(pp. 139-140).

In a research review of cultural psychology, Lehman, Chiu and Schaller (2004) conclude that

although most researchers within this field admit to a mutual relationship between culture and

psychological processes, two different substantial bodies of research are treated as being

entirely independent. These two areas relate to: a) research into the ways that culture

influences psychological processes and, b) how psychological processes contribute to the

origins and persistence of cultures. The authors therefore draw attention to the need for

research “that focuses more fully on the dynamic relations between psychology and culture”

(ibid., p. 705).

Although the challenge is methodological in character, the work of coming up with analytical

methods requires philosophical clarifications. In relation to cognitive research, where learning

is analysed in terms of development of cognitive structures and conceptual change, this

clarification concerns first of all the question of what is observable in action (Stenlund, 2000).

In such approaches action, language and learning (meaning making) are treated as detached

processes located in the two separate realms of outer reality and the inner mind. This makes it

very hard (and in our view impossible) to analyse the interplay between peoples’ experiences

and the social interaction and customs (institutionalised expectations and ways of acting)

through studies of action alone.

Wertsch (1998), Garrison (2001) and Hodkinson, Biesta & James (2007) have pointed out

that dualistic tendencies are also present in many sociocultural approaches. Wertsch (1998),

for example, maintains that the term internalisation, often used in sociocultural studies, can be

misleading as it:

… encourages us to engage in the search for internal concepts, rules, and other such entities that are quite suspect in the eyes

of philosophers such as Wittgenstein […]. The construct of internalization also entails a kind of opposition, between external

and internal processes, that all too easily leads to the kind of body-mind dualism that has plagued philosophy and psychology

for centuries (p. 48).

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We would like to argue with Garrison (2001) that John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy and

concept of transaction makes it possible to overcome the methodological problems connected

with dualistic tendencies. The argument put forward here is that in order to create an analytic

method that can deal with the interplay between the intrapersonal, interpersonal and

institutional dimensions it is fruitful to use a first person perspective on interaction and

language. The former is possible through the transactional approach put forward by Dewey

and Bentley (1949/1991). Although they also touched on a first person perspective on

language, the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein will here be used to elaborate on such a

perspective when creating an analytical approach.

In this paper we first of all outline some basic aspects of Dewey’s theory of action and

transactional perspective on meaning making. Second, we show how Dewey’s transactional

view of language use is in tune with Wittgenstein’s language game method, and how this first

person perspective dissolves the problem of observing meaning. Third, we specify the process

of meaning making by describing how aspects of continuity and change in individuals’

meaning making can be understood transactionally. Fourth, drawing on the transactional

perspective we suggest that intrapersonal, interpersonal and institutional aspects of meaning

making can be approached as mutual and simultaneous dimensions. Fifth, we give examples

of methods for empirical analyses of learning based on the transactional principles outlined in

this paper. In the final section we pay attention to methodological warnings raised by

researchers when trying to dissolve dualism.

Dewey’s theory of action

In his theory of action Dewey is highly influenced by Darwin in the sense that everything in

the world is evolving and is in the process of constant change due to organisms’ adaptation to

their environment (see Dewey, 1909/1983). This means that “nature is viewed as consisting of

events rather than substances” (Dewey, 1929/1958, xi). In this evolving universe the

fundamental aspect of life is action: “the organism, is always active; that it acts by its very

constitution, and hence needs no external promise of reward or threat of evil to induce it to

act” (Dewey, 1932/1985, p. 289). The activity of organisms can be understood in terms of the

organisms’ functional coordination with their environment (see Garrison, 2001; Biesta &

Burbules, 2003). This coordinative process consists of an active phase – doing – and a passive

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phase – undergoing the consequences of action. The relation between actions and

consequences is not casual and linear but reciprocal. Dewey holds that responses from the

environment are not the start of action but something that change the direction of action

already going on (Dewey, 1932/1985). Actions change the environment and shift of activity is

a response to changing conditions. The functional dynamic coordination is a continuous back-

and-forth process in which organisms continuously readjust their actions to a constantly

changing environment. This relational perspective implies that the activities of an individual

can never be fully understood in isolation. Dewey therefore speaks about ‘organism-in-

environment-as-a-whole’ (Dewey and Bentley, 1949/1991).

In their influential work, Knowing and the Known, Dewey and Bentley refer to this way of

investigating and understanding interaction as transaction (1949/1991, pp. 101–102). Here it

is important to underline that in introducing this concept Dewey and Bentley’s intention was

not to create a new ontology but rather a methodology for investigating action that departs

from the way we live through events in real life – this is what we could call first person

perspective on interaction (see below). What makes Dewey’s transactional perspective

particularly useful for in situ studies is that the acting individual, fellow beings, other

organisms, things and phenomena in the environment are not looked upon as predetermined

or autonomous – in contrast to a mechanistic interactional perspective where things are

described in terms of causal interconnections between predetermined entities. The concept of

transaction takes radical account of the fact that the only way to acquire information about

human beings is through their actions. Therefore, in transactional investigations the point of

departure is the processes that take place in the encounter between human beings and their

environment and between human beings themselves. Human beings and environment are

consequently described in terms of relations that arise in actions in specific events.

In a transactional perspective, meaning emerges as a consequence of individuals’ coordinative

processes. In illustrating this way of approaching the interplay Dewey exemplifies with a

trade (Dewey & Bentley, 1949/1991, p. 242). It is in and because of the transaction that one

participant becomes a seller and the other participant a buyer. It is also in the nature of the

transaction that the things bought and sold become goods, as well as all the other parts

becoming what they are in accordance with how they participate in the process and the

changes they undergo. It is in the transactional process that humans and their environment

obtain their meaning. In this way, meaning is not treated as something that exists within

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things themselves or in the minds of human beings, but as indissolubly connected to the

relations that are created in and by action – meaning is literally something we do. Thus,

meanings are practical in the sense that they are something we use as a means to an end; when

used for a purpose something acquires meaning. In other words, meaning emerges in the

process of doing and undergoing the consequences of action. As a consequence, meaning “is

not indeed a psychic existence; it is primarily a property of behaviour” (Dewey, 1929/1958, p.

179).

Dewey calls language the “tool of tools” in human meaning making. According to Dewey,

meaning is grounded in the immediate qualities of organic activities and receptivities,

although “meanings do not come into existence without language, and language implies two

selves involved in a conjoint or shared undertaking” (Dewey, 1929/1958, pp. 298-299). In the

use of language, that is, in communication, the products of primary experience can be refined,

changed and elaborated:

When communication occurs, all natural events are subject to reconsideration and revision; they are re-adapted

to meet the requirements of conversation, whether it be public discourse or that preliminary discourse termed

thinking. Events turn into objects, things with a meaning. // Events when once they are named lead in an

independent and double life. In addition to their original existence, they are subject to ideal experimentation:

their meaning may be infinitely combined and re-arranged in imagination, and the outcome of this inner

experimentation – which is though – may issue forth with crude or raw events (Dewey, 1929/1958, p. 166).

In communicating meaning individuals coordinate their activities by making something in

common, which indicates that meaning making is fundamentally a social process (see

Garrison, 1995). This coordinative perspective also provides us with a useful general

understanding of learning:

Interactions are established between, as Dewey said, what is done and what is undergone, and it is by means of

apprehending these connections and interrelations that ‘an organism increases in complexity’ (Dewey,

1934/1980, p. 23); in other words, it learns (Semetsky, 2008, p. 86).

Learning can thus be described in terms of actions, i.e. as meaning making resulting in a more

developed and specific repertoire for coordinating activities and the environment.

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A first person perspective on language use

As outlined above, language plays a key role in the transactional understanding of meaning

making. Garrison (1995) even holds that Dewey’s view of language as communication in

cooperative and coordinated partnership in the construction of all meaning is at the core of his

entire philosophy. Transactional in situ studies accordingly require an elaborated view of

language and the relation between language, meaning and reality.

In cognitive approaches it is often assumed that underlying mental predispositions cause

people’s speech and other actions in any given situation. It is therefore assumed that analyses

of meaning making require that we know the intentions, thoughts and feelings that lie behind

action. Such assumptions amount to a specific view of the mental as separated from the outer

reality, and of language as something that is possible to separate from humans and their

activities. Analyses carried out in connection with this view thus tend to treat language as an

entity that is detached both from the acting persons in question and the environment in which

they are acting. We can call this a third person perspective on language – a perspective taken

from a theoretical position that is distanced from the act of communication. In this third

person perspective language is regarded as an object – a tool or an instrument – used for

connecting meanings (concepts, ideas) with reality (referents, things). In this way language,

the meanings and reality are described as being located in different realms having an external

relation to each other. In order to connect mind and action cognitivist researchers need to

construct a translation theory, which means finding a method of interpreting the observable

into meaning in a consistent way, i.e. to create specific terms that correspond to inner

thoughts, feelings etc.

As highlighted by Stenlund (2000), some obvious problems are connected to the idea of a

translation theory. One problem is that such theories attempt to establish connections between

the observable and the unobservable: How is it possible to know that a particular action

corresponds to a certain mental structure when we have only been able to observe one side of

this connection? Another problem is that in such theories the borderline between inner and

outer is treated as though they were two different regions of nature and not as two different

language games, i.e. two different logics of language. Studies that rely on a translation theory

tend to present conclusions about mental representations as empirical facts, although the

existence of these representations cannot be controlled.

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Dewey’s transactional perspective offers a way of overcoming these problems through a

different view of language:

It will treat the talking and talking-products or effects of man (the namings, thinkings, arguings, reasonings, etc.)

as the men themselves in action, not as some third type of entity to be inserted between the men and the things

they deal with (Dewey & Bentley, 1949/1991, p. 11).

As pointed out in this quotation, language is not treated as a mere addition to humans and

their environment. Rather, language is treated as an aspect of human actions: language and

things connected with language (talking, thinking etc.) are synonymous with man in action.

What is called “mind” is accordingly something that emerges in the use of language:

“Through speech a person dramatically identifies himself with potential acts and deeds //

Thus mind emerge” (Dewey, 1929/1958, p. 170). The transactional perspective can thus be

seen as an alternative to mentalistic investigations in the sense of seeking explanations for

people’s actions in the human “mind”:

The living, behaving, knowing organism is present. To add a “mind” to him is to try to double him up. It is

double-talk; and double talk doubles no facts (Dewey & Bentley, 1949/1991, p. 124).

However, as Dewey and Bentley emphasise, this way of treating language is not to be

perceived as an -ism or a theory:

The difference in treatment of language is radical. Nevertheless it is not the type called “theoretical”, nor does it

transmute the men from organisms into putative “psyches”. It rests in the simplest, most direct, matter-of-fact,

everyday, common sense observation. Talking-organisms and things – there they are; if there, let us study them

as they come: the men talking (Dewey & Bentley, 1949/1991, p. 11).

It is rather to be perceived as a methodological stance and a way of investigating people’s

meaning making by using the way the relation between language, meaning and reality

emerges when we are directly involved in the act of communication – a first person

perspective on language usage (not to be confused with the researcher’s analytical position,

see below). In clarifying this perspective on language we find Wittgenstein’s later works

particularly helpful. The similarities between Dewey’s and Wittgenstein’s views of language

have also been underlined by scholars like Rorty (1980, 1990), Quine (1969) and Garrison

(1995).

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A point of departure in Wittgenstein’s later works is that philosophical problems are generally

connected to the correspondence theory of language (see Fann, 1969; Monk, 1999, Pleasants,

1999):

Other illusions come from various quarters to attach themselves to the special one spoken of here. Thought,

language now appears to us as the unique correlate, picture, of the world. These concepts: proposition, language,

thought, world, stand in line one behind the other, each equivalent to each. (But what are these words to be used

for now? The language-game in which they are to be applied is missing.) (Wittgenstein, 1953/1997, § 96).1

In order to dissolve this picture of language, Wittgenstein repeatedly reminds us that in the act

of speaking we are always situated within a certain language. Wittgenstein therefore advises

us to seek the meaning of words from their use in real situations (see Wittgenstein,

1953/1997, § 43 and 1969/1997, § 61).2 Here Wittgenstein’s term ‘language-game’ is an

essential concept and by using the term language-game he wanted to:

… bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life

(1953/1997, § 23).3

In this way Wittgenstein emphasises language as being interwoven with ways of acting, and

that the connection between language (words, expressions etc.), meaning and reality is not to

be found in theory, but in practice. Accordingly, the use of language is always intimately

related to an activity such as learning, commanding, teaching, inquiring etc. The meaning of a

word or proposition does not lie in its correspondence with reality, but in the role it plays in

the language-game. When language is actively used – when somebody ask us to fetch a chair,

for example – it is unreasonable to describe this in terms of an activity where we first relate

the sound of the word chair to the physical object chair and then form a mental meaning of the

implications of this request. In the use of language relations between words, meanings and

objects have already been established and therefore do not need to be created. In other words,

1 See the sections § 93-107 in Wittgenstein (1953/1997) where he develops the problems with this picture of language. 2 See also Monk (1990, p. 308). 3 It is important to note that it was not Wittgenstein’s intention to create a theory of language or meaning or an epistemology. The perspectives he introduced should be treated as methods of clarification, as this avoids certain philosophical problems (Wittgenstein, 1969/1997; see also Fann, 1969; Monk, 1990 and Stenlund, 2000).

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when we learn a language we do not only learn how to use it, but also simultaneously learn

about the world, people’s experiences, values etc:

In “learning a language” you learn not merely what the names of things are, but what the a name is; not merely

what the form of expression is for expressing a wish, but what expressing a wish is; not merely what the word

for “father” is, but what a father is; not merely what the word for ”love” is, but what love is. In learning

language, you do not merely learn the pronunciation of sounds, and their grammatical orders, but the ”forms of

life” which make those sounds the words they are, do what they do – e.g., name, call, point, express a wish or

affection, indicate a choice or an aversion, etc. (Cavell, 1999, pp. 177-178).

The meaning of the word and the circumstances in which the word is used are interconnected

in a way that precedes the analytical separation between the world (the circumstances), the

use of words and the meaning of the word (see also Janik & Toulmin, 1973, p. 235).

Accordingly, clarifications in language are not made in analytical processes (in

interpretations). To competent users of a language-game, the meanings of the words used in a

certain situation are already obvious. Therefore, when clarifying the meaning of words,

Wittgenstein advises us to ask questions like: “How did we learn this word (‘good’ for

instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for

you to see that the word must have a family of meanings” (Wittgenstein, 1953/1997, § 77).

The first person perspective on language usage implies that the unity of language, meaning

and reality is a natural ingredient in our daily lives. In most cases in our communications with

our fellow beings we do not doubt or hesitate about what they know, believe, want etc., since

doing this would make many of our ordinary ways of living together impossible. This means

that what is regarded as hidden and unobservable in a third person perspective on language is

“visible” in a user perspective. The fact that we can often immediately “observe” what people

feel, want and so on by the way they use language in specific situations is a result of our

having learned psychological language at the same time as learning psychological

experience.4 Wittgenstein maintained that the psychological is very much alive in our actions

and in our way of communicating with each other (see Monk, 1999, pp. 473-475). If we

assume a first person perspective, the psychological and our way of using language are so

intimately connected that it is unreasonable to presuppose that they are two distinct processes.

4 Discursive psychology has a similar point of departure (see, for example, Edwards 1997, p. 48).

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Accordingly, one of the main methodological points in Wittgenstein’s later works is that we

do not have to conduct empirical or philosophical investigations to connect meaning with the

empirical world. We do not have to create such a relationship because we do not usually make

a distinction between what we mean and what the meaning represents. Obviously, no

translation theory is required if we do not make an initial separation between the inner and the

outer. Thus, by using a first person perspective on language the inner-outer dualism tends to

disappear, and the meanings that humans make can therefore be said to be observable in the

use of language.5 As a consequence, it appears to be possible to study human beings’ actions

and acquire enough information to create knowledge about individuals’ meaning making.

Thus, the advantage of a first person perspective is not only that it makes a translation theory

unnecessary, but that it also helps us to keep the observed empirical material and the refined

analytical conclusions at the same logical level, namely action.

A first person perspective should not be confused with a first person position, however. As

such confusion is quite common a comment about this is relevant. The difference is similar to

the difference between acting and analysing somebody acting, and to the difference between

actually riding a bike and studying somebody riding a bike. These two positions are not equal

and cannot substitute each other. In other words, the difference between a first person position

and a third person position cannot be eroded. As researchers we are, sooner or later, forced to

take a third person position: even anthropologists living with and in a culture (i.e. taking a

first person position) will eventually need to take a third person position in order to analyse,

categorise and in other ways construct essences from the empirical material. We also need to

make choices about which perspectives, questions and methods we want to use. As shown by

both Dewey and Wittgenstein, the third person perspective on language is a theoretical

construction that separates language, meaning and reality, whereas in the act of

communication another relation between these entities emerges. It therefore seems reasonable

to suggest that researchers can choose the perspective on language that best serves the

purposes of the investigation.

5 It is essential to note that this perspective differs from social constructivist perspectives on language where the world is seen as constructed by language: the language is so to speak a filter of interpretation or glasses with a certain perspective. In this way, language is an external object that is used as a tool when trying to create a picture of the world.

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Continuity and change

A central issue in educational methodological discussions concerns the question of transfer in

learning. For example, Sfard argues that “if a model of learning is to be convincing, it is

probably bound to build on the notion of an acquired, situationally invariant property of the

learner, which goes together with him or her from one situation to another” (1998, p. 10).

Rogoff (1995) draws attention to how the sequential conception of time in dualistic

approaches makes it difficult to explain how previous experiences participate in meaning

making in new situations:

These [past, present and future] are treated as separate and yield problems of how to account for relations across

time that are often handled by assuming that the individual stores memories of the past that are somehow

retrieved and used in the present, and that the individual makes plans in the present and (if they are stored

effectively) executes them in the future. The links between these separated time segments are bridged in

mysterious ways to bring information or skills stored at one point in time to use in another (pp. 154-155).

Sfard (1998) means that situated and sociocultural learning theories’ have the ability to

explain how learning as change can be understood in the context in which it takes place,

namely, where people are constantly making new relations in different sociocultural

situations. At the same time, she criticises the shortcomings of these studies of learning in

their inability to account for the fact that something repeats itself as we move from context to

context.

To avoid such critique it is tempting to assume that we need to know what kind of

experiences people have had before they act and are exposed to a particular situation in order

to decide the significance of experiences on meaning making. This knowledge is then to be

related to the results of meaning making. In other words, comparable initial and terminal

meanings need to be created. Dewey and Bentley (1949/1991, p. 115) highlight a problem

here, namely, that the entire process presupposes that we can find out about an individual’s

experience without this being exposed to any kind of interaction, i.e. as though the individual

was in a frozen state or was a single autonomous atom.

In a transactional perspective the question of transfer is investigated in terms of continuity and

change, which are understood as two simultaneous and mutual aspects of a learning event (see

Wickman & Östman, 2002a, b; Öhman & Östman, 2007). Dewey (1938/1997) stresses that

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“every experience influences in some degree the objective conditions under which further

experiences are had” (p. 37). In a learning practice, this continuity aspect is understood as the

prior experiences the students re-actualise in order to make meaning in a new situation. In a

particular educational event, prior experiences can, for example, appear when students

respond to a situation, assess this situation and connect their assessments to future actions.

Consequently, when meanings are made, earlier experiences can be seen as being included as

part of the event, in action in the certain situation. The change aspect is understood in the way

the students relate the recalled experiences to what is experienced in the current educational

practice. In this establishment of new relations, students’ previous experiences take on a

different or extended meaning. Individual continuity and change are thus two sides of the

same coin, and this mutuality is established when students act and encounter the environment.

This understanding of continuity and change implies that prior experiences do not appear as

fixed memory units belonging to the past, but as something that comes into existence when

they are re-actualised and related to the circumstances of a present event and as something

that continuously changes as we make new meanings in new encounters. Exactly which

experiences students will recall when acting is difficult to predict, however. Therefore, in

transactional studies, the interplay between continuity and change in students’ meaning

making is explored in relation to a specific event.

The transactional understanding of individual continuity and change dissolves the sequential

concept of time, in which past, present and future are treated as isolated time segments that

sequentially succeed each other. Instead, a concept of time evolves in which every event in

the present comprises both the past and the future:

Any event in the present is an extension of previous events and is directed towards goals that have not yet been

accomplished. As such, the present extends through the past and future and cannot be separated from them

(Rogoff, 1995, p. 155).

We would argue that this way of perceiving time means that the past exists in the present in

the recalled experiences. Similarly, the future already exists in the present, in that the acting

students have established some kind of direction – a goal, aim, orientation, or an idea of

possible consequences. In this way, both the change and continuity of student learning can be

accounted for in the investigation of students’ actions in specific situations.

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A mutual understanding of intrapersonal, interpersonal and institutional

dimensions

When trying to deal with both individual and sociocultural aspects of learning in one

approach, avoiding one aspect being positioned as superior from the beginning and

predetermining the others is always difficult. If the individual is the starting point, the

individual tends to appear as being free to form its actions independent of the sociocultural

context. If the starting point is the sociocultural context, it often appears as determining the

individual’s actions. Such theories have a tendency to be self-fulfilling in empirical studies.

Dewey helps us to avoid this pitfall by underlining the reciprocal relation between the

individual and the sociocultural environment:

What is called environment is that in which the conditions called physical are enmeshed in cultural conditions

and are more than physical in its technical sense. “Environment” is not something around and about human

activities in an external sense; it is their medium, or milieu, in the sense in which a medium is intermediate in the

execution or carrying out of human activities, as well as being the channel through which they move and the

vehicle by which they go on (Dewey & Bentley, 1949/1991, p. 244).

The transactional perspective can thus be seen as an attempt to dissolve the dualisms created

within the traditional philosophy:

What has been completely divided in philosophical discourse into man and the world, inner and outer, self and

not-self, subject and object, individual and social, private and public, etc. are in actuality parties in life-

transactions (Dewey & Bentley, 1949/1991, p. 248).

It is once again essential to point out that Dewey’s ambition was not to present a new

universal theory or an ontology, but to present a method of inquiry or investigation (Dewey

and Bentley 1949/1991, p. 152). It is therefore from a methodological perspective that we

should understand his description of what is needed to understand people’s actions in a

participant perspective:

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neither he nor anything done or suffered can possibly be understood when it is separated from the fact of

participation in an extensive body of transactions – to which a given human being may contribute and which he

modifies, but only in virtue of being a partaker in them (Dewey and Bentley 1949/1991, p. 243).

We and our environment are interwoven through our actions. This methodological perspective

implies that both the psychological and the sociocultural are observable in actions and that

they can therefore also be understood in terms of action. Investigated in this way, they will

turn out as reciprocally constituting aspects of action.

As a consequence, the intrapersonal, interpersonal and institutional aspects of meaning

making are treated as dimensions that are “mutually defined and interdependent in ways that

preclude their separation as units or elements” (Rogoff, 1995, p. 140).6 Neither individual

experience nor sociocultural activity appear in transactional investigations as factors that

precede or occasion meaning making. Methodologically speaking, there is an indissoluble

relation between an individual’s experience and the discursive practice (s)he participates in –

both the individual’s experience and the cultural activity constitute each other. Sociocultural

activity arises from individual action, which means that we cannot isolate the sociocultural as

an autonomous, causal factor. The experiences of the individual are formed during encounters

– in sociocultural activities. This also means that individual experiences cannot be isolated

and assigned primary factor status. In other words, the sociocultural activity and the

experience of the individual are each other’s prerequisites. It is not possible to understand one

without referring to the other. This means that in transactional analyses none of these

dimensions can be favoured in advance. The importance of the different dimensions thus

becomes an empirical question, i.e. how the dimensions emerge in individuals’ actions in a

specific event.

6 Rogoff has formed this holistic and relational approach with inspiration from both Dewey and Vygotsky. In understanding the personal plane, Rogoff puts forward a process-oriented perspective as an alternative to the perspective of internalisation. She sees learning and development as the individual’s transformation of participation in an activity. This participation both contributes to the activity and changes the individual: “… participation is itself the process of appropriation” (Rogoff, 1995, p. 151). Rogoff claims that this approach is the core of the sociocultural perspective: “Without an understanding of such mutually constituting processes, a sociocultural approach is at times assimilated to other approaches that examine only part of the package” (ibid, p. 141).

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Analytical methods within a transactional approach

The research group SMED (Studies of Meaning-making in Educational Discourses) has been

engaged in methodological development based on the perspectives presented above for

several years. This work has resulted in a toolbox of methods for classroom studies and a

number of empirical and methodological articles (see for example Wickman and Östman

2002 a, b; Almqvist & Östman, 2006; Lidar, Lundgren & Östman, 2006; Wickman, 2006;

Öhman & Östman, 2007, Rudsberg & Öhman, 2010; Quennerstedt, Öhman & Öhman,

accepted). Within the limits of this paper, in this final section we choose to present some of

the developed methods. This presentation serves as an illustration of the practical use of

Dewey’s transactional perspective and Wittgenstein’s first person perspective on language use

in empirical analyses of classroom conversations and activities. When presenting the

analytical approaches we do so in relation to common research questions within learning

research.

It is not possible to detail all the different methods in this paper, although for those of you

who are interested in such details we have tried to highlight works that do just this. Before the

actual presentation we would like to reiterate that we analyse learning as individuals’ ways of

coping and interacting with the environment in an activity. This emphasis on coping and

coordination means that our focus is on what individuals do when they try to pursue an

activity with specific purposes. Therefore, and as a consequence of a first person perspective

on interaction and on language, it is necessary to acquire knowledge about the purposes that

the interlocutors themselves pursue.7 Sometimes the purpose is obvious in the participants’

talk, although it can also be important to ask the teacher and students about the purpose.

The analytical methods presented here are the development of a method that is called

Practical Epistemology Analysis (Östman & Wickman 2001; Wickman & Östman 2001,

2002a, b). Practical Epistemology Analysis (PEA) is built on the pragmatic turn of analysing

and understanding education (cf. Östman, 1996): what counts as ”true” or relevant knowledge

is different in different practices, and that this is the case because the purposes for actions are

7 It is important to notice that this methodological advice does not imply a psychological interpretation of intention. Instead we use the transactional approach illustrated by Wittgenstein as the following: “An intention is embedded in its situation, in human customs and institutions. If the technique of the game of chess did not exist, I could not intend to play a game of chess. In so far as I do intend the construction of a sentence in advance, that is made possible by the fact that I can speak the language in question” (Wittgenstein, 1953/1997, § 337).

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different in different practices (Rorty, 1991; cf. Lidar, Lundqvist, & Östman, 2006). What can

be considered to be true and valid knowledge is constructed in discourse practice, i.e.

epistemology can be seen as a part of and a result of all human practices (Rorty, 1990).

All the methods presented are designed for analyses of events. The smallest event possible is

one transaction (which requires that the purpose for the transaction is known). At a general

level, when using the methods described the procedure largely follows Wittgenstein’s

methodological advice: look at the circumstances when people use words and sentences (see,

for example, Wittgenstein 1953/1997, § 66; 1969/1997, § 501).

It is also important to underline that the transactional perspective does not prevent

methodological distinctions between different dimensions of the process. It is also fully

possible to put one of these dimensions in the foreground and the other in the background of

the analysis depending on research interest, as long as the dimensions are mutually and

simultaneously described (see Rogoff, 1995; Garrison, 2001).

The role of the intrapersonal in learning

Like Lave (1996), one could say that learning is not the issue for learning research. The

mission is rather to understand why certain learning and not another takes place within an

activity. In order to create such an understanding one needs to look into both the process of

learning and the product of this process. When Wertsch (1998) introduced the term

privileging, it could be argued that he brought the process of learning into focus in a way that

is in accordance with a pragmatic perspective (Östman & Wickman, 2001; Östman, 2010).

The term privileging make us pay attention to the question of why people’s learning takes one

direction and not another and that these constitute possible and plausible directions. Through

PEA a description of students privileging in a practice is acquired; i.e. a description of which

practical epistemology students use in the studied practice.

In PEA four concepts are central: “encounter”, “gap”, “relation” and “stand fast”, all of which

can be operationalised in terms of concrete actions. The term encounter is used to describe

what happens when the students transact in a situation. An encounter can be made with the

teacher, peers and/or the physical world. Gaps occur in these encounters and in order to fill

the gap, relations have to be created between what the students already know and what is new

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in the encounter. The relation takes the form of differences and similarities. The gap is

sometimes obvious, for example when the participants hesitate, ask questions, make guesses

etc. On other occasions the gap is immediately filled with relations. Sometimes the students

are unable to fill the gaps – the gap lingers. What stands fast for the different individuals in

the situation is what the students already know.

Let us illustrate this perspective in discussions between two university students. The

following transcript, taken from Östman & Wickman (2001), is from a lesson where the

students are investigating the morphology of insects.8 They have received instructions from

the teacher to study the insects’ antennae, mouthparts etc. We enter the conversation when the

students have observed a bumblebee in the stereomicroscope and are consulting the textbook.

Lena … Do they have any antennae?

Malin No, they usually do though, don’t they? In cartoon films they usually have

antennae. (They discuss other matters for a while) Malin Okay, if you put it like this: in all cartoon films I’ve seen, then bumblebees

always have antennae. Lena Yes, they do. Malin An artist whose picture I’ve got. In her painting the bumblebee have got

antennae. And she’s one of those that make perfect representations.

In the conversation the students notice a gap: do bumblebees have antennae? Malin introduces

her experience of cartoon films in order to answer the question, and Lena agrees with her

conclusion. In the next meaning exchange Malin put forward another reason for believing that

bumblebees have antennae: an artist who always makes representational pictures has painted

bumblebees with antennae. The analysis is summarised in the table below. What is obvious

here is that for the students a lot of terms stand fast, for example bumblebee, antennae,

cartoon films and paintings. The learning that occurs is that they create relations between

these and former experiences. This learning takes place through encountering prior

experiences – experiences of cartoon film and realistic paintings.

Using PEA, learning is the creation of relations as to what stands fast and the learning process

is the creation of relations as to what stands fast in the encounters staged. This way of 8 A more elaborated analysis of university students’ use of practical epistemology is presented in Wickman and Östman (2006).

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perceiving learning and the learning process is a consequence of a first person perspective on

interaction and language.

Gaps Relations Encounters with Do bumblebees have antennae or not?

Real bumblebee, text book

Cartoon films – bumblebees – antennae

1. Earlier experiences: cartoon films 2. M – L

Realistic paintings – bumblebees – antennae

Earlier experiences: realistic painting

In the analyses above it is obvious that students’ prior experiences are used to create the

relations, thus bridging the gap that is created in the encounter with the real bumblebee. In

order to bridge the gap, one has to stage encounters with the human or the physical world. In

this example Malin encounters her prior experience with cartoon films and realistic paintings.

This recalling of experiences means that the old experiences acquire new meaning, in this

case as “proof” that bumblebees have antennas. Thus, using a first person perspective on

interaction and language has radical methodological consequences: it becomes possible to

create knowledge about individual continuity through studying a single transaction, since the

different aspects of time – past, present and future – become visible in a single transaction.

What is also important to note is that in the act of reactualisation change is inevitable. Thus,

continuity and change coexist in the act of reactualisation.9 Although it is possible to use any

transaction to make studies of individual continuity and change, it is often more convenient to

start such analyses when a gap has become visible in transaction.

The role of the interpersonal in learning

At least two different types of questions can be discerned in the interpersonal, or the social,

role in learning. The first kinds of questions concern the role that norms and values

institutionalised within a specific activity and group of people have for an individual’s

learning. This issue is for example dealt with in Almqvist & Östman (2006) and Östman

9 For more detailed information see Öhman and Östman (2007), Lidar, Almqvist & Östman (2009) and Quennerstedt, Öhman & Öhman, (accepted), where the ambition is explicitly to clarify the individual dimension of learning within a sociocultural frame.

19

(2010, forthcoming) by analysing the “institutionalised expectations” that are staged by the

participants in communication. The second kinds of questions focus on what encounters with

other people can mean for the learning. Here we deal with this second question by illustrating

the role that teachers can have for students’ meaning making.

Lidar, Lundqvist and Östman (2006) developed an approach – Epistemological Move

Analysis (EMA) – in order to create knowledge about the role that teachers play in students’

privileging processes (see also Rudsberg & Öhman, 2010). In interactions with students,

teachers perform practical and conversational actions, and some of these can be thought of as

epistemological: they communicate to the students what counts as knowledge and what counts

as relevant ways of acquiring knowledge in this particular practice or situation. These actions

can be thought of as specific moves in a language game.

In epistemological move analyses, the description of teachers’ actions focuses on the effect

these have on students’ meaning making. Consequently, it is only possible to acquire such

information through an analysis of at least three transactions. If the students do not follow up

a teacher’s action the action of the teacher cannot be described. Ascribing specific intentions

to the teacher would not be in accordance with a first person perspective on interaction. EMA

therefore starts with a PEA in order to identify the situations in which the teachers’ actions

take place. It then ends with a PEA in order to determine whether the practical epistemology

used by the students has changed. This procedure makes it possible to identify and describe

the connection between teachers’ teaching practices and students’ privileging. What becomes

obvious in the analyses is that the teachers’ different actions – epistemological moves –

influence the students’ meaning making processes in a profound way. The practical

epistemology that students use changes as an effect of the transactions between students and

teacher. Students are not always able to proceed with the activity without the help of the

teacher. Even in the most simple activity student often get lost because they are not given any

clues as to what is worth noticing or not in the particular activity. Thus, perception, or

identifying what is worth paying attention to, cannot be taken for granted. The analyses

facilitate a description of the qualitatively different functions – different epistemological

moves – that the teacher’s actions have in the context of students’ learning processes. In

different ways, all the epistemological moves identified help the students to change their

perception, their attention, i.e. to notice new things in an encounter. Even confirming moves –

such as nodding – are attentional, since they offer confirmation to the students that they are

20

focusing on the right thing. When using different epistemological moves the teacher interacts

with the students and thereby directs their attention to new and relevant things in the specific

practice. In other words, the epistemological moves help the students to create new and

relevant relations to what stands fast, pay attention to fruitful gaps or stage productive

encounters. Consequently, the students change their way of privileging and can then create

the intended knowledge.

The interplay between students and teachers that is identified in the analyses is an

illumination of relations between the individual and the social dimension of learning. EMA

facilitates such illumination through studies of peoples’ interactions in a discourse practice.

The role of the institutional in learning

When working with the institutional, or the cultural, dimension at least two central questions

need to be addressed: i) what roles do cultural norms and values have for students’ learning;

and ii) what role do cultural artefacts have for students’ learning? The difference between

these two questions and the question of the role of the social in learning is mainly one of

scale. If the social concerns the group and the practice that is studied, the cultural concerns

customs that is manifested in space and time that goes way beyond the particular group or

practice being studied.

In order to answer the first question in situ analyses are often insufficient: complementary

historical or comparative analyses are often also necessary. In this context the method of

Communication Analyses of Companion Meanings (CACM) was developed as an attempt to

identify the institutional dimension of students’ learning – the socialisation that accompanies

learning. The concept of companion meanings grew out of an ambition to conceptualise the

collateral learning (Dewey, 1938/1997) that is connected to the learning of epistemic

meanings, e.g. scientific meaning in science education (Östman, 1996; Roberts & Östman,

1998). CACM contain the three following steps:

Step 1. Practical epistemological analysis (PEA): an analysis that describes the relations

created in the encounters.

21

Step 2. Language game analysis: adding an analysis of the words, expressions etc., used in the

creation of these relations (step 1) helps to identify which language game is being used. In

order to clarify how people use words in relation to other words we use an approach that is

common in many discourse theories, namely comparison (see, for example, Edwards and

Potter, 1992), i.e. a comparison between the specific languages used with other possible

language uses. A norm (rule) for inclusion and exclusion is formulated on the basis of the

comparison. Here it is crucial to note that norms or rules are part of a language game, since

they are expressed through the use of language and are not regulating in the sense that we can

understand and predict people’s actions by identifying and describing them (Edwards, 1997,

p. 5). Furthermore, they are learned through practising a language game (Lundqvist, Almqvist

& Östman, 2009; Taylor, 2009; Östman, 2010).

Step 3. Moral contextualisation: the identified norm is regarded as a moral norm. It is

important to note, however, that a companion meaning analysis doesn’t mean that researchers

can take a stand as to whether the identified norm is moral or non-moral in character. The

point is rather to treat them as possible candidates for inclusion in the moral sphere.10

When it comes to analyses of the role of artefacts, historical analyses are often unnecessary: it

is enough to know that the artefact has been used for a long time in different practices. As

mentioned at the beginning of this paper, there has been an intensive debate between

cognitive and sociocultural researchers concerning the role that artefacts play in students’

learning. This debate implies that the other party neglects the individual and the cultural

aspects when undertaking such investigations.11

Lidar, Almqvist & Östman (in press) demonstrate how a transactional approach can escape a

priori conceptions that directly lead to the mentioned fallacy:

10 As Dewey (1922/1988) emphases there are no universal demarcations that separates moral from non-moral since and which act that should be included as being moral varies: “The foremost conclusion is that morals have to do with all activity into which alternative possibilities enter. For wherever they enter a difference between better and worse arises. // Yet it is a perilous error to draw a hard and fast line between action into which deliberation and choice enter and activity due to impulse and matter-of-fact habit. …every reflective choice tends to relegate some conscious issue into a deed or habit henceforth taken for granted and not thought upon. Potentially therefore every and any act is within the scope of morals, being a candidate for possible judgement with respect to its better-or-worse quality” (p. 279). 11 The fallacy highlighted by Hodkinson, Biesta & James (2007) related to the privileging in investigations of either agency or structure is also closely connected with this discussion. In elaborating on this fallacy they suggest that sociocultural researchers would benefit from the work of Bourdieu.

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• either that cultural artefacts are external manifestations that embody and represent

specific conceptions and when people uses cultural artefacts these conceptions

determines people’s actions and thinking

• or that individuals prior conceptions govern how the artefact will be interpreted, which

means that the prior conceptions determine individuals’ actions and thinking.

If we want to avoid this fallacy we need to start with the simple notion that it is only when

people uses artefacts that we can create knowledge about how artefacts affect learning. Thus,

the object for investigation must therefore be artefact in use. Lidar, Almqvist & Östman (in

press) found that students who use the same artefact – in this case a terrestrial globe – in order

to answer an identical question (“what is on the other side of the earth?”) arrive at a variety of

answers. On closer inspection, the differences in the answers were due to different ways of

using the artefact, i.e. the students reactualised different experiences when encountering/using

the artefact. This became evident because in PEA the focus of investigation is the creation of

relations to what stands fast in the encounter with the terrestrial globe. This means that use of

an artefact always involves uniqueness – agency becomes evident in the act of reactualisation.

The uses of PEA in this investigation also showed that when the terrestrial globe was given a

certain meaning in its actual use the artefact-in-use mediated actions. In order to benefit from

the presence of a cultural artefact (for example a terrestrial globe or a map) knowledge about

the cultural conventions of using these tools has to be acquired. If this is established it is

possible to benefit even if the physical artefact is not actually present. In the presented study,

one of the groups of students held hands to represent the earth and then used this

representation to arrive at an answer to the question.

If one acknowledges that we can only create knowledge about the role of cultural artefacts for

learning through studying people’s actions it also becomes logical to acknowledge that the

purpose of study is to find out under which circumstances the individual and the cultural

come together in people’s use-of-artefacts. When doing this, social norms, power relations

and so on turn out to be important circumstances (see Öhman, accepted).

Concluding remarks

23

The transactional perspective presented in this paper should not be apprehended as a theory of

learning. Our intentions are rather to show how Dewey’s and Wittgenstein’s first person

perspective offers philosophical clarifications of central methodological problems connected

to in situ studies of learning that take intrapersonal as well as interpersonal and institutional

dimensions into consideration. However, in using a transactional methodology based on a first

person perspective a number of pitfalls need to be borne in mind. In the following we make

brief mention of two of the most important pitfalls.

In striving to avoid dualism it is tempting to replace it with a universal claim for holism, and

in this way exchange one metaphysical standpoint for another. The first pitfall could thus be

described as making anti-dualism a universal category. While a dualistic point of departure

tends to treat meanings and actions as always belonging to different spheres, a holistic

metaphysics runs the risk of overlooking those situations in life where things appear as

separate, or when a separation provides a more useful understanding. As Valsiner (1998)

holds: “The result could be a conceptual myopia – structured complexity of the phenomena is

overlooked and replaced by one or another way of describing unstructured (or dynamic)

complexity” (p. 352). What Valsiner is thus pointing to here is that the problem with a

dualistic approach is not that it makes distinctions, but that the distinctions are preconceived.

On the other hand, if we are prevented by holism from making any divisions and separations,

we reduce the possibilities of organising our knowledge about a studied phenomenon. It is

therefore important that the transactional approach does not prevent us from making

empirically based distinctions when describing learning.

Valsiner’s critique also leads us to the second major pitfall when developing a ‘mutually

constituting’ approach, namely that such an approach “can become a general explanatory

label that is used to stop any need for further inquiry” (ibid., p. 353). This is the case when the

approach is used not only as a method with which to make investigations to create new

knowledge, but is taken out of its context and given a metaphysical status. The problem is not

that the assumptions of different approaches are necessarily wrong, but rather when “they

essentialise one feature, seen from a particular point of view into the essence of ‘the way

things really are’” (Pleasants, 1999, p. 24), i.e. to transform methodological assumptions into

general and universal explanations of phenomena, events etc.

24

With these warnings in mind it is our hope that the findings from the different kinds of

analyses presented towards the end of this paper eventually will provide sufficient knowledge

to form the basis for an empirically grounded transactional theory of learning.

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