THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
3.4. The evolution of educational and learning Theories
3.4.1. From canonisation towards knowledge generation
56 | P a g e bridging the divides between the profession and society as well as between academia and practice. The neo-humanist approach further extends architectural education to the broader global context wherein the complex nuances of the South African contexts may valuably contribute to critical discourses on social, economic and environmental change. Neo-humanist principles, based on connecting different contexts and paradigms, may immensely benefit the universities of technology in South Africa in determining their unique identities. It further has value to the pedagogic approaches of architectural education at universities of technology, which have historically been defined by an industrialised approach, towards one that advances human potentialities to the benefit of society.
It is therefore important to analyse various approaches in education to better understand the evolution of education in society in order to determine the key principles that may inform the alternative model that this thesis proposes. The historic approaches to architectural education, which have greatly impacted current practice, have been influenced by broader theories and philosophies that have shaped education in general. While this research focuses on architectural pedagogy and learning space development, reference has to be made to broader philosophical frameworks which influence education and learning space development, before focusing on architectural education.
57 | P a g e education, this approach is clearly evident in the British system of articled pupilage and the French Beaux-Arts system, which will be discussed in the next chapter. While architectural education within the behaviourist paradigm focused on imitation and master-led instruction, behaviourist pedagogy, in general, implements teaching and learning devices such as textbooks, worksheets, linear student generated text and independent work (Bigenho 2008).
Jonassen and Land (in Stauffacher et al. 2006) refer to traditional teaching as based on a sender- receiver model, wherein learning is confined to knowledge acquisition (Stauffacher et al.
2006). The implication of such model, against the framework of critical theory, suggests that there is an inherent lack of critical enquiry in learning.
Saidi (2005) referred to Perennialism as the oldest educational philosophy whereby the mind is conditioned with universally accepted notions of knowledge, including the view of knowledge being based on absolute truths. This philosophy is also based on a teacher-student linear transmission model, wherein the former is seen as the holder of wisdom and the latter the recipient / disciple. Saidi (2005), associated this passive role of the learner to the philosophy of Essentialism, wherein the learner awaits learning stimuli from the teacher.
The behaviourist, perennialist and essentialist positions on knowledge were widely prevalent in and continued to be perpetuated in architectural education through the Beaux-Arts model, which placed heavy reliance by the student on the master for learning and decision-making stimuli. Students focused on the finished product as an object which was considered to be of greater significance than the critical theoretical and philosophical processes of design.
Historically, as evident in the Beaux-Arts system, the materiality and object-focused endeavours of architectural discourse, pedagogy and practice defined the scope of architectural education and practice. The Beaux-Arts system as such inhibited critical thinking, ultimately resulting in the decline of the general level of design (Salama in Andjomshoaa et al. 2011).
Education based on universal laws and norms as definitive, determinate and therefore inflexible to change, inhibit critical thinking and it is therefore necessary to look at alternate pedagogic approaches that could be more relevant in architectural education, in order to bridge the divides between theory, practice and society. The past two decades have seen a shift from these approaches to a constructivist approach in (architectural) education which places emphasis on learning and the construction of knowledge by learners.
Constructivist pedagogy connects individual learners’ cognitive constructions with the influences of social and environmental factors within an engaged learning paradigm. It could,
58 | P a g e therefore, be considered as being learner-, and learning-centred. Constructivism as an educational paradigm, however, emerged much earlier – during the 1980s and 1990s as interest waned in behaviourist, information-processing paradigms (Mayer in Liu & Mathews 2005).
The behaviourist mode became increasingly undesirable by learners, who preferred a more active and engaged approach to learning. Phillips (in Liu & Mathews 2005) affirmed that the mechanistic, predictable and controllable view of the universe contrived by the behaviourist approach could not capture the active and social characteristics of learners. As a consequence, the behaviourist approach was superceded by a constructivist approach which promulgated the view that learners were situated constructors of their own knowledge (Liu & Mathews 2005), wherein cultural and social nuances would be naturally factored.
Two variants of the theory of Constructivism, derived mainly from the works of Piaget and Vygotsky (Andjomshoaa et al. 2011) in the field of developmental psychology, had profound significance on education in the developing world (Liu &Mathews 2005). The first, known as cognitive or radical constructivism, stemmed from the work of Jean Piaget, while the second, social or realist constructivism, was most associated with Lev Vygotsky (Dahl 2003). The constructivist approaches of Piaget and Vygotsky, which were seemingly dialectically opposed, were both relevant to the pedagogic approaches of architectural education. Cognitive, radical constructivists such as Piaget argued that knowledge was not directly transmitted from person to person but rather idiosyncratically constructed or discovered. Social, realist constructivists such as Vygotsky on the other hand postulated that the role of the social environment was central to learning (Liu & Mathews 2005). The social/relativist approach affirmed that learning is a context-bound activity through interaction with the learning environment. Whereas Piaget’s theory focused on fixed, chronological stages of development based on creative and intelligent construction of knowledge, Vygotsky presented a more fluid interactive approach to the construction of knowledge and meaning. Piaget promulgated the concept of equilibrium (balance) achieved by an individual’s adaptation to the environment through the cognitive processes of assimilation and accommodation while Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) emphasised the outside social forces in the learning process (Blake & Pope 2008).
Liu and Mathews (2005) argue that Vygotsky’s reference to the social and collective must not be viewed as a total of the sum of independent individuals, rather that the collective is always greater than the sum of individual parts. This view supports Homi Bhabha’s ‘third space theory’
in which the integration of different individual domains results in hybrid conditions that
59 | P a g e generate unique conditions of greater significance. Liu and Mathews (2005) present Vygotsky’s view differently by referring to text, wherein they posit that understanding cannot be reduced to sequence of individual words without distortion of meaning. Words have their own objective individual meaning, while simultaneously deriving meaning through their relationships to other words in the context, thereby establishing significance and meaning. This interpretation of Vygotsky, with reference to language structure, tends towards Derrida’s poststructuralist philosophy of language construction while the emphasis on society, culture and history leans toward Foucault’s postmodernist philosophy. According to Blake and Pope (2008), Vygotsky’s work was significantly influenced by Marxist theory as well as reference to poststructuralist and postmodernist theories, which suggests that his philosophies may be interpreted within the framework of critical theory.
This thesis argues that the individual and the social approaches in constructivist pedagogies are not dialectically polarized, parallel systems but are rather complementary. Piaget’s cognitive equilibrium focusing on stages of development can be related to the concept of Jungian Epistemological Balance, which will be discussed later in the chapter, while Vygotsky’s ‘Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) can be reinterpreted within the broader concept of
‘interdisciplinarity’. Muthivhi and Broom (2009) support this argument that Piaget’s individual self-regulatory processes and Vygotsky’s socio-culturally mediated processes can simultaneously affect learning and knowledge construction. In considering both, the dialectic between the approaches of Piaget and Vygotsky may then develop a dialogical relationship, complementing and enhancing learning; in which the processes of concept learning could be derived from both the individual’s cognitive activity as well that of his/her collective society and culture in context (Muthivhi & Broom 2009).