Direct and indirect relevant knowledge: Strategies for handling diversity and unity in teacher education


KÅRE FUGLSETH Nord University


1. The challenge of diversity and the paradox of freedom

The common question to discuss in this special issue of the journal is how teachers “can respond to and resist growing neoliberal and neoconservative orientations.” A possible answer to this question takes me to educational theories first articulated in the wake of the Enlightenment and the later modern quest for liberation from tradition and social class. This Bildung pedagogy incorporates ideas that still elucidate and advocate possibilities for handling both diversity and unity in democratic education. Diversity in this context is understood in a broad sense, but my examples are taken from religious and cultural diversity. Moreover, references in the article to teaching and teachers refer to primary and secondary level teachers. As will be shown, the proponents of this educational approach discovered and tried to find ways to solve the paradox of freedom and the dilemmas it created for teachers by telling someone to be autonomous. This approach, the Bildung, or comprehensive education ideal, contends that there is no knowledge per se, it always comes with questions of autonomy and responsibility (see Klafki, 1964; von Oettingen, 2001). I shall argue that, although our present religious and cultural diversity in Norway and elsewhere in Scandinavia is relatively new, we do not need to invent new educational principles to meet plurality, we only need to re-apply old ones in new contexts. My suggestion is centred on the distinction between what I have called “encyclic” and “encyclopaedic” principles, that is, between a comprehensive (encyclic) and all-encompassing (encyclopaedic) curriculum. This leads me to a rejection of Dewey’s model for teacher education concerning the relationship between theory and practice — a rejection based on a proposition by Lee Shulman — and finally to my own solution based on the distinction between direct and indirect relevant knowledge for teaching practice.

My contribution first engages in a textual analysis of the present Norwegian national curriculum for the primary and secondary school levels with the purpose of locating possible models related to neoliberal and neoconservative orientations. As will be argued, it is not possible to see the Norwegian curriculum as either neoconservative or neoliberal, but therein also lies the problem that must be solved theoretically, as the national curriculum for primary and secondary schools frames and also entails teacher practices, and as such the hybrid is key to a problem teacher education must confront. How the curriculum is understood and practiced, and what its end results are, are questions beyond the scope of this study. Secondly, I shall present a general guide to knowledge presentation: There are both direct and indirect relevant knowledge and skills to guide future teachers in these matters.

2. Neoconservative and neoliberal marks on the Norwegian curriculum

The current curriculum (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020) was introduced in 2020 as a renewal reform.1 The preparatory work started in 2013 and resulted in a series of white papers, the first one published in 2014 (Ludvigsen, 2014, 2015). The initial discussions and plans for the new curriculum were explicitly based on neoliberal standards, particularly seen in the stress on formal learning principles such as deep learning, social and emotional competences, self-regulation, and meta-cognition (see Hilt et al., 2019, 2022). These ideas were imported from global institutions such as the OECD, UNESCO, the EU, and also the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Several scholars believe that the new curriculum brought in principles that represent a clear break with the former educational policies in Norway (Hilt et al., 2019, 2022). Prior to its implementation, there were also earlier signals of a change from the previous curriculum principles, not only in Norway, but in all the Nordic countries. Imsen et al. (2017) even used the word “undermining” of the Nordic values by “new technologies” in this connection, with “technology” referring generally to all kinds of organizational instruments:

It is argued that the Nordic model still exists as the predominant system for the large majority of Scandinavian children at a national level, but that a number of new technologies aiming to increase the efficiency of teaching and learning are gradually undermining the main values of the Nordic model. (p. 568)

There are similar discussions about this instrumentalization of educational theories in other European countries at the moment. One important example comes from Germany, where leading university professors wrote a manifesto against neoliberal reform plans (see Anders et al., 2023). In Norway, Hilt and Riese (2022) demonstrated how these principles were discussed during the process of public curriculum consultations, and how the guiding principles were altered in the political deliberations. The discussions, leading up to the present national curriculum, did not alter the marks of instrumentalization, but instead added new ones in line with the Bildung traditions. The result is a hybrid of two types of educational theories, as pointed out by Hilt and Riese, linked to either neoliberal or neoconservative ideologies. Initially then, the present curriculum does not seem to be dominated by any of these ideologies, a fact that turns out to be important for the operationalization and practices of the curriculum in the classrooms, and its double character of being both liberal and conservative is therefore also of interest, for schools and teacher education.

In the general part of the curriculum, the core curriculum, the Norwegian word for formative development or Bildung, danning, is used extensively to describe the educational aim of the schools (Government of Norway, 2019). The Bildung ideal is seen in the broad scope of the curriculum, with 11 main school subjects covering almost all parts of human life in the modern world. The Norwegian main subjects are: religious education (RE), Norwegian, mathematics, science, English, other foreign language, social sciences, arts and crafts, music, food and health, and physical education. In the Bildung tradition, 12 areas of society and culture of interest for schools are defined:

  1. the body and physical education

  2. crafts and technology

  3. social life

  4. the musical-aesthetic life,

  5. language, literature, and cultural knowledge

  6. history and politics

  7. trade (economics and geographical knowledge)

  8. mathematics and natural science

  9. biology (life on earth)

  10. philosophy and life knowledge

  11. social ethics and morality

  12. religion and threat

In various forms, this structure is universal for all societies and cultures.

(Klafki, 1975, p. 332, own translation)

The RE subject (knowledge of Christianity, religions, secular life, and orientations and ethics [KRLE]) is of special interest when it comes to a discussion of how to handle diversity and unity generally, as diversity is mostly connected to different religious or non-religious group identities (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). On the one hand, the RE subject is clearly neoconservative in that the curriculum refers to traditional theories, values, and practices: “Education and training shall be based on fundamental values in Christian and humanist heritage and traditions” (Government of Norway, 2019, p. 3). On the other hand, the role of historical knowledge is generally downplayed (see Rasmussen, 2020), the notion of “world religions” from the previous curriculum being totally omitted, indicating a more neoliberal than neoconservative approach. The articulations of very specific learning outcomes for every school subject in the curriculum (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020) may also be regarded as neoliberal if implemented to ensure and measure competences, but Bildung ideas of independence are also obviously present in the learning outcomes of autonomy and responsibility, in Norway called “general competences” (see Shulman’s, 2004, term in the book The Wisdom of Practice). This articulation is of a more conservative stance. However, it is questionable to call these outcomes “competences,” as if they were to confirm moral characters and virtues. Nevertheless, being in close connection with a development of knowledge and skills, as in the European Qualification Framework (Europass, 2023), the category of autonomy and responsibility reflects genuine Bildung ideas. The three categories (knowledge, skills, and general competences) form a tripartite unity, also adopted in the description of learning outcomes in the Norwegian national curriculum. Thus, Bildung is seen as a theoretical, valuational, and practical aspect of knowledge and skills, and cannot be isolated from them.

The renewal of the former curriculum may also be characterized as a value promotion reform (verdiløft in Norwegian, see Karseth et al., 2020, p. 31). For instance, the general part of the curriculum is heavily marked by the necessity of values guiding education. The general values are “respect for human dignity and nature, freedom of thought, charity, forgiveness, equality and solidarity” (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020, para. 1.3; see also the Education Act, Government of Norway, 2014). However, “value” is not a word used in the RE plan in the curriculum apart from a quote in the general part, and the word for Bildung, “danning,” is not used at all in connection to this school subject — perhaps the core school subject for the teaching of values. This lack of value and Bildung language reflects a clear neoliberal approach in this school subject curriculum. On the other hand, the fact that there is an RE subject at all, with a strong focus on Christian beliefs and practices, is a neoconservative mark. Apart from the introduction to the curriculum, no other religions are mentioned apart from Christianity, a further indication of the neoconservative inclination. Traces of neoconservative ideology are obvious with the weight on values and cultural heritage, and with a compulsory RE subject and its stress on Christian beliefs and practices, while traces of neoliberal ideology are particularly seen in the formal aims for “21st century skills” and competence.

A complete scrutiny of the national curriculum and the RE plan is not necessary to see the ambiguities involved. A general report on the curriculum revealed that teachers like the new curriculum because it is less detailed and generally value-based, and as such adds more personal responsibility to the teachers, not only for teaching methods, but also for content (Burner et al., 2023). These examples suffice to demonstrate the general claim that the curriculum is a hybrid text, as Hilt and others have concluded (see Hilt et al., 2019; Riese et al., 2020). What is of further importance in this connection are the consequences for the understanding of teaching by schoolteachers, and teacher educators and their students alike, with the frames that the curriculum constitutes. As a hybrid text, there are two tendencies with almost conflicting interests, a neoliberal and a neoconservative one, and for that reason it may be seen as ambiguous and confused in this regard. Teachers and teacher educators have to find a way to understand and handle this ambiguity in one way or another. There is another Bildung concept that seems to be forgotten, which might help them: the categorical thinking in teaching practice. Nonetheless, as will be shown, there are also severe challenges in appropriating this pedagogical solution to our problems with the hybrid national curriculum.

3. Categorical thinking as solution

In Germany in the 1950s, Wolfgang Klafki, who developed the critical-constructive Bildung theory, argued that teachers must be teaching what he called “elementary” in their presentation of subjects, referring to the basic elements in each field of knowledge, as this is essential for understanding the topic (see Klafki, 1964, and in English, 1995). In addition, they must also aim for more general knowledge and values in fundamental or existential ways for the student. This is the core idea in categorical Bildung theory, the “double opening” of students: Teachers must be able to critically open the world for students, and students for the world (see core contributions of Klafki, 1975, 1976, 1993, 2002). Klafki also employed and developed further theoretical concepts that made it possible to differentiate between formal and material Bildung. Twenty-first century skills and neoliberal ideologies were already present at the time of Klafki’s articulation of the idea, but certainly present were also formal learning theories (e.g., “learn to learn”). He saw school essentialism and the attention to some classical literature as a form of material Bildung.

When comparing these categorical Bildung theories of Klafki and the above analysis of the national curriculum of Norway, a certain parallel way of thinking emerges. Klafki combined the formal and material Bildung concept in a critical-constructive and categorical theory of education. The perceived ambiguity in the national curriculum of Norway may in fact be understood as a similar combination, almost by chance, and most probably unknowingly for the authors.

The distinction between encyclic and encyclopaedic curriculum principles also represent two types that can be used to explain the perceived ambiguities in accordance with the Klafkian double opening. An encyclic education is a comprehensive way of dealing with schooling, as it covers all the main societal areas as explained above. I understand encyclopaedic education as all-encompassing, and there is a tradition in Norway for this type of encyclopaedic curricula. However, in earlier curricula, descriptions of the school subjects were not phrased as learning outcomes, but rather teachers’ topics one should consider teaching, with the chosen subjects being dependent on what the pupils already knew and understood (see Ministry of Education and Research, 1996). Being completely encyclopaedic is of course not possible with a competence-based curriculum that includes specific learning outcomes. There is one way to solve the problem of topic overload while at the same time being encyclic and Bildung oriented: create autonomy and responsibility by using categorical-based strategies. By using the categorical principle, the educator also sees the pupil or student as a human with integrity needing formative development in all main areas of a modern society. Although broad, it is not encyclopaedic. In one way, encyclic education is also all-encompassing, but the selection of topics is thought to be conscious and aimed at the development of critical thinking. The categorical teaching theory by Klafki (1964, 1975) highlights the dilemmas that the paradox of freedom creates, and no teaching can dissolve the paradox completely. It is a way of acting that is ethically justifiable, as some kind of cohesion is always necessary, but it should be minimal. It also demonstrates a way of handling the ambiguity and lessening the confusion created by a curriculum that combines neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies.

However, conclusions like these do not give much specific advice for teaching methods and actions. The problem is that in a plan to establish or constitute categories in a learning situation, one can never be sure of the end result. Specific plans for action and plans that involve the constitution of categories among one’s own students or pupils are similar to plans for action in general in at least one respect: They are necessarily anonymous until completed (a “factum”), as Alfred Schütz, one of the first followers of the father of phenomenology Edmund Husserl, pointed out in his action theory, the theory of relevance (Schütz, 1970, 1971; see Berger & Luckmann, 1967, who transferred these theories to a sociology of knowledge). There are several insights that can be drawn from this relevance theory for education, as well as the proto-theories of phenomenology in general (see Fuglseth 2015, 2020, 2023). In the remaining part, I shall discuss some insights that may be gained from this for teacher education generally. These suggestions are meant to guide how teacher education may prepare students for the constitution of values, a core priority in a diverse society. It brings me to a discussion of Dewey’s (1904) model for teacher education, and to a new theory that emerges from it regarding the difference between directly and indirectly relevant knowledge — two types of knowledge and skills that teacher education should let their students meet and engage with.

4. Training for practice in teacher education

John Dewey’s theories are often used as a starting point for discussions of theory versus practice (academic practice versus workplace practice) in teacher education in Norway and elsewhere (e.g., Eikseth & Nilsen, 2004; Shulman, 1998; Sætra, 2018). The point for John Dewey (1904) was that in teacher education one should not use the method found in the apprentice approach (i.e., through imitation) but rather a more scientific or exploratory point of view. There is a difference between teaching as technique and teaching as art, between the master–apprentice model and the laboratory or research-based model: “Practice work is, as far as it goes, of the nature of apprenticeship” (Dewey, 1904, p. 9).

Dewey (1904) pointed out that “the laboratory point of view” is oriented long-term “to supply the intellectual method and material of good workmanship, instead of making on the spot, as it were, an efficient workman” (p. 10). Dewey can be said to have been a supporter of research-based education. He emphasized that both models must be included in professional education. However, here, Dewey, known for the slogan “learning by doing,” defended his opinion on the organization of teacher education in the United States, at that time only recently established, that it initially be theoretical. As Shulman (1998) has pointed out, Dewey used other vocational education to support this view, particularly from medicine and medical education in the Flexner model. The model assumed that practice learning could preserve unwanted practices, so a scientific basis for actions had to be introduced and practice adjusted according to accepted scientific beliefs. Thus, medical training needed to be a theoretical study first, and then students would be allowed to try their hand at medical practice. Dewey wanted this model to be the template for teacher education as well, but Shulman has argued that it would discourage the medical practice schools common in the United States at the time of Dewey. Today, Shulman believes that the trend has turned against the Flexner model, as it has become more common in medical training to use early practice and problem-based learning.

Today’s Norwegian teacher education mostly follows Dewey’s research model for professional teacher training, with a combination of the apprenticeship model with practical training, and the research model with research-based teaching. For example, as an argument against those who want even more practice in education today, Sætra (2018) has argued that Dewey’s model is still relevant, and that a new teacher will fare better in everyday practice with a strong epistemological basis. In a mixed model, it will be possible to see how theories about teaching and school subjects on one side, and the experiences that students gain in practice on the other, can support each other.

A key objection on Shulman’s (1998) part was that Dewey was too strongly influenced by the medical education model, in which students had to learn from scientific theories in the form of objective explanations. The idea that one can learn from practice experiences was less appreciated. When Dewey transferred this model to teacher training, he took on a similar theoretical bias. However, as Shulman argued, this strategy is not that simple when it comes to educational research on school practices. In his critique, Shulman contended that we should expand the list of what is needed in a profession, in addition to the knowledge and skills that teacher educators and students engage with.

One strategy that combines learning from grounded theories and practical experience is problem-based learning, with the use of examples or cases. The case method loosens up the theory–practice problem by allowing us to link theories with practice experiences, ideas with experience, and norms with possibilities. In the face of a situated example from practice, the novice is given the opportunity to combine theory and practice where there are many choices, but where one can make only one of them (Shulman, 1998).

Still, there is an argument by Dewey that Shulman did not capture, and that I think proves to be essential for an understanding of teacher education, and in particular for handling categorical training. Dewey (1904) presented a notion of the teacher–student encounter that I think is fruitful for our discussion. He pointed to an important insight when he distinguished between “the immediate aim” and “the ultimate aim” as expressions of what teachers encounter (pp. 9–11). Dewey believed that knowledge and insight into scientific theory also have a long-term effect on student teachers, allowing them to become students of teaching, rather than just good practitioners. The point is that when we ask what a teacher needs to learn to become a good teacher, we need to think beyond the first day of work and the first year of work.

Biesta (2013) launched a similar model of short-term and long-term goals in the book The Beautiful Risk of Education. He first points out a basic feature of teaching as relational — that the teacher is always in a social relationship. Although trivial, it becomes his starting point for a theory about how the overall and long-term goals of teacher practice govern or orient what happens in the situation. It is in the individual meetings with the child that the overall objectives can be concretely expressed. According to Biesta (2013), these meetings are based on three areas that govern, or should govern, what happens in schools: “qualification, socialization and subjectification” (p. 4). The areas are always moving and floating in some way. It is a conception of the end result that determines what is highlighted, communicated, and then constituted. The teacher must steer in the direction that these concepts represent, to use a naval metaphor. We can also understand this as a classic hermeneutic problem between the parts and the whole.

This requires a form of balancing different considerations, Biesta (2013) believed. Biesta’s theory is a theory of what is going on in the situation: It should always be seen against certain overarching aims, although this is not just a descriptive theory. Biesta claimed to have found a relationship pattern in all learning situations, and it is therefore prescriptive as well. The balancing adapts according to what the situation requires. This insight is based on a certain amount of judgement to which no evidence-based research can provide answers. The neo-Aristotelean word for discretion or tact, phronesis, links Biesta’s approach to Bildung theories of education.

Shulman (1986, 1987) also presented theories on teaching and teacher education that evolve in a similar Bildung direction, and as with Biesta, perhaps unknowingly. Actually, his theories on content analysis (see Shulman, 2004) go very well with the German–Scandinavian Bildung tradition. He operates with a similar distinction to Biesta, with three types of teacher knowledge, which can also be characterized as short- and long-term categories:

  1. Propositional knowledge: evidence, claims

  2. Experiential knowledge: previous knowledge / cases, experience

  3. Strategic knowledge: pragmatism, prudence, tact, with possible combinations of 1 and 2

Such categories analyze what de facto teacher knowledge can be transferred to a more general level, to a theory of direct and indirect relevance of knowledge and skills in teacher education, or in fact any professional training.

5. Direct and indirect relevance in teacher education for school teaching

What remains valuable of Dewey’s model of teacher education is the relationship between immediate and ultimate aims, a view that we may further develop for the sake of our understanding of the role of education for specific professions such as teacher education. These are two aspects of professional practice that school education usually covers. Generally, researchers of social interaction, such as in a classroom situation, cannot understand the meaning of actions by only observing what is happening in one situation. An interpretive approach requires insight into both of these synchronous, and also diachronic, cultural features that are given concrete, conscious, and unconscious expression in conversation and interaction (see Knoblauch, 2020; Tuma et al., 2013). It is important for the researcher to pay attention to the cultural traits also. The constitution of meaning in social situations or all encounters, regardless of whether they are social or not, is therefore to be seen as the result of two different movements, vertically (synchronously, culturally) and horizontally (diachronically, sequentially). The cultural or synchronous aspects of an encounter are seen as background and express global values, while the diachronic aspects are foreground and are focal (see Fuglseth, 2012). This can also be portrayed as the difference between a core with an inner and outer horizon in the philosophical–phenomenological theorizing of Edmund Husserl (see Fuglseth, 2017a, 2017b).

The method and also the theory or perspective that govern this interpretive approach are parallel to what Biesta maintained in his model of the encounter between teacher and student. The difference between what is described here as constitutive of meaning in social situations in general and in the teaching profession, is that school teaching has global aims, often expressed as values and as Bildung-based. Teaching by definition has direction; it is intentional. If the teacher does not see or know the direction that they are able to use as a compass, a place of orientation, actions in the situation easily become randomly chosen. This forms the natural starting point for creating theories of action for professional practice in general, which in turn has consequences for the educational practice of these professions.

In the encounter with the student, the teacher faces two movements that one must handle at the same time. These are what we shall call synchronous and diachronic. The synchronous in this case is not only cultural, but also value-laden and intentional. In Norwegian schools, there are certain basic values that the teacher is obliged to follow. It is not only about professional ethical requirements or demands, but also about legally binding aims, for example, that the teaching must promote “democracies, gender equality and scientific thinking” (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020, para. 1.3). In an intentional model, one can imagine that the synchronous aspects of the situation form the background that the teacher uses to respond to the student. Consequently, this is a condition for the teacher's general ability to respond to what is going on in the foreground, and that develops dialogically in the situation in sequential steps, on the basis of certain overarching values and cultural traits. We can call this a balancing model, since teachers must balance overarching objectives (wholeness), which must be made real in individual situations (parts). With such a balance model, we have a general theory of action about intentional actions, such as those in which teachers always are placed.

The essential point in this context is to maintain that what students encounter during vocational education will always be something they can either directly or indirectly use in professional work. Likewise, we can talk about the direct and indirect use of previous experience, “the stock of knowledge,” to use a term from Alfred Schütz (e.g., Schutz & Luckmann, 1973, p. 99). They represent two kinds of relevance of theories and practices during education. Theories and practices in teacher education that students later need for indirect use, such as a general knowledge of school history, the educational act, a school’s purpose, or psychological theories of a child’s development, are no less important than direct relevant knowledge and skills, such as teaching methods and the school subject itself. Within a school subject there will also be theories of different relevance. In this context, it is not the degree of relevance that is interesting, but instead the type of relevance — direct or indirect.

6. Categorical value-based teaching for diversity and unity

I argued above that the Norwegian national curriculum is strangely ambiguous when it comes to neoliberal and neoconservative tendencies, and it therefore stands out as hybrid. This is particularly noticeable in the RE subject, and it has historical explanations. Formal learning theories (e.g., 21st-century skills) on one side, and more material and value-based aims on the other, were combined during the political and academic discussions. The result appears in a way that is easily seen as confusing for practicing teachers. However, as I argued above, this is perhaps not such a serious matter in practice. The resulting ambiguity and confusion find a solution when seen in the light of Bildung theories, in particular the categorical theory from Wolfgang Klafki — a theory that I would like to promote in the present situation for the sake of managing challenges in schools related to diversity among students. Schools and school subjects must, firstly, be all-encompassing (encyclopaedic) to prepare students and pupils for their lives in a democratic society, but also encyclic (comprehensive) in a categorical way to open the world for the student and the student for the world, to gain the necessary understanding for diversity, but also for a unity among diversity. All training for becoming a primary and secondary level teacher should then also move along two lines: what is of direct and of indirect relevance for the practice of teaching for that type of categorical teaching strategy. This is perhaps the only way that student teachers may be made aware of the dilemmas facing them, and the excellent solutions that the Bildung theory may offer. The teaching of values, as prescribed in the Norwegian national curriculum (such as “respect for human dignity and nature, on intellectual freedom, charity, forgiveness, equality and solidarity,” in Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020, para. 1.3) may be understood in accordance with this categorical strategy.

The relevance in the two types of knowledge, skills, and practice that I have highlighted, indirect and direct use, is or should be high, and its relevance for teaching clearly understood by the students. In order to achieve an understanding of relevance, teacher educators should at least be able to explain the difference for their students and what the relevance is of each subject or learning activity. Theories and skills with little or no relevance for teaching practice, whether directly or indirectly, should be able to be sorted out and used as a basis for setting priorities. The perceived relevance for students is often associated with the direct benefits, which is unfortunate, both for their assessment of their education and for their ability to respond as teachers.

NOTES

  1. Læreplan etter Kunnskapsløftet (curriculum according to the renewal reform of knowledge), referred to as “LK20.”

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