Can an account of teaching go far enough?
One reason that disagreement runs deep about the nature of teaching is that our concept of teaching has two closely linked but distinct aspects. On the one hand, teaching is often thought of as some relevant act on the part of the teacher, and, on the other hand, teaching often emphasizes the information or knowledge that is transmitted to the learner. Kline emphasizes the first aspect of teaching without giving sufficient attention to the vast variations in learning that results. What may be needed is a fully integrated view of social transmission or exchange that adequately captures these two complementary aspects of teaching and of learning. Accounts that strive to explain variations in teaching, along with variations in learning, may be in the best position to explain how teaching both generates and explains the knowledge that we gain from it.
Distinct forms of teaching likely lead to distinct forms of learning
Kline is right to identify the merits of functionalist, mentalistic, and cultural approaches to teaching and to point out that one type of mistake scholars make is to ignore the analogies or similarities in teaching practices across distinct human cultural groups and animal species. However, another equally significant mistake is to group together dissimilar practices under a common label of “teaching.” The risk of conflating distinct teaching behaviors is that it can neglect the fact that distinct characteristics of teaching carry distinct consequences for the learner. For example, within the type “teaching by social tolerance,” B can observe A, B can overhear A, and B can observe A failing to do something. In each of these cases, A plays a significant causal role in B's coming to know X or how to X. However, each of these learning opportunities can occur with more or less intentionality on the part of A, and such differences may lead to consequences for the learner (e.g., how well X is learned, understood, remembered). Without giving full attention to the consequences that such differences have for the learner, Kline leaves open important questions that concern how learning is affected by variations in the behaviors, beliefs and knowledge of the teachers.
The relevance of plain truths and falsehoods
For Kline, a central problem for teachers and learners is the need to limit information in ways relevant to the learner: She argues that only novel information which is useful or connected to the pupil's prior knowledge is relevant and useful to the learning process. In this way, Kline places demands on the teacher: “By definition, only relevant information will promote pupil learning” (sect. 5, para. 2), and on the learner: “the pupil's psychology must be sensitive to relevant information in the context of teaching” (sect. 5.1, para. 1). Learning new and relevant information certainly characterizes many teaching episodes; however, restricting pupil learning to the expression of new but “relevant” information neglects two important points. First, it underestimates (or ignores) the utility of information that is known and that fully conflicts or concurs with the prior knowledge of the learner. For example, learners come to understand and better comprehend words and sentences by experiencing them when they are plainly true; in cases when the speaker utters something that the listener can observe just as easily as the speaker can. Cases like these serve to both enrich the learner's understanding of message content and amplify the pedagogical value and reliability of the speaker. Second, in gleaning information from actions or signals that are plainly true or false, learners learn important lessons about the teacher or model who expresses them. In the case of failed actions or false messages, learners may not gain new knowledge about the expressed topic, but they certainly gain new information about the model or teacher who made the mistake, information that will prove critical in future encounters.
More generally, in cases of direct teaching as well as in cases of teaching by opportunity provisioning, learners must make assumptions and learn about the behavioral (and in the case of humans, psychological) capacities of models, such as what someone can perceive from a given viewpoint, what someone can be expected to remember over time, and what someone is likely to do in response to threat. For juveniles in a species, all of these behavioral lessons about the models are picked up along with their evaluations of the informational content that is made available to them. Thus, new information is important, but old information is important too. Old information is important because (i) it can conflict with or otherwise bear on potential new information and (ii) by evaluating the teacher against already known information, the learner can learn valuable information about the model.
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Can an account of teaching go far enough?
One reason that disagreement runs deep about the nature of teaching is that our concept of teaching has two closely linked but distinct aspects. On the one hand, teaching is often thought of as some relevant act on the part of the teacher, and, on the other hand, teaching often emphasizes the information or knowledge that is transmitted to the learner. Kline emphasizes the first aspect of teaching without giving sufficient attention to the vast variations in learning that results. What may be needed is a fully integrated view of social transmission or exchange that adequately captures these two complementary aspects of teaching and of learning. Accounts that strive to explain variations in teaching, along with variations in learning, may be in the best position to explain how teaching both generates and explains the knowledge that we gain from it.
Distinct forms of teaching likely lead to distinct forms of learning
Kline is right to identify the merits of functionalist, mentalistic, and cultural approaches to teaching and to point out that one type of mistake scholars make is to ignore the analogies or similarities in teaching practices across distinct human cultural groups and animal species. However, another equally significant mistake is to group together dissimilar practices under a common label of “teaching.” The risk of conflating distinct teaching behaviors is that it can neglect the fact that distinct characteristics of teaching carry distinct consequences for the learner. For example, within the type “teaching by social tolerance,” B can observe A, B can overhear A, and B can observe A failing to do something. In each of these cases, A plays a significant causal role in B's coming to know X or how to X. However, each of these learning opportunities can occur with more or less intentionality on the part of A, and such differences may lead to consequences for the learner (e.g., how well X is learned, understood, remembered). Without giving full attention to the consequences that such differences have for the learner, Kline leaves open important questions that concern how learning is affected by variations in the behaviors, beliefs and knowledge of the teachers.
The relevance of plain truths and falsehoods
For Kline, a central problem for teachers and learners is the need to limit information in ways relevant to the learner: She argues that only novel information which is useful or connected to the pupil's prior knowledge is relevant and useful to the learning process. In this way, Kline places demands on the teacher: “By definition, only relevant information will promote pupil learning” (sect. 5, para. 2), and on the learner: “the pupil's psychology must be sensitive to relevant information in the context of teaching” (sect. 5.1, para. 1). Learning new and relevant information certainly characterizes many teaching episodes; however, restricting pupil learning to the expression of new but “relevant” information neglects two important points. First, it underestimates (or ignores) the utility of information that is known and that fully conflicts or concurs with the prior knowledge of the learner. For example, learners come to understand and better comprehend words and sentences by experiencing them when they are plainly true; in cases when the speaker utters something that the listener can observe just as easily as the speaker can. Cases like these serve to both enrich the learner's understanding of message content and amplify the pedagogical value and reliability of the speaker. Second, in gleaning information from actions or signals that are plainly true or false, learners learn important lessons about the teacher or model who expresses them. In the case of failed actions or false messages, learners may not gain new knowledge about the expressed topic, but they certainly gain new information about the model or teacher who made the mistake, information that will prove critical in future encounters.
More generally, in cases of direct teaching as well as in cases of teaching by opportunity provisioning, learners must make assumptions and learn about the behavioral (and in the case of humans, psychological) capacities of models, such as what someone can perceive from a given viewpoint, what someone can be expected to remember over time, and what someone is likely to do in response to threat. For juveniles in a species, all of these behavioral lessons about the models are picked up along with their evaluations of the informational content that is made available to them. Thus, new information is important, but old information is important too. Old information is important because (i) it can conflict with or otherwise bear on potential new information and (ii) by evaluating the teacher against already known information, the learner can learn valuable information about the model.