Overview

In this chapter, we explore the processes for designing education that make it different from everyday, casual or incidental learning in the life-world. Education is learning that has been consciously designed. Education's designs can take curricular form by focusing on programs or courses of study; and they take pedagogical form by focusing on the learning tasks or activities in which learners engage as a part of this curriculum. The chapter discusses three approaches to pedagogy and curriculum: mimesis, synthesis and reflexivity.

Mimesis is imitation or copying, or learning by absorbing facts, theories, bodies of knowledge and literatures that have been presented to learners in a formal educational setting.

Synthesis is a process of gaining understanding in which learners figure out rules or discover facts through observation and experimentation, but mainly in order to get the ‘right’ answer in the artificial context of schooling and its assessments. The learner deconstructs then reconstructs knowledge without necessarily connecting closely to their own interests, motivations and experiences.

Reflexivity in education involves learners moving between different ways of knowing (developing a knowledge repertoire), connecting learning with their own experiences and identities, and applying their learning by doing things in the world which impact on that world.