The nature of academic understanding

Volume 37 Number 1, Spring 2013

The Psychology ofEducation Review

ISSN: 0262-4087

Open Dialogue:

The nature and experience ofacademic understanding

The Psychology of Education Review – Volume 37 Number 1 Spring 2013

EDITORSDebbie Pope & Debbie Mainwaring

PSYCHOLOGY OF EDUCATION SECTION – OFFICERS & COMMITTEE 2011–2012

Chair:Dave Putwain Email: [email protected]

The Psychology of Education Review Editors:Debbie Pope Email: [email protected]

Debbie Mainwaring Email: [email protected]

Secretary:Andrea Creech Email: [email protected]

Treasurer:Jane Hutchinson Email: [email protected]

Membership Secretary:Emma Jackson Email: [email protected]

PsyPag Representative:Jillian Adie Email: [email protected]

Research Board Representative:Lynne Rogers Email: [email protected]

Website co-ordinator:Richard Remedios Email: [email protected]

Ordinary Committee Members:Sue Hallam Email: [email protected]

Chris Kyriacou Email: [email protected]

Edward Sosu Email: [email protected]

WE ARE pleased to introduce thisedition of The Psychology of Educa-tion Review, which includes an open

dialogue initiated by Professors NoelEntwistle and John Nisbet on the topic of‘The nature and experience of academicunderstanding’. Noel and John spent manyyears reflecting about the nature ofacademic understanding, discussing theresearch findings and wondering about theirimplications for education. This paperoffers, for further discussion, some of theevidence and ideas underpinning thisthinking. It is with great sadness that John did not live to see the finished version.He died on 5 October, 2012, and so thispaper is now dedicated by Noel to thememory of his dear friend, an outstandingeducational psychologist and universityteacher.

In this edition, we also report the deathof a good colleague and friend, ProfessorMargaret Sutherland. Margaret will beremembered by many in the Psychology ofEducation Section for her contributions atannual conferences, and her presentation ofthe seventh Vernon-Wall lecture, ‘ThinkingAbout Empathy’. An obituary to Margaret is provided by her close friend and colleagueHazel Francis within this edition of The Psychology of Education Review.

We would like to thank Professor SusanHallam for her tireless work as Chair of theSection over the last year. Susan’s continuedsupport for the Section over many years isalways appreciated by all. We welcome Dr Dave Putwain as our new Section Chairand look forward to exciting and chal-lenging times ahead.

Finally, the forthcoming Psychology ofEducation Section Annual Conference is tobe held on 8–10 November 2013, in theMarriott Hotel, York. The theme of thisyear’s conference is ‘Enhancing Experiences ofLearning and Teaching’ and empirical,theoretical and review material, as well aswork in progress are all encouraged. Guestspeakers this year include Professor RobKlassen (University of York) and ProfessorColin Rogers (Lancaster University).

Further details are available on theconference homepage (http://www.kc-jones.co.uk/rsm/6/event-page/331/1/)and general enquires can be addressed toProfessor Chris Kyriakou ([email protected]).

If you would like to submit a paper to afuture issue then please get in touch with oureditor (Debbie Pope via [email protected]). The Psychology of Education Reviewpublishes a variety of articles including fullresearch papers and short reports onresearch in progress. The editors are alsohappy to receive your ideas about themes forfuture issues.

Debbie Pope & Debbie Mainwaring

EditorialDebbie Pope & Debbie Mainwaring

The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 2013 1© The British Psychological Society – ISSN 0262-4087

2 The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 2013

British Psychological Society

Psychology of Education Section

Annual Conference 2013

8 – 10 November

Marriott Hotel, YORK

ENHANCING EXPERIENCES OF

LEARNING AND TEACHING

Call for Papers

Submissions for symposia, papers and posters are invited for the next

Annual Conference of the BPS Psychology of Education Section.

Closing date for submissions is 30 June 2013

The theme of this conference is enhancing experiences of learning and teaching.

Empirical, theoretical and review material, as well as work in progress are all encouraged. Paper sessions and symposia will be organised around themes

representing a wide variety of educational disciplines and contexts.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Professor Rob Klassen Chair of the Psychology in Education Research Centre, University of York

Professor Colin Rogers Professor in Social Psychology in Education, Lancaster University

Dr Jackie Lown Principal Educational Psychologist, East Riding

Further details are available at www.kc-jones.co.uk/learningandteaching

A limited number of bursaries are available for full-time students.

General enquiries and those regarding bursaries for students can be

addressed to:

Professor Chris Kyriacou, Psychology in Education Research Centre,

University of York. Email: [email protected]

MARGARET SUTHERLAND wasborn in Glasgow in 1920 and diedin St. Andrews in 2012. Her

outstanding career spanned the latter half ofthe 20th century when the position ofwomen in higher education was steadily,albeit very slowly, improving. One of herprincipal interests was the education of girlsand women, where her work combinedanalysis of theory with empirical evidence,bringing psychology to bear in her own clearstyle on an important educational matter.But Margaret’s gifts were not limited to heracademic work. She also had a record ofrunning departments, working on academicand other committees, and serving a rangeof academic and other societies, all of whichcontributed to her national and interna-tional reputation. One such society was theBritish Psychological Society.

She is remembered by many in thePsychology of Education Section of theSociety for her contributions to papers anddiscussion at annual conferences, culmi-nating in her much-admired presentation in1987 of the seventh Vernon-Wall lecture,Thinking About Empathy. She was always ableto remind members of the importance ofthoughtful analysis of a psychologicalphenomenon in education before consid-ering what its significance might be and howsuch analysis might relate to empiricalresearch.

It will be no surprise to those who knewher that she is also remembered as a formermember and chair of the Section committee.She was particularly influential and helpfulduring the late 1970s and early 1980s whenmajor developments in education affected

members and membership. The post-warperiod of expansion in provision of univer-sity undergraduate courses in psychologyhad led to an increase in the numbers ofschool educational psychologists who foundtheir work strengthened through member-ship of the new Society Division rather thanthrough the Section. It also enabled theSociety to restrict its membership topsychology graduates and to others whosequalifications were judged on an individualbasis to be sufficiently psychological. This hitthe Section badly, since membership hadpreviously been more open to educationqualifications. The new rules tended toexclude, amongst others, Scottish MEd graduates who had previously been activeand valued Section members. Furtherproblems came from changes in teachertraining directed to achieving a fully grad-uate profession. Section members who hadtaught psychology on college trainingcourses suffered as colleges were closed.Margaret’s position and experience enabledher to fully understand what was happening,and her support and guidance to the SectionCommittee is remembered with apprecia-tion and affection by those who wereinvolved.

Margaret began her career in secondaryschool teaching, as did many of us who wereborn too early to find undergraduatepsychology courses an available route intopsychology careers. She obtained a first classdegree in modern languages from GlasgowUniversity, then, whilst teaching in Glasgowschools during the second world war, sheobtained an MEd with a strong psychologycomponent. This, together with her later


Obituary:

Remembering Professor Margaret SutherlandHazel Francis

doctorate, gained her membership of theSociety. In 1947 she was appointed to alectureship, and later a readership, in theeducation department at Queen’s UniversityBelfast. During the next two decades,building on her love of travel and hercommand of languages, she developed a veryimpressive mastery of the range of educa-tional theory, practice, and policy acrossEurope and South Africa. Her work incomparative education became well-knownand widely appreciated. Associated with itwas a developing research interest in psycho-logical issues in education, particularly in thedevelopment of imagination and in genderdifferences. She gained her PhD in 1955 onthe development of the imagination ineducation and thereafter her publicationscontinued to address a broad range oftheoretical, comparative, and psychologicaleducational concerns. In 1971 she publishedher book on Everyday Imagining and Educa-tion and in 1981 she followed it with Sex Biasin Education. By that time she had moved in1973 to a chair in education at the Universityof Leeds where she held senior positions inthe education faculty. She continued toteach and publish her work in psychologyand comparative education, gaining furthernational and international recognition. Sheretired in 1985 when, freed from faculty andteaching responsibilities, she returned toScotland to live in St. Andrews. Shecontinued to publish, producing Women WhoTeach In Universities in 1985, and tocontribute to a range of services to educa-tion on the national and international stage.I happened to meet her once in London onher way to a Fawcett Society meeting.Gender issues still commanded her concern.

I knew Margaret in Leeds, and appreci-ated her professionalism and kindness. Shethought clearly and worked hard, withspecial concern for women and overseasstudents. Her lectures were a model of clarityand interest. She undertook a heavy load offaculty and university work. In addition shewas also well known beyond the universityconfines, serving community and academicsocieties, councils and committees in the UKand abroad. Her international reputation incomparative education led to many invita-tions to speak – not always in English! After her retirement we continued to meetand to write to each other from time to time,and I saw more of the sense of humour andfun that helped fire the enthusiasm anddedication that characterised her life. Sheloved to travel and was an avid reader.Throughout her adult years she valued thewarmth and companionship of her sister andbrother and their families, and was especiallyclose to her sister. She is remembered notonly as a figure who achieved much in educa-tion but essentially as a good woman and avalued friend.

Hazel FrancisEmeritus Professor of Educational Psychology,University of London.


Hazel Francis

THE TWO OF US have been reflectingover a number of years about the natureof academic understanding, discussing

the research findings and wondering abouttheir implications for education. This paperoffers, for further discussion, some of theevidence and ideas underpinning ourthinking.

Early explorations of the nature ofunderstandingThe earliest discussions about the nature ofunderstanding came from philosophers,particularly during the Enlightenment in the1700s, when David Hume’s An EnquiryConcerning Human Understanding (1748, inMillican, 2007) had widespread influence. Yethis analysis has to be seen in its historicalcontext. It was making a radical attack on theinfluence of religious teaching on thefreedom to speculate about the nature of theworld and its inhabitants. Hume’s thinkingshowed the crucial importance of logic andevidence in deciding what conclusions couldbe reached within human understanding andpointed out its probable limits, and yet he stillsaw the nature of understanding as elusive.

It is remarkable concerning the operations of themind, that, though intimately present to us, yet,whenever they become the object of reflection, theyseem involved in obscurity; nor can the eyereadily find those lines and boundaries, whichdiscriminate and distinguish them. …Itbecomes, therefore, no inconsiderable part ofscience… to know the different operations of themind, to separate them from each other, to classthem under their proper heads, and to correct allthat seeming disorder, in which they lie involved. (Millican, 2007, pp.8–9 of the Enquiry).

Research in mainstream psychologyNowadays, we might expect psychology tohave more pertinent answers, but ‘under-standing’ has not been part of the researchagenda in mainstream psychology. The earlybehaviourists, of course, would not considersuch an idea, and yet their notions of arousaland reinforcement do remain relevant to it.Even cognitive psychologists have been waryof exploring the nature of understanding,seeing it as too broad and vague a concept tobe operationalised in ways that could beinvestigated experimentally. There were,however, important studies on memory thatled to the notion of mental representations,which could be readily accessed from long-term memory (Johnson-Laird, 1983) andhave been taken to be associated with the wayin which understanding may be formed andstored. There was also the idea of mentalmodels in problem-solving, (Gentner &Stevens, 1983), which was associated withhow an understanding is used. None of thisresearch, however, addressed the nature ofunderstanding itself, and yet educationalistsconsider understanding to be a crucial goalof education, particularly at university level(Kirby & Lawson, 2012). So, what have educa-tional psychologists had to say about it?

Research by educational psychologistsOne of the difficulties in discussing thegeneral meaning of ‘understanding’ is that itproves to be multifaceted and used todescribe instances of rather different things.For example, it can refer to an end-point oroutcome of learning, but if we are describing‘reaching an understanding’, we arefocusing on the processes involved. When we


Open Dialogue:

The nature and experience of academicunderstandingNoel Entwistle & John Nisbet

come to academic understanding itself, itsmeaning will differ depending on who isexperiencing it. University teachers may bereferring to understanding as a target to beachieved, while students are more likely tobe describing experiences of reaching theirown personal understanding (Entwistle &Smith, 2002).

The idea of academic understanding as atarget or goal leads to discussions about whatform it takes. For example, White andGunstone (1992, p.3) suggested six distin-guishable targets; the understanding ofsingle elements of knowledge; concepts;extensive communications; whole disci-plines; situations; and people. The idea of atarget also indicates that understanding isnecessarily directed towards an object – weunderstand something – which also remindsus that in education the object, and theprocesses used to arrive at the under-standing, necessarily differ markedly acrosssubject areas (Donald, 2002). The processesinvolved in coming to understand, forexample, a mathematical equation, a pieceof literature or music, or people’s behaviour,are markedly different, even if the feeling ofsatisfaction achieved may be similar. Inacademic contexts that satisfaction is,however, often hard won: the student’slearning has to be active and highly focused.Nickerson (1985), in an article on ‘under-standing understanding’ commented:

Understanding is an active process. It requiresthe connecting of facts, the relating of newlyacquired information to what is alreadyknown, the weaving of bits of knowledge intoan integral and cohesive whole. In short, itrequires not only having knowledge but alsodoing something with it… [Nevertheless], allunderstanding is tenuous and, in a sense,transitory. We are obliged to understand theworld in terms of the concepts and theories ofour time… At root, understanding is a trueparadox: the more one learns, …the moreone… [becomes] aware of the depth of one’signorance. (pp.217, 234, 236)

Pask (1976) was one of the few educationalpsychologists of his era who investigated the

nature of understanding. He developed aconversation theory of learning that sawacademic learning as the interaction betweentwo knowledge structures, with the student’sstructure gradually approaching that of theteacher. In his experiments, students wereasked to display their changing views of theinter-relationships among aspects of a topicthrough elaborate concept maps. Theirunderstandings were then demonstrated by‘teaching back’, explaining them to the satis-faction of the teacher or researcher. His workshowed the crucial importance of feedback –explanations from the expert teacher orcomputer system – in shaping the develop-ment of a student’s academic understanding.He also identified individual differences inthe processes involved in developing anunderstanding, contrasting holists, whodepended on seeing an overview the topicfrom the start, with serialists who used a step-by-step approach in their learning. Studentscould reach an understanding whicheverstyle they preferred, but following markedlydifferent routes.

More recently, Perkins (1998) criticisedthe teaching implications of viewing under-standing mainly in terms of knowledge struc-tures or mental representations, arguing thata performance perspective was preferable, as itemphasised the processes underlying under-standing that teachers could then encouragedirectly through the tasks they set.

Understanding is being able to carry out avariety of actions or ‘performances’ that showone’s grasp of a topic and at the same timeadvance it… [Our performance perspective is]a brand of constructivism… because of itsemphasis on building learners’ repertoires ofunderstanding performances, more thancultivating the construction ofrepresentations… Understanding is a matter ofbeing able to do a variety of thought-demandingthings with a topic – like explaining, findingevidence and examples, generalising,analogising, and representing the topic in a newway… It is being able to take knowledge and useit in new ways. … (Perkins, & Blythe, 1994,p.5; Perkins, 1998, pp.40, 57)


Noel Entwistle & John Nisbet

A well-honed understanding can be put touse and so become proactive (Perkins, 2008),supporting future cognitive activity, such asexplaining to others, interpreting orapplying in new contexts, seeing within abroader perspective, empathising withothers’ behaviour, and being aware of one’sown thinking in relation to that of others(Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p.84). Devel-oping such a proactive understanding hasbeen seen in terms of a thinking dispositionthat involves three main components –ability, willingness, and awareness of context(Perkins & Tishman, 2001). It depends onhaving acquired the intellectual skillsneeded and the strategies for using themeffectively; a willingness and intention to puteffort into applying those skills; and a contin-uous monitoring of that effort in relation tothe perceived demands of the task. Suchawareness of context is also valuable, lateron, in seeing how to use understanding innew situations.

More recently, Bereiter (2002) hasargued that a definition of understandinghas to involve more than the completion oftasks that demand high-level learningprocesses, as such a description says nothingabout its underlying nature. He rejects theidea of mind as a bundle of bits of knowl-edge that can be brought together to forman understanding, seeing it as just ‘folkpsychology’. Marton and Booth (1997) sawunderstanding as a relationship between thelearner and the world, not as separate enti-ties but as ‘constituted as an internal relationbetween them’ (p.13). This idea is also seenin Bereiter’s thinking, as he draws onconnectionist ideas from neuropsychologyto describe understanding as an emergentproperty of our natural, self-organisingability to make sense of the world around us.

There is something personal and contingentabout understanding… involving the wholerelationship between knower and the object ofunderstanding. … The connectionist view ofmind [sees it] as a self-organising system –a system that does not actually contain mental objects as data but that produces

knowledgeable behavior as an emergent. …Itmakes better sense of the mind’s relation tobrain on one hand and to the physical worldon the other, and of the inseparability ofthought and feeling. …Self-organisation at theneural level… produces thought as anemergent. (Bereiter, 2002: Chapter 6, finalpage)

There is growing evidence of the mindacting as a self-organising system withprocesses that can be mimicked by computerprograms, weighting connections betweennodes within a neural net to create an emer-gent output. But, as in almost all attempts todescribe understanding, we are left with ametaphor that may or may not accuratelyrepresent how we experience under-standing.

The crucial difficulty in capturing thenature of academic understanding is that themental acts leading to that understandingare fleeting and barely conscious. Outsiderscan imagine them only through people’sexplanations of how their understandingcame about, what that experience involvedand felt like, and how it was subsequentlyused. Student learning research has systema-tised the collection of such explanationsfrom a wide variety of students on their studypractices to throw more light on theprocesses involved in reaching and usingacademic understanding. Often there are afew students who throw a particularly valu-able light on the nature of understanding,and extracts from such descriptions will beused in the following section to illuminatethe nature of academic understanding.These extracts have been chosen to illustratethe kind of comments that students havemade in a wide range of different interviewstudies.

Student’ experiences of understandingStudents generally describe having their ownidea of what they are aiming to achieve,however tenuous that goal may initially seemto them. For an understanding to bereached, students have to have the intentionto understand. That may seem obvious, and

The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 2013 7

The nature and experience of academic understanding

yet its importance was rarely recognised ineducational research until Marton and hiscolleagues introduced the notion of deepand surface approaches to learning (see Marton& Booth, 1997). The approach depends onan intention, either to seek the deep, under-lying meaning, or to rely on surface aspectsand avoid personal involvement in thelearning. These different intentionsinevitably lead to contrasting learningprocesses. A deep approach requires substan-tial effort in, for example, relating ideas andusing evidence, but each discipline and subjectarea also requires specific skills and strate-gies to reach academic understanding(Entwistle, 2009). A surface approach may alsoinvolve substantial effort, but is directedtowards the routine memorising of facts andtheories, reproducing the teachers’ knowledgeand its structure, and mimicking theirunderstanding.

Discussions about the deep approach ledto research in Edinburgh that focused onstudents’ experiences of understandingwhen revising for final exams. The studentstypically described an emotionally tingedfeeling of arriving at a satisfying picture ofideas and evidence fitting together into acoherent whole (Entwistle & Entwistle,1997). There was a clear sense of cognitiveand emotional aspects being inter-mingled,and understanding being recognised as anevent that might occur suddenly, evensurprisingly, but at other times gradually andunconsciously.

Understanding is the interconnection of lots ofdisparate things, …the feeling that youunderstand how the whole thing is connectedup – you can make sense of it internally… If Idon’t understand, it’s just everything floatingabout and you can’t quite get everything intoplace – like jigsaw pieces, you know, suddenlythey connect and you can see the wholepicture… But there is always the feeling youcan add more and more and more... [Reallyunderstanding], well, for me, it’s when I…could explain it so that I felt satisfied with theexplanation… [When you understand likethat]... you can’t not understand it

[afterwards]. You can’t ‘de-understand’ it!(Various disciplines in Entwistle &Entwistle, 1997, p.148)

Analysis of the complete set of transcriptsfrom this study identified recurring descrip-tions of understanding as also involving asense of coherence, connectedness and ‘provi-sional wholeness’, a recognition of meaning andsignificance, a sense of irreversibility but with arecognition that understanding could be acontinuing process. There were also feelingsinvolved, related to closure and confidenceabout explaining. Findings of connectednessand personal significance were also reportedby Dahlin (1999) among first-year under-graduates, and he also found a developingmetacognitive awareness that ‘seems toprogress from an outward-looking, ‘external’awareness towards a more inclusive aware-ness, which embraces ‘outer experience’,‘mental acts’, and the learner as a whole’(p.203).

The Edinburgh research also identifiedindividual differences in the forms of under-standing that students were seeking,reflecting the breadth of information andevidence being integrated, the depth to whichthe interconnections between the ideas werebeing pursued, and the extent to which aclear conceptual structure was found, orcreated, within which to make sense of thesources used (Entwistle, 1998). However, theability to develop appropriately academicunderstandings depends on acquiring thenecessary concepts and theories used tocreate conceptual structures. In the first yearof a degree, there are usually some basic tech-nical concepts that have to be mastered and,later, these concepts are integrated intoincreasingly complex combinations, some ofwhich act as threshold concepts that provide aportal into a more advanced level of under-standing (Meyer & Land, 2006), but whichoften prove difficult for students. Eventually,students begin to adopt the ways of thinkingand practising that are the hallmark ofprofessional expertise (Davies & Mangan,2007), and these provide a formidable chal-lenge to students due to their abstract nature.



Academic understanding can then beviewed as a progression through a series oflevels over time (Dahlin, 1999), with earlierunderstandings being constantly being fine-tuned, or even reformulated, to accommo-date the new ideas met. In study of medicalstudents, Fyrenius, Wirell and Silén, (2007)found that those who were seeking todevelop a deep personal understanding atan advanced level developed it through

a continuous restructuring and reframing offacts and knowledge… It seems that [these]students continuously shift between detailsand wholes, and are simultaneously aware ofthe overall picture and details, even thoughtheir focus is on one of the two… Theycontinuously move between differentperspectives and learning modalities in orderto reshape and refine [their] under-standing… [and] Interestingly, it is not onlythe number of different [mental] activitiesthat is of importance, but the way thestudents construct meaning out of theactivities. (pp.160–???)

A similar sense of the interplay of evidenceand perspectives in forming an under-standing was found in a study by Hay (2010),who used a dialogic form of conceptmapping with students explaining themeaning of their maps to the researcher. He argued:

From a dialogic position, learners do not cometo understand things in isolation, butmeanings are shaped through the inter-animation of the different voices (or texts) ofothers, as students learn to see things fromother perspectives. Here, it is an increasinginclusion of difference that leads towards moreencompassing understandings. (p.264)

This perspective can be illustrated throughthe experience of one neurology student.She had used repeated concept mapssummarising each of the articles she read tosee patterns of interconnections, andcoming to appreciate how each researcher’sinterpretation was coloured by their indi-vidual perspective. She therefore consciouslyavoided firming up her understanding untilseeing a complete picture.

The point is that reading any paper (or even alecture), you have to recognise the views of theauthor. …Each time you read a differentarticle, you get a completely different picture ofthe topic. …So, what you have to do is to try toimagine this new paper from anotherperspective; one you have already read. …Ittakes time for a pattern to emerge – and youhave to find it gradually – for yourself,…getting to see why this question is important,while another one is not, or that this theory ismore likely than another. Then you get afeeling for the author of each paper and foryour lecturers too: a sense of where they arecoming from and why such and such isimportant for them, …getting to know thepeople that explain ideas or data. …Then, inthe end, I come to realise how everything isreally related and I’m able to connecteverything together – but this cannot happenuntil much later and when it comes, it is notas if I were looking for it – it just happens.(Hay, 2010, pp.275–276)

Like this student, many other students regu-larly mentioned understanding as involvingthe creation of a personally satisfying patternor structure that integrates importantaspects of a topic.

I can see [the topic] virtually as a picture, andI can review it, and bring in more facts abouteach part. Looking at a particular part of thediagram sort of triggers off other thoughts. I find schematics, in flow diagrams and thelike, very useful because a schematic acts a bitlike a syllabus; it tells you what you shouldknow, without actually telling you what it is. I think the facts are stored separately, and theschematic is like an index, I suppose.(Chemist) Sometimes I can visualise parts of it. I canthink about, perhaps, where certain thingswere… It must be that, in my mind, I’m justgoing back to the same structure that I had tobegin with… (When I think back now) thegeneral points are there, and the actual detailsall come flooding back, as it were. The generalarguments that I included tend to beremembered. I would probably remember certainpoints, and then they may lead off to other



noelentwistle

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points, and then they might start bringingthings out. (Social historian) (Entwistle &Entwistle, 1997, p.152)

Students often talked about this form of visu-alisation and how it helped them in testingout their understandings and using themlater in exams. This led to the idea of knowl-edge objects (Entwistle & Marton, 1994) as‘quasi-visual’ entities (‘almost like seeing’)created as students sought to bring togethertheir ideas into a coherent whole that theywould subsequently be able to recall easily,and interrogate, in the exams. They are‘runnable’ mental representations that canbe used as a mnemonic for an exam, but donot represent understanding itself. Under-standing still lies hidden, but is on the fringeof awareness, as a zoology student explained.

I just clear my mind and something comes. It’s visual in some ways but it’s also just there.I know it’s there and I can either use it visuallyor else it will just appear on the pageautomatically, and then I can zoom in onexamples. When I’m in an exam situation thisvisual memory is not so obvious because it’smuch faster, it’s only in this [interview]situation where I can actually perceive it as avisual memory. In the exam, it may be that thevisual memory is by-passed. I haven’t time tolook at it and it just comes out. I feel I’msearching a visual memory, or else a visualdisplay of memory, where you have a ‘central’memory which can either be expressed visually,mechanically or aurally, but in extreme stresssituations comes straight out. (Editedextract from the original transcript)

From the whole set of interviews, it seemsthat knowledge objects have two aspects: oneis the structure that has helped the studentsto create a coherent picture of a topic with‘nodes’ that pull in detailed information asrequired, while the other is the memory ofthe logical links created to provide aconvincing explanation of the topic in theprocess of revision. Students described howtheir visual mnemonic provided them with alogical ordering of the topic, one that couldbe readily adapted to the needs of thequestion set, due to the thorough under-

standing that underpinned it. So, the knowl-edge object was also used to guide themthrough the writing of an essay or the solvingof a problem.

It’s almost as though it says, ‘Okay, we’redoing Optimal Foraging, we’re doing it in thisorder, get into line now!’. Well, you start withevolution and you know where you’re goingfrom evolution, so you get there, and thensuddenly you know where you’re going next,and then you might have a choice to go in thatdirection or that direction, and you follow itthrough various options it’s offering.Hopefully, at that point you’ll be able to makethe right choice, and so it could be that thisgoes to this, goes to this. When you’veexplained it to the level you’ve got to, it says‘Okay, you can go on to talk about furthercriticisms in the time you’ve got left’.(Zoologist) (Entwistle & Entwistle, 1997,pp.152–153)

From other extracts, it appears that a knowl-edge object is providing a generic logicalpathway for students to follow, withoutnecessarily constraining it (Entwistle, 2010).It appears that the process of writing, guidedby the knowledge object but animated by theunderlying understanding, may beextending that understanding recursively,with the new understanding emerging fromthe old one. Academic understandings andexam answers also reflect the interplaybetween a student’s and a tutor’s thinking, asenvisaged in Pask’s (1976) conversationtheory.

I try to take a critical stance on the material: thegerm of it can be found in tutor’s thinking,which is ‘feeding’ mine. I have a direction – herperspective – and this gets me into morethinking. I initially try to understand the issue,by putting myself in the tutor’s shoes, how sheappeared to personally think on an issue, andthe issues that are raised again and again,indicating her convictions. So, you start withthe tutor’s perspective; you bring in your ownprevious knowledge and experiences that getsyou to a different end from where you started.(Psychologist) (Karagiannopoulou &Entwistle, under review)



noelentwistle

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Although the form and level of under-standing reached may vary markedly bothover time and across courses and topics,some students show a relatively stable disposi-tion to understand for themselves (Entwistle &McCune, 2009), which is part of thestudent’s identity as a learner, and involvesan emotional commitment to learningdeeply.

I had to go through all the stages of workingthrough the topic and showing that I hadunderstood it: I couldn’t gloss over the surface.I have to explain it in that way – you can’t cutit up and avoid bits: half an understandingdoesn’t make sense! It’s essential todemonstrate your understanding of the whole,and its implications and limitations and youalso need to demonstrate a critical approach toany evidence. Among many of my friends, it’smore underlying than that; it’s not even thewill to succeed, it’s almost an obsession.(Entwistle & McCune, 2009, pp.43–44)

What is academic understanding?We started by looking at some theoreticalideas on the nature of academic under-standing, suggesting three main perspec-tives. Understanding can be seen as mentalrepresentations within cognitive structure, asthe learning processes involved in reachingit, or as the emergent property of mentaloperations within a neural net. Theoristsinevitably point out the strength of their ownconceptualisation, and yet each of themdescribes a recognisable facet of under-standing. It might, therefore, be better tolook for a broader perspective that indicateshow they fit together.

Although there are considerable differ-ences in the specific processes involved indeveloping and achieving an academicunderstanding, there is a discernible patternamong the students’ experiences thatinvolves a number of successive actions: theintention to understand for oneself; identi-fying and collecting relevant informationand ideas; discovering their meanings andimplications; noting the most salientelements and considering the relationships

between them; seeing the overall picture andhow the parts relate to the whole; anddeciding one’s own position in relation tothe evidence collected. And within thatprocess, and in rather different ways, anevent called ‘understanding’ takes place.

It may come without conscious effortafter considering many aspects, but in othersituations it may take much time and effort,involving putting ideas on paper andperhaps making diagrams or creatingconcept maps. But ‘academic under-standing’ itself lies in the single event, whenthe connections are established to one’s ownsatisfaction and the overall meaning is recog-nised. And that brings with it a complex ofpositive feelings, sometimes strong, evensomatic ‘gut feelings’, but often just a warmfeeling of satisfaction and self-confidence.Those feelings are important as they providethe impetus for attempts to repeat them, andso encourage the development of the skillsand the learning processes that lead towardsfurther experiences of deep, academicunderstanding. That is the strongest indica-tion that helping students to acquire a dispo-sition to understand for themselves isimportant at university level.

The picture of academic understandingcan be made clearer by using composites ofthe most revealing comments within theextracts used earlier. These provide indi-vidual insights into the fleeting and verypersonal mental activities that lead up to anunderstanding and how that understanding,and representations of it, are used in thecrucial next step – of making that under-standing known to other people.

I came to realise how everything is really relatedand I’m able to connect everything together –but it takes time for a pattern to emerge, youhave to find it gradually, for yourself, andwhen it comes, it is not as if I were looking forit – it just happens. But if I don’t understand,it’s just everything floating about and youcan’t quite get everything into place – likejigsaw pieces, you know, suddenly they connectand you can see the whole picture.



I feel I’m searching a visual memory, or else avisual display of memory, where you have a‘central’ memory which can either be expressedvisually, mechanically or aurally but, inextreme stress situations, comes straight out. I can see it virtually as a picture, and I canreview it, and bring in more facts about eachpart. Sometimes I can visualise parts of it. I canthink about where certain things were, andthen the actual details all come flooding back –I just clear my mind and something comes.Then, it’s almost as though it says, ‘We’redoing it in this order, get into line now!’, andso this goes to this, goes to this, until you’veexplained it to the level you’ve got to. I had to go through all the stages of workingthrough the topic and showing that I hadunderstood it: I couldn’t gloss over the surface.I have to explain it in that way – you can’t cutit up and avoid bits: half an understandingdoesn’t make sense!

Understanding may well be an emergentproperty of our natural, self-organisingability to make sense of the world around us,but we also need to recognise it in terms ofpersonal experiences of the cognitiveprocesses, visualisation and individualpattern making that lead to the feelings thatusually signify its achievement. In some ofthe comments there is also a suggestion thatstudents feel that the processes of remem-bering an understanding and learning thedetails are somehow separate. And it may bethat what we remember best is the process bywhich we arrived at an understanding ratherthan a representation of the understandingitself, and that each time we provide anexplanation of it, we are reconstructing italong remembered paths but with a specificpurpose and audience in mind.

Although these considerations of thenature of academic understanding do notlead directly to implications for universityeducation, they should give pause forthought. How can we help students tobecome more aware of how understanding isestablished in specific disciplines and of howthey themselves can organise their own

thinking and studying to grasp the essence ofthe subject more clearly? There are manyspecific insights within the students’ experi-ences, and within the other research cited,that would allow university teachers in thedifferent subject areas to decide how best toanswer these questions.

ConclusionAs we, the authors, brought together thedifferent ideas and evidence about academicunderstanding, we were increasinglyconscious of its complexity, and yet alsoaware that we had deliberately restricted thecompass of our exploration. Understandingbecomes bound up with ideas aboutlanguage, communication, and culturaldifferences (Francis, 2010), but those wentbeyond the bounds of this current review.Moreover, we have only looked at the experi-ences of students, while an exploration ofthe understandings of academics would alsohave been valuable (Prosser et al., 2005).

In the end, what have we contributed tothe conceptualisation of the nature ofacademic understanding? Hume set a taskfor future scientists:

to know the different operations of the mind, toseparate them from each other, to class themunder their proper heads, and to correct allthat seeming disorder, in which they lieinvolved.

That was what we attempted to do for thenature of academic understanding indrawing on the experiences of students, andperhaps we offered some clarification. Butwe are left with the uncomfortable feelingthat Hume may have been right after all, andthese ‘operations of the mind’ and theirimplications remain ‘involved in obscurity’.But perhaps help is at hand, in the commen-taries that follow. We recognise all too wellthat the ideas we have highlighted within thestudents’ experiences of understanding areopen to other interpretations, and ourunderstanding of ‘the nature of academicunderstanding’ has been, and will continueto be, recursive as we respond to newevidence and other perspectives.



Footnote from the lead authorJohn Nisbet and I had many discussionsabout the nature of understanding over theyears, right up until the penultimate draft ofthis paper had been produced, but he didnot live to see the finished version. He diedon 5 October 2012, and so this paper is nowdedicated to the memory of an outstandingeducational psychologist and universityteacher, and a great friend.

CorrespondenceProfessor Noel EntwistleProfessor Emeritus,Education, Community and Society (ECS),The University of Edinburgh.Email: [email protected]



Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and mind in the knowl-edge age. London & New York: Routledge.

Dahlin, B. (1999). Ways of coming to understand:Metacognitive awareness among first-year univer-sity students. Scandinavian Journal of EducationalResearch, 43, 191–209.

Davies,P. & Mangan, J. (2007). Threshold conceptsand the integration of understanding ineconomics. Studies in Higher Education, 32,711–726.

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Entwistle, N.J. (2009). Teaching for understanding atuniversity: Deep approaches and distinctive ways ofthinking. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Entwistle, N.J., & Entwistle, A.C. (1997). Revision andthe experience of understanding. In F. Marton,D.J. Hounsell & N.J. Entwistle (Eds.), The experi-ence of learning (2nd ed., pp.145–155). Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. Electronicedition at:http://www.tla.ed.ac.uk/resources/EoL.html.

Entwistle, N.J. & Marton, F. (1994). Knowledgeobjects: Understandings constituted throughintensive academic study. British Journal of Educa-tional Psychology, 64, 161–178.

Entwistle, N.J. & McCune, V. (2009). The dispositionto understand for oneself at university andbeyond: Learning processes, the will to learn,and sensitivity to context. In L-F Zhang & R.J.Sternberg (Eds.), Perspectives on the nature of intel-lectual styles (pp.29–62). New York: Springer.

Entwistle, N.J. & Smith, C.A. (2002). Personal under-standing and target understanding: Mappinginfluences on the outcomes of learning. BritishJournal of Educational Psychology, 71, 321–342.

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Karagiannopoulou, E. & Entwistle, N.J. (underreview). Influences on academic understanding:Intentions, approaches to learning, perceptionsof assessment, and a ‘meeting of minds’.

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Meyer, J.H.F. & Land, R. (Eds.) (2006). Overcomingbarriers to student understanding: Threshold conceptsand troublesome knowledge. London: Routledge.

References

Millican, P. (2007). David Hume: An enquiry concerninghuman understanding. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Nickerson, R. (1985). Understanding understanding.American Journal of Education, 93, 201–239.

Pask, G. (1976). Conversational techniques in thestudy and practice of education. British Journal ofEducational Psychology, 46, 12–25.

Perkins, D.N. (1998). What is understanding? In M.S. Wiske (Ed.), Teaching for understanding.Linking research with practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Perkins, D.N. (2008). Beyond understanding. In R. Land, J.H.F. Meyer & J. Smith (Eds.),Threshold concepts within the disciplines (pp.3–19).Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Perkins, D.N. & Blythe, T. (1994). Putting under-standing up front. Educational Leadership,February, 4–7.

Perkins, D.N. & Tishman, S. (2001). Dispositionalaspects of intelligence. In J.M. Collis & S. Messick(Eds.), Intelligence and personality (pp.233−258).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Prosser, M., Martin, E., Trigwell, K., Ramsden, P. &Luekenhausen, G. (2005). Academics’ experi-ences of understanding of their subject matterand the relationship of this to their experiencesof teaching and learning. Instructional Science, 33,137–157.

White, R. & Gunstone, R. (1992). Probing under-standing. London: Falmer Press.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding bydesign (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervison and Curriculum Development.

Wiske, M.S. (Ed.) (1998). Teaching for understanding.Linking research with practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.



Knowledge objects and processes

IAM GRATEFUL for the opportunity toread and respond to the paper from Noel Entwistle and John Nisbet. I am

responding from the perspective of someonewho is principally interested in academicunderstanding in the field of economics. Somy main question is ‘How do these ideashelp to understand learning and teaching inthis subject domain?’ My subsidiary questionis prompted by the knowledge that only avery small proportion of the scholarship ofteaching and learning in economics isinformed by the educational psychologyliterature. Here are two worlds which rarelycollide. So my subsidiary question is ‘Can weaccount for part of this lack of engagementthrough the benefits to the educationalpsychology in having a common languagewith which to discuss (academic) under-standing in any domain?’

Noel Entwistle and John Nisbet frametheir task as a response to Hume’s injunction‘to know the different operations of the mind,to separate them from each other, to classthem under their proper heads, and tocorrect all that seeming disorder, in whichthey lie involved’. Their response provides alucid account of academic understandingdefined in terms of conceptual structures andlearning processes and they suggest a way inwhich structures and processes work together.The idea of a ‘knowledge object’ is central tothis account. This is defined as a conceptualstructure which the learner has developed,which they can visualise, which pulls in rele-vant information, and which is also dynamic.It becomes animated rather than being acti-vated. Learning processes are made contin-gent on conceptual structure through thephrase ‘pulls in relevant information’.

From the perspective of a subject domainthis looks attractive. The language used todiscuss ‘teaching and learning in highereducation’ or ‘academic understanding’generally employs constructs which do notdistinguish between subject domains. Thislanguage may have limited fruitfulness ifprocesses and conceptual structures aremutually contingent and vary betweensubject domains. For example, the ‘disposi-tional view of intelligence’ put forward byPerkins and Tishman (2001, p.254)comprises two elements (sensitivity whichinvolves detection of occasion, and inclina-tion which involves motivation or leaning)which they describe independently of a thirdelement, ability, which may vary by domain.Perkins and Tishman begin their chapterwith an account of an inclination to avoidconfirmation bias which lawyers activated inone domain (studying law) but not inanother (everyday reasoning).

But what if learning processes (such assensitivity and inclination) are not inde-pendent of domain? Hume’s task of identi-fying different operations of mind may beapproached in different ways. For the econo-mist John Maynard Keynes (1921, p.v), thestarting point was to distinguish aneconomic way of thinking (which hedescribed as ‘an apparatus of the mind, atechnique of thinking’) from other ways ofthinking. From this perspective, sensitivity tocontext and disposition to pursue particularforms of reasoning are constituted with partic-ular conceptual structures. This propositioncan be illustrated from the domain ofeconomics as a particular form of academicunderstanding.

One long-standing notion in this domainis that ‘an economic way of thinking’ must


Open Dialogue peer review:

A response to Entwistle & NisbetPeter Davies

be characterised by the use of the concept of‘opportunity cost’. The opportunity cost ofoption X is the value of the next mostpreferred option which will be foregone ifoption X is chosen. This concept has beenfrequently cited by economists (e.g. Salemi2005; Shanahan et al., 2006) as central toacademic understanding in economics. It isusually presented in the early pages of intro-ductory textbooks in the form of a simplediagram known as a ‘production possibilityfrontier’ and first-year undergraduates areoffered this diagram as one of the lecturer’sknowledge objects. But it is not possible foran expert to fully represent their knowledgeobject of opportunity cost to first-yearstudents. Opportunity cost was firstexpressed by von Wieser in 1891. The idea isfrequently used with first-year undergradu-ates in the context of international trade.But it took 30 years for this connection to bemade by the economics profession whenopportunity cost was linked in the 1920s tothe ideas of David Ricardo from the early19th century. Did the whole economicsprofession suffer from a lack of inclination orsensitivity to context during these 30 years?Or was the animation of opportunity cost in the context of international tradedependent on a collective theoreticalconceptual re-structuring?

If we return to the problem as experi-enced by undergraduate students, anemerging understanding of economics istypically located in narrowly definedcontexts which are close to personal experi-ence: individual consumer choices and thebehaviour of individual firms. It then opensout into market behaviour (in whichconsumers and firms interact) and then intointeractions between markets in aneconomic system (Davies, 2011). An expertis able to choose between knowledge objects(of individuals, a market or interactionsbetween markets) but a novice whose knowl-edge object is restricted to an individualcontext has no choice. They have to try tounderstand the situation in terms of indi-

vidual behaviour and this limits their powersof detection within any particular occasionregardless of any inclination they havetowards understanding. Opportunity costwas developed as a way of understandingeconomic systems and it is greatly shorn ofits power to prompt questions or to guideinformation search when it is restricted to anindividual context. A learner’s capacity toengage in the kind of intellectual processeshighlighted by Perkins and Tishman (2001)appears contingent on the conceptual struc-tures they are able to bring into being asknowledge objects.

There are also reasons to suspect thatinclination to understand is contingent onconceptual structure. First, insofar asconceptual structure affects students’academic success it will also affect students’sense of self-efficacy. Second, as studentscome to believe that their knowledge objectsare indicative of ‘insider status’ within asubject domain or professional communitythey are more likely to believe that studyeffort will be rewarding and their confidencein their capacity to develop acceptableknowledge objects is likely to increase. Theidea of threshold concepts in higher educa-tion (Davies & Mangan, 2007; Davies, 2012)is an attempt to express a congruencebetween conceptual and social integrationwithin academic domains.

So, to this reader, the ideas in Entwistleand Nisbet’s paper look very productive inprompting analysis of academic under-standing in economics. They encouragedialogue between the world of educationalpsychology and the world of economics. Thesuccess of this dialogue depends on thecapacity of economics educators to articulatea response which is open to inspection fromnon-economists. This may prove more of achallenge.

CorrespondenceProfessor Peter DaviesEmail: [email protected]


Peter Davies

Davies, P. (2011). Students’ conceptions of price,value and opportunity cost: Some implicationsfor future research. Citizenship, Social andEconomic Education, 10, 101–110.

Davies, P. (2012). Threshold concepts in economics.In G. Hoyt & K.M. McGoldrick (Eds.), The inter-national handbook on teaching and learningeconomics (pp.250–256). Aldershot: Edward ElgarPress.

Davies, P. & Mangan, J. (2007). Threshold conceptsand the integration of understanding ineconomics. Studies in Higher Education, 32,711–726.

Keynes, J.M. (1921). Introduction to CambridgeEconomic Handbooks. In D.H. Robertson (Ed.),Money. London & Cambridge: CambridgeEconomic Handbooks.

Perkins, D.N. & Tishman, S. (2001). Dispositionalaspects of intelligence. In J.M. Collis & S. Messick(Eds.), Intelligence and personality (pp.233–258).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Salemi, M. (2005). Teaching economic literacy: Why, what, how? International Review of EconomicsEducation, 4, 46–57.

Shanahan, M., Foster, G. & Meyer, J.H.F. (2006).Operationalising a threshold concept ineconomics: A pilot study using multiple choicequestions on opportunity cost, InternationalReview of Economics Education, 5, 29–57.

Von Wieser, F. (1891). The Austrian School and theTheory of Value. Economic Journal, 1, 108–121.


A response to Entwistle & Nisbet

References

NOEL Entwistle and John Nisbet’spaper exposes something of theconceptual struggles behind any

attempt to investigate the experience ofunderstanding. I have sympathy with theirintroduction through reference to Hume’shope that the methods of the then newsciences, of classification and principledarrangement of defined units of naturalmental phenomena, would help us to under-stand understanding. As they point out, thishas traditionally been the subject of consid-erable philosophical discussion but of verylittle psychological investigation. The paperattempts to pursue the problem by pinning itdown to more empirical investigation – howunderstanding is understood by students inhigher education – presumably with the aimsof clarifying the nature and use of theconcept in psychology and in education. Ofcourse, if there were no variation in thestudents’ reports thier problem would besolved, at least to the extent that they had awell-supported description of understandingin the academic context. But there is varia-tion and their problem remains open tofurther investigation.

However, the introduction to the paperdoes alert us to the caution needed in ouruse of terminology since it is quite possibleto relate mental terms to different views ofhuman intellect. For example, we could bethinking analytically in terms of systems ofmental objects and their relations in theindividual thinker, or we could be thinkingdescriptively of a biologically active system ofcommunication between thinkers in a socialworld. For different scientific reasonspsychologists can be found working undereither umbrella, but it seems to me that iftheir goal is to support educational provision

they are likely to work more usefully underthe second. I am not sure whether or not thisis Noel and John’s position, but they recog-nise it in his reference to Perkins (1998),and the paper certainly prompts furthersuggestions under this second cover.

My first suggestion arises from observa-tion that Noel and John say little of what thestudents thought they were doing inproviding the quoted reports. I think itwould be wise to keep intact, as an object ofinvestigation, the connection betweenstudents’ reported accounts of under-standing and the way they are invited to givethem. The context and wording of questionor invitation would surely steer the natureand direction of response, and variation inthe former may be related to variation in thelatter within what are effectively conversa-tional units. This might throw light on theway students’ descriptions seem to depictdifferent experiences of understanding,such as, for example, the completion of anovel mental construction or a new grasp ofa situation as compared with the process ofworking or coming towards such an end.There may be further mileage in invitingthem to report specific experiences in theiracademic context, whether this be a disci-pline, a course of study or, perhaps mostusefully, a particular topic within one ofthese; always keeping in their reports theconnection between understanding and thecontext of how and when it came about. Asthe paper suggests, published work onvarious aspects of learning in higher educa-tion suggests there would be considerablevalue in this kind of exploration to help usunderstand understanding.

My second suggestion is to wonderwhether there might be mileage in exploring

18 The Psychology of Education Review, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 2013© The British Psychological Society – ISSN 0262-4087


A response to Entwistle & NisbetHazel Francis

how students describe experiences of under-standing in terms of their personal develop-ment and evaluation of what theyunderstand, as, for example, in answers toquestions directed at discovering what, where,how or why something happened or is thecase. These elements form essential featuresof our general notions of what we mean byexplaining and understanding. The wordsform part of the vocabulary of very youngchildren and, as parents and teachers know,are tools of demand for help with under-standing features of life in the world as theysee it. They set understanding in a conversa-tional and social context and continue to bepresent as structural prompts throughoutunderstanding in schooling and later life.They are very evident in classroom explana-tions and in test and examination questions;though I think the extent to which awarenessof their role is felt during teaching andlearning is a moot point. I know of no workon analysis of understanding in these termsexcept for that of Pask (1975a, 1975b, 1976)and others who worked with him inanalysing the nature of learning. I havediscussed his work elsewhere in relation tolearning in higher education (Francis,2010), and I feel it should be possible to useconversational structures around these termsto explore students’ responses to invitationsto comment on their experiences of under-standing of various specific topics or tasks inthe academic context.

My third suggestion relates to thewelcome reporting of positive emotionalloading on gaining cognitive understanding.I wonder whether reports from students ofmisunderstanding and non-understanding mightalso provide useful evidence for the attemptto understand understanding. How dostudents know they have not understood orhave misunderstood and why do they think ithas come about? What do they think isneeded to remedy the situation? Reports ofthis nature would flesh out the reports of theemotional aspects of understanding, particu-larly those associated with frustration andresolution, as well as throwing light on the

cognitive. I have found it a very fruitfulapproach in conversations with youngchildren about their experiences ofattempting to read, when they reported anddemonstrated strategies that sometimesdidn’t work for them. At some educationaldistance from this I found in work with acolleague on higher education students’understanding of texts (Francis & Hallam,2000) that they were able to identify stickingpoints and to discuss differences in theirunderstandings, some of which reflectedknown or likely differences from the authors’intended meanings. Some of their reporteddiscussions with each other threw light on theidentification of misunderstanding or non-understanding and steps towards a mutuallysatisfactory resolution of understanding. Thiswork raised questions about tutors’ assump-tions concerning the use of texts and of anappropriate loading for a course; and, mostimportantly, brought out the difficulties asso-ciated with coming to grips with the practicesand related terminology of the knowledgefield concerned. There is already a literatureon understanding of scientific conceptswhich suggests this to be a fruitful area ofinvestigation. Perkins (2008) refers to this inhis discussion of students’ encounters withdifficulty.

I think I have said enough to show that I welcome Noel and John’s discussion papersince the problems of understanding others’understandings bedevil both conceptual andempirical analysis in psychology, yet under-standing other understandings is central tolearning from tutorial and text expositionsand therefore to education. Any educationalpsychology worth its salt must include explo-ration of such understanding on its agenda,for whatever is said about education in termsof meeting targets in promoting knowledgeand skills, the fundamental aim of education isto promote understanding and target its confirma-tion. Teachers are obvious colleagues in suchexploration, but above all psychologists needto listen to what learners have to say aboutexperiences of understanding. What mightbe a shock for a psychologist is the realisa-



tion that he or she cannot adopt the role ofneutral observer since their own priorunderstanding is expected to influence thedirection of research and their latest under-standing will be the outcome!

In summary, I think Noel and John’spaper challenges psychologists to find waysof understanding students’ understandingthat open the way for new support for highereducation and, by extension, to education asa whole. Psychologists cannot continue todoubt work that is not based on experi-mental design with numerical measurement,nor can they depend on experiment-basedlocal evaluation of government-promotedprograms, together with particular attentionto meeting special educational needs, inorder to claim a service to education. Insofaras the needs of all learners should be met inrelation to understanding what, how, andwhy they are expected to learn what theirteachers introduce them to, psychologistscould play an even more important servicethan they do.

CorrespondenceProfessor Hazel FrancisEmail: [email protected]

ReferencesFrancis, H. (2010). Words and Deeds – a psycholog-

ical perspective on the active nature of learningand understanding in higher education. Journalof the Hellenic Psychological Society 17(3), 231–242.

Francis, H. & Hallam, S. (2000). Genre effects onhigher education students’ text reading forunderstanding. Higher Education 39, 279–296.

Pask, G. (1975a). The cybernetics of human learning andperformance. London: Hutchinson Educational.

Pask, G. (1975b). Conversation, cognition and learning.Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Pask, G. (1976). Conversation Theory – applications ineducation and epistemology. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Perkins, D. (1998). What is understanding? In M.S.Wiske (Ed.), Teaching for understanding. Linkingresearch with practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Perkins, D. (2008). Theories of difficulty. In N. Entwistle & P. Tomlinson (Eds.), Studentlearning and university teaching. British Journal ofEducational Psychology Monograph Series II: Psycho-logical Aspects of Education – Current Trends, 4,31–48.


Hazel Francis

THE PAPER by Noel and John raisesagain the complex nature of memorisa-tion in relation to student learning and

understanding. They refer to mainstreampsychological work in the 1980s in whichissues of long-term memory, mental repre-sentations and mental models were thefocus, but the concept of ‘understanding’was not. They then move on to work byeducational psychologist in the 1990s inwhich ‘understanding’, both the process andproduct, became the focus of attention. Buttheir main focus in this paper is on thestudent’s experience of understanding –beginning with the concepts of deep andsurface approaches to learning and movingon to Noel’s concept of ‘knowledge object’.But one of the issue I would like to have seenthem focus on, and one which they have notaddressed directly, is the role of memorisa-tion in understanding. This issue has beenbrought into sharp relief by the cross-cultural studies in students’ experiences oflearning, and in particular Chinese students’experiences.

I began my own work in this area in themid 1980s when I visited Noel in Edinburghon my first sabbatical. My background was inphysics and mathematics and I became veryinterested in student learning in first yearuniversity physics and why it was thatstudents seemed to be able to pass theirexaminations but in discussion and interviewshowed deep misconceptions of keyconcepts. It was through reading Noel’s workand ongoing discussions, and that ofFerence Marton and John Biggs that Ibecame aware of the surface/deep distinc-tion in approaches to learning and under-standing. But as Noel and John observe, a surface approach has an intention to

reproduce and ‘is directed towards routinememorisation of facts and theories’ while adeep approach involves an intention tounderstand and involves such things as‘relating ideas and using evidence’. But mybackground as a student in physics andmathematics suggested to me that memori-sation was an important aspect of coming toan understanding. Memorisation and under-standing were not polar opposites as was,and still is, often suggested in the literature.

This issue came to the fore in researchinto Asian students’, and particular Chinesestudents’, experiences of learning – whichidentified a paradox when compared to theWestern students’ experiences (Marton,Dall’Alba & Tse, 1996). In the West, Chineselearners were perceived to be surfacelearners because they appeared to befocused on memorisation. Yet, paradoxically,they showed high levels of understandingand achievement – usually thought in theWest to require deep approaches tolearning. The resolution of the paradoxseems to be in a cultural variation in the rela-tionship between memorisation and under-standing. In the West, memorisation is oftenassociated with rote learning – learningwithout understanding. But in Chinesecultures it seems that the experience ofmemorisation and understanding are inter-twined. Understanding is not separated frommemorisation – as it is often experienced inthe West.

This intertwining of memorisation andunderstanding seems to me to have echoesof my own student experience of studyingscience and mathematics, and suggests thatthe relationship of memorisation and under-standing is far more complex than is oftenenvisaged.



A response to Entwistle & NisbetMichael Prosser

Returning to Noel and John’s paper, it isclear in their discussion of ‘knowledgeobjects’ that memorisation is an importantaspect of the formation of a knowledgeobject. The student quoted in their papertalked about the importance of ‘visualmemory’. Noel and John discuss two impor-tant aspects of knowledge objects: ‘one is thestructure that has helped the students tocreate a coherent picture of a topic with‘nodes’ that pull in detailed information asrequired, while the other is the memory ofthe logical links created to provide aconvincing explanation of the topic in theprocess of revision’. Here we see that memo-risation is an important aspect of knowledgeobjects. What is not clear to me is whetherNoel sees a knowledge object as constitutingunderstanding, or is it just the result ofreproductive aspect of preparing for anexamination?

My own view is that memorisation is animportant aspect of understanding, and thatthe relationship between the experience ofmemorisation and understanding needs tobe more thoroughly researched. EchoingNoel and John’s comment about disciplinaryvariation in what constitutes a deepapproach, the relationship between memori-sation and understanding will not only havebroad cultural variation but also importantdisciplinary variation.

The relationship between memorisationand understanding, and the experience ofthe relationship, is far more complex thanwe have so far acknowledged.

CorrespondenceDr Michael ProsserUniversity of Sydney.

ReferencesMarton, F., Dall’Alba, G. & Tse, L.K. (1996). Memo-

rising and understanding: The keys to theparadox. In D.A. Watkins & J.B. Biggs (Eds.), The Chinese Learner: Cultural, psychological, andcontextual influences. Hong Kong University;Australian Council for Educational Research,Melbourne.


Michael Prosser

IWAS STRUCK, while both reading theEntwistle and Nisbet paper and listeningto Noel’s conference presentation on the

nature and experience of academic under-standing, by the many parallels between thethemes raised and those also to be foundwithin psychoanalytic theory and practice.The Entwistle and Nisbet paper ends with acommitment to be open to interpretationfrom other perspectives and I wish to do justthat by offering a psychoanalyticallyinformed discussion to explore what I see,despite the use of very different conceptsand languages, as common ground. It is notmy intention to suggest that this alternativeperspective is better than that alreadyprovided but I will conclude that psycho-analytic thinking does provide a morenuanced view of human understanding aswell as supporting practical interventions.Within this context I shall briefly provide aninsight into how psychoanalysis perceiveslearning and understanding and also high-light the similarities between the nature ofacademic understanding and the thera-peutic process. Surface and deep under-standing will then be considered in the lightof defence mechanisms. Finally, I shall indi-cate how psychological insights intoacademic understanding can benefit from apsychoanalytic approach and ultimately howthis could be employed to help students, andtheir teachers, engage with understanding.There is little space for a full explanation ofthe many principles mentioned here but Iprovide a short bibliography for those whowish to pursue these ideas further.

Developing an individual understandingof the world we live in, is central to psycho-analytic theory and practice, where the movetowards understanding is positioned within

the context of a ‘cradle to grave’ notion oflife-long learning (Bainbridge & West, 2012;Coren, 1997). As such, learning is an exis-tential and emotionally charged process,which begins in very early life and isdependent on relationships with significantothers who interpret and provide initialunderstanding. It is within these very earlyrelationships that the nature of under-standing begins to develop and yet thechild’s thinking is not simply cloned fromothers. Contemporary psychoanalysis recog-nises the interplay between the psycholog-ical, social and cultural dimensions ofexperience. In subsequent years these earlyprocesses, which provide understanding, aremodelled and remodelled in a variety ofexperiential contexts. The central pointbeing made is that throughout life, theimmediate context and, therefore, experi-ence of understanding may change. Yet thenature of understanding is more likely to beinfluenced by and reflect archives of pastpatterns of behaviour. Therefore, an under-standing of understanding must considerthe nature and role of these archives andhow the past plays out in the present.

To put some flesh, onto what are so farvery bare bones, it is worth noting how thesearchives of understanding are reported inthe Entwistle and Nisbet paper and also howthey reflect psychoanalytic theory and practice.

The regular reference to ‘gut feelings’and emotional responses in relation toreaching understanding, endorses the earlyrelationship between emotion and cogni-tion, where experiences are felt before theycan be cognitively articulated and under-stood. This link is also confirmed by Illeris(2002) and Jarvis (2006), who although not



A response to Entwistle & NisbetAlan Bainbridge

from a psychoanalytic stance, also approachthe nature of learning from a more holisticand existential position.

The idea of ‘knowledge objects’ mirrorsthat of psychoanalytic object relationstheory, which seeks to explain behaviour as apsychosocial relational process between anindividual and an object, which could beanother person or even subject knowledge(Youell, 2006). This emphasises the rela-tional ‘self and other’ aspects of reaching anunderstanding.

It is notable how often the accounts inthe paper refer to ‘not understanding’ asrepresenting fragmented ideas and chaos,with ‘understanding’ recognisable by anembodied sense of coherence. This frag-mented experience is almost exactly howpatients present when entering therapy. Asproblems are alleviated a sense of coherenceand personal understanding, often accom-panied by an emotional and physicalresponse, are commonly reported.

Gaining understanding is referred to asan emergent property and a number of theaccounts provide details of how the under-standing provided by a significant other,represents not just their initial under-standing, but also the platform from whichto further explore ideas and reach a satis-fying personal and academic understanding.Psychoanalytically, this represents the veryearly nature of understanding, one in whicha (m)other seeks to interpret the infantsneeds and provide an initial understanding.As the child develops and separates from thisclose relationship they will gradually learn tointerpret the world from a perspective that ismeaningful to them. (M)others andteachers, as well as infants and learners, canbe seen to represent similar roles in themove towards understanding.

The relational aspects of reaching anunderstanding could provide insight intothe motivations to engage in deep or surfaceunderstanding. Psychoanalytical object rela-tions theory recognises the troubling rela-tionship individuals have with difficult ornovel knowledge. It can be argued that

knowledge gained through understanding isused to provide a coherent experience andunderstanding of the self, subsequently aninteraction with new knowledge serves tothreaten this satisfying status quo (Pitt &Britzman, 2003). As such, unconsciousprocesses defend against new knowledgeand the potential awareness of the ignoranceand anxiety this provokes. Surface under-standing may reflect the actions of uncon-scious defences that prevent a personalengagement with new knowledge and, there-fore, a full and personally satisfying under-standing is not achieved. This knowledge hasnot been thought about and remains the‘property’ of others, repeating the very early(m)other/infant experience and repre-senting a kind of ‘false self’ (Winnicott,1965), where the understanding gained issufficient to enable the individual to partici-pate and yet not enough to provide deepand coherent meaning. Deep understandingis achieved when the individual is not soheavily defended towards new knowledge.Therefore, providing the motivation toencounter and struggle with difficult knowl-edge, resulting in personal coherence andan embodied sense of fulfilment. For deepunderstanding, individuals must be able tomanage the emotional work required toconsider how new knowledge can be inte-grated into their previous understanding.There is not time within this response toconsider why these different approaches tounderstanding occur, suffice to say that theexperience of understanding is predicatedon archival patterns that represent thenature of understanding developed in veryearly relationships.

The consideration of how past patternsof behaviour impact on the present is centralto psychoanalytic thought. This is not to beregarded in some crude deterministicmanner but rather as a complex psychoso-cial interaction in which the developing selfis influenced by the external world and viceversa. Bainbridge and West (2012) make thecase for considering educational processesthrough a psychoanalytic lens as this


Alan Bainbridge

provides the advantage of semantic, ratherthan syntactic insight. We highlight contem-porary psychoanalysis which considers thepast, present and future from a psycholog-ical, societal and cultural perspective andfrom which it is possible, to reach a morecomplete, human and sematic under-standing of understanding. This stancereflects the reports of the participants thatreaching an understanding providespersonal satisfaction and meaning as well ashighlighting the distinction between surfaceand deep understanding. For the psycho-analyst, academic understanding can only befully and semantically understood within therich and complex context of a lived life. It isthis approach that can bring us nearer toanswering the question why a particularstudent may reach understanding and yetanother does not. The syntactic nature of thechart that accompanied the lecture told meeverything and yet nothing about individualacademic understanding, the ideas in theboxes are not rejected, they just appeardisembodied and waiting to inhabit a lifestory that allows us to consider why under-standing has or has not been reached.

Finally, how can a psychoanalyticapproach help our students achieve deepunderstanding? I would suggest by acknowl-edging the importance of the relationshipbetween tutor and student and allowing timefor new knowledge to be encountered andemotionally and cognitively dealt with. Thisprocess is charged with anxiety and studentsrequire time and space to make new knowl-edge their own – at least for deep under-standing. Reaching an understandingshould not be presented as a simplistic,‘matter of fact event’: understanding is diffi-cult and to hide this from students is both adisservice to the learner and unprofessional.I would argue, in these ‘student first’ days,that the role of the tutor is to not remove theanxiety of learning, as to do so avoids the

interaction with difficult knowledge. Anattempt to remove anxiety is to encouragesurface understanding. Equally, if we are tounderstand the nature of academic under-standing we must accept the complexity ofpersonal experience while valuing the widerange of perspectives applied to this area ofstudy. Not least, by considering an epistemo-logical shift, from syntactic to semantic waysof knowing.

Correspondence Dr Alan BainbridgeCanterbury Christ Church University.Email: [email protected]

ReferencesBainbridge, A. & West, L. (2012). Introduction:

Minding the gap. In A. Bainbridge & L. West(Eds.), Psychoanalysis and education: Minding a gap(pp.11–38). London: Karnac.

Bibby, T. (2011). Education – an impossible profession.London: Routledge

Britzman, D.P. (2009). The very thought of education:Psychoanalysis and the impossible professions.New York: New York Press.

Coren, A. (1997). A psychodynamic approach to educa-tion. London: Sheldon Press

Geddes, H. (2006). Attachment in the classroom: The links between children’s early experience, emotionalwell-being and performance in school. London:Worth Publishing.

Illeris, K. (2002). The three dimensions of learning:Contemporary learning theory in the tension fieldbetween the cognitive, the emotional and the social.Leicester: NIACE.

Jarvis, P. (2006). Towards a comprehensive theory ofhuman learning. London: Routledge.

Pitt, A.J. & Britzman, D.P. (2003). Speculations onqualities of difficult knowledge in teaching andlearning: An experiment in psychoanalyticresearch. International Journal in QualitativeStudies in Education, 16(6), 755–776.

Winnicott, D.W. (1965). Ego distortions in terms oftrue self and false self. In The maturationalprocesses and the facilitating environment(pp.140–152). London: Hogarth Press.

Youell, B. (2006). The learning relationship: Psycho-analytic thinking in education. London: Karnac.



Three phases of understanding

ENTWISTLE and Nisbet bring an expe-riential perspective to their rich explo-ration of the nature of academic

understanding. Profiling several views ofunderstanding from Hume on, they test theideas against learners’ own words aboutachieving integrative understandings thatmake sense of topics as patterned wholes.

Taking a cue from the authors, I’ll addlearner reports with a different time scale.I’ve often asked people to identify topicsfrom pre-university education that haveproven important to their lives. Here is oneresponse:

I learned about the French Revolution inEuropean History. Through the FrenchRevolution, I was able to understand thegeneralities of world conflict – forinstance, how the lack of freedom,poverty, over-taxation, weak economies,the struggle between the Church andstate, or social inequity has always being areason to engage in war. The FrenchRevolution has also helped meunderstand current politics, economics,and society. Concepts like the division ofChurch and state, socialism, and theseparation of political power in thebranches of government, are still issuesthat are debated today all over the world.

Notice how the statement reaches wellbeyond the French Revolution as a topic.This learner’s understanding has become atool for examining many other aspects of thesociopolitical world past and present.Indeed, the learner seems to have inter-nalised the understanding as a framethrough which to see the world as much as atool deliberately wielded.

This progression from topic to tool toframe has a natural interpretation within theperformance perspective on understandingfrom colleagues and myself, mentioned byEntwistle and Nisbet (e.g. Perkins, 1998).Broadly, the performance perspective treatsunderstanding as a matter of being able tothink flexibly with what you know aboutsomething. Understanding the French Revo-lution as a topic entails thinking well aboutits causes and dynamics. Wielding thatunderstanding as a tool expands thethinking to include, for instance, criticalanalogies and disanalogies with other revolu-tions (American, Russian, Chinese) andperhaps other events considered revolu-tionary (the industrial revolution, the digitalrevolution). In a further shift, those patternsof thought become fluent and intuitive, a frame for seeing the world.

Such a progression could serve manytopics. A learner might address basic statis-tical concepts first as topic, learning whatthey mean along with illustrative applica-tions and inferences; then as tool, deployingthe ideas in life-meaningful contexts such asinterpreting reports about the effectivenessof a policy; and then as frame, with statisticalintuitions emerging almost automatically atleast in elementary cases.

Topic, tool, and frame, besides offering along view of the building of understanding,write a prescription for instruction. Teachingfor academic understandings often tends tobe topic-centric, the immediate goal to buildtopic understanding, with tool and framehardly on the agenda. But it doesn’t have tobe like that, as illustrated by words fromanother learner.



A response to Entwistle & NisbetDavid Perkins

I was first taught Philosophy in highschool at the age of 14… the way thelesson was taught was as follows: Firstly,we would be exposed to the basic tenetsof a philosophy theory (anything fromPlato to post-modernism scaled to ourdevelopmental level). Then we would beasked to select an article from anewspaper or even an entertainmentmagazine at home and prepare a talkabout the interrelations between thetopic or the treatment of that piece andthe theory we had as homework andother theories we had been exposed topreviously. That class trained me to thinkon a theoretical level… I often findmyself analyzing everyday events orsituations based on a theory.

This learner’s experience illustrates a basicprinciple of transfer of learning. Consider-able research argues that often learners donot spontaneously transfer specific conven-tionally acquired content. However, they aremuch more likely to do so when the instruc-tion frames and organises the learning tofoster detecting opportunities and followingthrough (e.g. Engle et al., 2012; Perkins &Salomon, 2012).

What if educators generally avoided atopic-centric pattern of teaching and, fromthe beginning, nudged learners toward flex-ible tool-like applications and internalisa-tion? This might foster a habit of mindapparent in the above quote. Entwistle andNisbet emphasise the intentionality of thequest for understanding and write of a‘disposition to understand for oneself’. Thispowerful notion applies to the full range ofdeveloping an understanding. For an avidlearner, the disposition to understand foroneself would reach beyond understandingthe topic toward the wider scope of topic-as-tool and the fluent intuitions of topic-as-frame.

The AuthorDavid Perkins is the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr.,Research Professor of Teaching andLearning at the Harvard Graduate School ofEducation.

CorrespondenceProfessor David PerkinsEmail: [email protected]

ReferencesEngle, R.A., Lam, D.P., Meyer, X.S. & Nix, S.E.

(2012). How does expansive framing promotetransfer? Several proposed questions and aresearch agenda for investigating them. Educa-tional Psychologist, 47(3), 215–231.

Perkins, D.N. (1998). What is understanding? In M.S.Wiske (Ed.), Teaching for understanding: Linkingresearch with practice (pp.39–57). San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.

Perkins, D.N. & Salomon, G. (2012). Knowledge togo: A motivational and dispositional view oftransfer. Educational Psychologist, 47(3), 248–258.



Exploring the nature of academicunderstanding

THE LEAD PAPER looked forward toclarification of the nature of under-standing coming from the commenta-

tors and accepted the need to be recursive inresponding to other perspectives. We aregrateful for the wealth of ideas contained inthe comments and will do our best toconsider them in relation to our own broad-ening conception of the topic. We have iden-tified a number of themes that can be usedto frame our response, although it wasimpossible to do justice to the whole rangeof suggestions we were given, while alsotaking account of Hume’s encouragement‘to correct all that seeming disorder’ inwhich the topic then, and still, lies.

Understanding depends on existingconceptual frameworks and is recursiveIt was clear in preparing the lead paper thatpart of the problem in defining the nature ofunderstanding is that theorists come to itwith differing conceptual frameworks. Thisconclusion was strengthened by meeting yetother perspectives in the commentaries, andhighlighted the first important aspect,missing in the lead paper. Peter Davies,looking from his own experience inresearching economics teaching, stressedthat the learner’s capacity to achieve anappropriate academic understanding of atopic ‘appears to be contingent on theconceptual structures they are able to bringinto being’. And that explains why academicunderstanding within a university is neces-

sarily recursive, as new concepts are intro-duced at successively more complex levels toproduce sophisticated ways of dealing withtopics and so extending existing conceptualframeworks.

In their studies of economics education,Davies and Mangan (2008) have used theidea of ‘threshold concepts’ that form a‘portal’ through which students have to passto transform their understanding of thesubject and so form part of the ‘target under-standing’ that is set by academic staff. Thesethreshold concepts are often ideas that have,in the past, transformed researchers’ ways ofthinking about the discipline and need to begrasped by students if their understanding isto develop smoothly. Davies and Manganshowed how students meet different kinds ofthresholds. Basic concepts allow newcomersto the discipline to reinterpret everyday waysof thinking in more powerful ways, later onthreshold concepts within the disciplineshow how groups of basic concepts can beintegrated in meaningful ways, but the mostcomplex threshold involves beginning tothink like an economist, seeing how toengage with the discourse of the disciplineand make use of the disciplinary models andtheories to deal with new topics or problems.A crucial part of this final step is being ableto enter the dialogue of the discipline and socommunicate with experts and extendunderstandings further, in the waysdescribed by Hazel Francis. And, as Petermakes clear in his comments, students haveto be recursively reconstructing theiracademic understanding as they gain access


Open Dialogue:

Authors’ response to peer commentaryNoel Entwistle & Colin Smith

Colin Smith, who has taken over from John Nisbet as co-author in this response, introduced the contrastbetween target and personal understanding in his PhD, which John Nisbet examined, and has continuedto follow the topic with interest in his subsequent career as a schoolteacher and educational researcher.

to more sophisticated conceptual structures.This leads us to the related theme of disci-pline and culture.

Understanding depends on thediscipline and the culture The process of developing academic under-standing involves adopting a deep approachto learning, with its underlying intention todevelop personal understanding. But, asmentioned in the lead paper, the specificprocesses within this approach necessarilyvary across disciplines, due to the verydifferent forms of knowledge, and thecontrasting individual styles adopted bystudents in seeking understanding. Pask(1976a) distinguished between holist and serialist learning styles, with versatile studentsbeing those who were able to move readilybetween these two styles to develop theirpersonal understandings. Holists prefer tolook, first, for an overall idea of the topic,coming to details and supportive evidencelater, while serialists prefer to build up theirunderstanding step-by-step, keeping close tothe facts within a logical progression. Notsurprisingly, therefore, science studentsdepend more on serialist strategies within adeep approach, while humanities studentsshow more tendency to be holists (Entwistle& Tait, 1995).

In his commentary, Michael Prosser’sdescription of his own experience as aphysics student suggest a serialist style, butalso the reliance on learning facts and detailsthat is essential to build up understanding inthe sciences. And so, in his words, ‘the inter-twining of memorisation and understandingis far more complex than is often envisaged’.But there is an ambiguity in the meaning of‘memorisation’. It can refer simply to rotelearning, which does play a part in coming togrips with technical terms or rememberingdetails, or when the topic cannot be under-stood; but there is also the idea of ‘commit-ting an understanding to memory’. In theinterviews, students talked about rehearsingtheir understandings, sometimes byexplaining it to an imaginary audience, and

so strenthening confidence in their explana-tions. This process does involve strength-ening the memory, but is far removed fromrote learning, as we shall see later.

Michael also points out that importantcontrasts exist between cultures in the rolethat memorisation plays in developingacademic understanding. Among Chinesestudents, specifically, initial reliance on rotememorisation is common, perhaps stem-ming in part from the need to memorisepictograms when learning to read and write.When faced with formal examinations,Chinese students tend to adopt what hasbeen called deep memorising; the intention tounderstand is counteracted by an equallystrong need to bring details to mind readily(Biggs & Tang, 2011). However, this tensionis not just an Asian phenomenon; it occurswherever this form of assessment is domi-nant and students perceive the need for theaccurate reproduction of received knowl-edge. So how could the form of memorisa-tion involved in developing understandingbe modelled?

Understanding involves a coherent webof interconnecting ideas and evidenceGiven the extensive treatment of knowledgeobjects in the lead paper, it is hardlysurprising that several commentatorsdiscussed the role they might play in devel-oping personal understanding. Formal exam-inations do, in general, tend to encouragesurface approaches, but the final examina-tions that provided the focus for the inter-views reported in the lead paper were clearlyperceived by the interviewees as demandingunderstanding, and this was the context inwhich knowledge objects were more consis-tently identified. They were not memorisedto facilitate reproduction but, rather, theywere used as mnemonic devices to allow apersonal understanding to be brought tomind and used flexibly to answer the specificquestion set. As Peter Davies said, ‘The ideaof a ‘knowledge object’… is defined as aconceptual structure which the learner hasdeveloped, which they can visualise, which


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pulls in relevant information, and which isalso dynamic. It becomes animated rather thanbeing activated ’ (italics added).

There is a sequence involved in the devel-opment and use of knowledge objects. Theyare created through an awareness of validconnections between ideas and their implica-tions but, as one of the students said, ‘I think the facts are stored separately and theschematic, virtually a picture, is like anindex’. The schematic within the knowledgeobject represents the interconnections, andthe structure can be used flexibly to writeessays or solve problems, and to pull in therelated details, which may well have beenlearned by rote. That much is clear; but it isworth considering what is held in memory.The term ‘knowledge object’ implies thatthere is an actual object in memory that canbe used, but the students’ descriptions ofhow it is used in writing essays or answeringexam questions suggest that it is not an objectas such, it is rather the logical steps withinexplanations that are remembered, and thatthe knowledge object is simply a mnemonic,held in visual memory, that brings to mindthe steps in the argument. The link betweenvisual memory and semantic memory hasalways been seen an important way of trig-gering knowledge from memory.

Alan Bainbridge sees a knowledge objectfrom a psychoanalytic perspective as ‘a rela-tional process between an individual and anobject, that could be another person or evensubject knowledge’, although with academicunderstanding, the emphasis is more onknowledge representation than on people.However, the fact that it can be applied toboth perhaps strengthens support for theconcept. And, as the next section explains,understanding does also develop throughrelationships.

Understanding develops throughrelationships with people and theirideasThe development of understanding isdependent on relationships and thelanguage through which ideas are communi-

cated and discussed between people, as bothHazel Francis and Alan Bainbridge madeclear. This was recognised by one of theinterviewees in saying that she was ‘getting toknow the people that explain the ideas ordata’, she even referred to them as herfriends. For this reason, Hazel also stressesthe importance in carrying out research intostudent learning, of ‘inviting students toreport specific experiences in their academiccontext, whether this be a discipline, acourse of study or, perhaps most usefully, aparticular topic within one of these; alwayskeeping in their reports the connectionbetween understanding and the context ofhow and when it came about’. The interviewsreported in the lead paper did, in fact,almost always contain discussions of specificessays or examinations, and the purpose wasmade clear, but the context did become lostin the subsequent attempt to see generali-ties, and even more so in selecting theindicative quotes for the lead paper. A casestudy approach would certainly be necessaryto see understanding within the context ofdiscipline and specific topic or task, and thisapproach has recently been used in tworecent studies mentioned in the lead paper.

These studies bring more directly intofocus both the ways in which understandingsdevelop through the ‘inter-animation ofdifferent voices’ (Hay 2010), heard asstudents listen to their lecturers and tutors,and as they read researchers’ articles. Formany disciplines this seems to be the mostimportant way in which the interconnectionsbetween ideas are realised and built into apersonal academic understanding; it is theinner experience of ‘reading for a degree’.

Another way of seeing the processes thattake place in reaching an understanding canbe seen, as Hazel reminds us, in GordonPask’s work on conversation theory (Pask,1976b). He argued that understandingcomes from conversations with tutors (realand imaginary) and with oneself, as the rami-fications of the topic are explored internallythrough the ‘inter-animation of differentvoices’.


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The emergence of a personal under-standing depends on feelings and emotionsas well as knowledge. When tutors showinterest and offer support, there can be ameeting of minds in which cognitive and affec-tive elements are intertwined in the student’sexperience (Karagiannopolou & Entwistle,under review). Conversely, when thatsupport is not provided, students may retreatinto surface strategies which, as Alan Bain-bridge points out, may reflect the actions ofunconscious defences. Knowledge is notpersonally engaged with, or thought about,remains the ‘property of others’, and so isnot fully understood.

Alan Bainbridge also reminds us thatstudents’ feelings and attitudes to knowledgecan be strongly influenced by their earlyexperiences and their whole educationaland personal history, and that ‘an under-standing of understanding must considerthe nature and role of… archives of pastpatterns of behaviour’ and that ‘learning isan existential and emotionally chargedprocess’. These are important issues thatoften get ignored in writings on educationalpsychology. Hazel Francis points out that theempirical methods typically employed inpsychology are not designed to investigate aconcept such as understanding, suggestingthat ‘the problems of understanding others’understandings bedevil both conceptual andempirical analysis in psychology, yet under-standing other understandings is central tolearning from tutorial and text expositionsand, therefore, to education’. Here, thestudents’ own purposes become important.

Understanding can be open or closed,with important educationalconsequencesThe purposes that university students have inlearning academic topics and theories arevaried and sometimes, as we have seen, canlead to the tension created by opposites. Formost students, the primary purpose is tofulfil course requirements and obtain a gooddegree, but many also want to understandthe topics for themselves and expect what

they have learned to be useful in a careerand in everyday life. The lead papersuggested that students’ personal under-standings varied in their breadth, depth, andstructure, but recent research has indicatedthat they also differ in terms being either‘open’ or ‘closed’. If the predominantmotive is course completion, then surfaceapproaches lead to a ‘closed’ form of under-standing: there is no expectation that theunderstanding will extend, or be used, afterthe university course is completed. But this isdisastrous from the point of view of theacademic who is trying to develop a way ofthinking that will be indelible.

If teachers focus their attention onstudents being able to reproduce theirknowledge from effective knowledge repre-sentations, their understandings are morelikely to remain closed. As we saw in the leadpaper, David Perkins (1998) and hiscolleagues suggested that understandingshould be seen as a process, which could bedeveloped through understanding perform-ances. If students are given a series of tasksthat focus on a specific understanding,completing those tasks will bring to bear theintellectual skills necessary to reach thatunderstanding. But that may still result in a‘closed’ form of understanding, which Davidhas since described this as the possession ofknowledge, with information or other people’sideas being passively accepted (Perkins,2008). This has to be contrasted with perfor-mative understanding, which still requiresthe possession of knowledge, but alsoinvolves the development of personal under-standing. Finally, he described a ‘forward-looking’, proactive understanding thatdepends on progressively enhancing under-standings into more complete and usefulforms, ready to be applied in new situations.

In his commentary, David Perkins hasintroduced another set of categories todescribe phases of understanding that mapon to the three forms already described.Understanding can be seen, initially, as atopic to be understood, then as a tool to beused to explore other areas of knowledge or



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situations, and finally as a frame throughwhich to view the world, which can also beseen as that ‘indelible way of thinking’mentioned earlier. And this move towards‘framing’ can be encouraged by makingconnections ‘outside the box’, making surethat understandings are connected, wherepossible, to broader issues and real worldproblems.

In all these analyses, David Perkins islooking at understanding specifically froman educational perspective, asking how canwe help teachers to bring about academicunderstanding more effectively? We shalllook at this aspect in our concluding section.

Understanding is often described withthe help of metaphorsEach of our sections, so far, has been lookingat a rather different aspect of understandingand we have seen how our commentatorshave been drawing on their own preferredtheoretical perspectives, as well as personalexperience, to consider the nature ofacademic understanding. In this section, webegin the process of bringing these ideastogether by recognising that attempts todescribe understanding often seem todepend on the use of metaphors, whichshow this abstract concept in comparison tomore concrete ones or everyday experience(Kövecses, 2010). So far, we have met, forexample, webs, tools, frames, archives,performances and conversations in order tounderstand understanding. The use ofmetaphors in this context is not surprisingsince metaphors underpin a good deal ofour thinking and understanding, not justpoetry and literature (Brown, 2003; Gibbs,Jr., 1994; Kövecses, 2010; Lakoff & Johnson,1980, 1999).

All understanding, whether of the worldor even ourselves, depends on choosingthe right metaphor. The metaphor wechoose governs what we see. Even intalking about understanding we cannotescape metaphors. ‘Grasping’ things, forexample, won’t get us as far as we wouldlike, because the most important things

in life refuse to be grasped in eithersense. Like Tantalus’ grapes they retreatfrom the reaching hand. (McGilchrist,2009, p.179)

However, McGilchrist points out thatchoosing the ‘right metaphor’ for describingunderstanding is not easy.

[The fact] that knowledge comes fromdistinctions implies that we can come toan understanding of the nature of anyone thing, whatever it might be, only bycomparison with something else wealready know, and by observing thesimilarities and differences. However, justas everything changes its nature, howeverslightly, when it changes it’s context, whatwe choose to compare a thing withdetermines what aspects of it will standforward and which will recede. … Themodel we choose to understandsomething determines what we find. If itis the case that our understanding is aneffect of the metaphors we choose, it isalso true that it is a cause: ourunderstanding itself guides the choice ofmetaphors by which we understand it.The chosen metaphor is both cause andeffect of the relationship. Thus how wethink about our selves and ourrelationship to the world is alreadyrevealed in the metaphors weunconsciously choose to talk about it.Paradoxically we seem to be obliged tounderstand something – includingourselves – well enough to choose theappropriate model before we canunderstand it. Our first leap determineswhere we land. (p.97)

And in this open dialogue, we have anumber of ‘first leaps’ – and possibly second,third and so on. As noted at the beginning ofthis response, people bring different concep-tual frameworks to the topic of under-standing and the above suggests that thesedepend, in part at least, on choices ofmetaphor. Building on this way of thinkingabout metaphors, and applying it to science,Brown (2003) notes how large complex,scientific problems, such as global warming,



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involve multiple metaphors working ondiffering levels. Indeed, abstract conceptsthat are central to our lives are oftendescribed using a range of, sometimesconflicting, metaphors. This apparentincompatibility between metaphors is,perhaps, even necessary to aid under-standing of complex, abstract concepts. Andthis will surely apply to understanding.

The lead paper and the responses aretrying to work towards a coherent under-standing of something of which we ourselveshave different experiences and whichvarious forms of metaphor exemplify.Understanding, as we have seen, can beexperienced as ‘closed’ or ‘open’. We mayexperience a moment when things become‘clear’ and, as we saw in the lead paper,‘‘jigsaw pieces’ suddenly connect and youcan see the whole picture’. Or, we experi-ence ourselves ‘mastering’ certain keyconcepts and moving across a ‘threshold’into a whole new world of academicdiscourse. We could go through othermetaphors used in this dialogue, but thepoint is that we will need multiple metaphorsto develop a convincing description ofacademic understanding and the experi-ences associated with it.

The metaphors do, however, seem toform two broad groups. There are those thatdescribe understanding as an event, a pointin time when a particular outcome isachieved, associated with feelings abouthaving done so. The associated emotionsmay be more or less intense, sometimes a‘eureka experience’, often just satisfaction,but the focus is on the moment. The othergroup of metaphors implies that under-standing is moving onwards, even thoughthere are experiences of ‘provisional whole-ness’ along the way. So, we master thresholdconcepts and pass through the threshold.We have an open understanding that leadsus to further explore the topic. We have atool (understanding) that we wield in certainperformances to strengthen them, we thenimprove our dexterity in using the tool untilit becomes something else – a frame for

looking at certain aspects of the world in amore powerful way.

This Open Dialogue, taken as a whole,leads us to think that it is not a matter oftrying to pin down understanding into onemain perspective, but of how best to utilise arange of metaphors. We might learn some-thing from the experience of others whendealing with similar concepts related toeducation. One example is inquiry. In aEuropean Union-funded project aimed athelping teachers to support their students’learning through more inquiry-based experi-ences, some contributors moved from askingwhat inquiry is to what inquiry might be(Hoveid & Gray, forthcoming). Perhaps wealso have to ask, ‘What might academicunderstanding be for differing individuals incontrasting contexts and at different educa-tional stages?’ And how can we best takeaccount of this complexity, both in seekingto describe academic understanding and inconsidering how best to support it throughteaching and supportive learning environ-ments?

Supporting students in developingacademic understandingsThere has been a great deal of discussionrecently about how best to encourage andsupport students’ understanding, and thediscussion of the nature and experiences ofacademic understanding can be used to lookat this in a rather different way. In the leadpaper, we recognised that the wide range ofdifferences in subject matter and learningcontexts make any specific implications forteaching wholly implausible, but it is possibleto encourage teachers to think about thelink between teaching and learning inimportantly different ways. There has been aview, particularly from Government, thatbeing a good university teacher was just amatter of having advanced knowledge andacquiring a set of techniques that wouldallow that knowledge to be conveyed tostudents. Research into teaching andlearning in higher education has, however,shown how inadequate that idea is



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Figure 1: An expanding understanding of teaching and its main aspects(from Entwistle, 2009, p.76).

(Entwistle, 2009; Biggs & Tang, 2011).Teaching depends not just on having knowl-edge, but also on understanding howstudents learn. A sophisticated conception oflearning is necessary if knowledge and goodteaching techniques are to be used in waysthat enable high quality learning to takeplace.

Figure 1 summarises the findings ofvarious studies to suggest how universityteachers develop increasingly powerfulconceptions of teaching and learning, and

what is necessary, in general terms, for anapproach to teaching that supports concep-tual change. It draws attention to three mainaspects on which good teaching andlearning depend: the subject matter, theteaching activities, and the relationships withstudents. And each of these, in turn,depends on both knowledge and feelings.Knowledge is important, but so are feelingsand intuition. Good teaching, importantly,depends on an act of imagination, being ableto imagine what it is like not to understand

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the topic, and what steps are necessary tohelp students to grasp it. So the nature of anunderstanding of teaching becomes similarto that of an academic understanding for thestudent.

This dialogue has shown how our under-standing of the nature of academic under-standing depends on taking account of arange of overlapping perspectives, alongwith their multiple metaphors, that stress theintertwining of cognitive and affectiveaspects, and differing ways of using memoryand learning strategies. The message foruniversity teachers is that we must helpstudents to become more aware of what isinvolved in acquiring a deep understandingof an academic discipline and to devise ways,appropriate to that discipline, which willpromote and support the development ofsuch understandings. In general terms,teachers can support students’ under-standing by coming to understand for them-selves what is involved in reaching anunderstanding of the discipline they areteaching, and introducing students to someof the ideas and metaphors about memory,learning, and understanding that come fromrecent research findings.

What might that involve in practice? Wewant students to be able to recognise andunderstanding the basic concepts and howthey interconnect, so explanations of thoseconcepts have to be made clear, often byaddressing them in different ways and onrepeated occasions, particularly when theyare threshold concepts.

Concept maps can also play a key role.Just as students find ‘knowledge objects’useful for remembering the main aspects ofa topic and writing essays, so universityteachers can use them to organise theteaching of a course or a topic and to giveexplanations. Creating a simplified concept

map for a course unit can be used as a‘throughline’ (Wiske, 1998) to provide athread running through the course thatallows students to see how topics inter-relate.Concept maps can also be used to plan indi-vidual lectures, that provide mnemonics forthe lecturers, and also show students how anexpert envisages, and justifies, the inter-connections between concepts.

Lectures can also be used to exemplifythe discourse of the discipline, how evidenceis used and conclusions reached, and topoint up connections to real-world applica-tions or current issues that may help studentsto use their own understandings morebroadly. This emphasis on understandingmust also be carried through into the assess-ment procedures, as these are important‘drivers’ of the approaches to learningadopted, and affect where effort is mostconscientiously applied.

We also saw that academic understandingdepends on conversations, with oneself andwith others, and how a personal under-standing can emerge from the inter-anima-tion of the ideas met and through a ‘meetingof minds’ with supportive others, whetherstudents or tutors. The role of tutors inencouraging students to seek an inde-pendent, critical understanding of topicscannot be overemphasised, as this also helpsto build up self-confidence.

Others will, of course, see additional oralternative implications in what we, and ourdiscussants, have mentioned, and that is tobe welcomed as we seek to expand ourunderstandings of this complex and multi-faceted topic.

The AuthorsNoel Entwistle & Colin Smith University of Edinburgh.



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There are differences in what has been put at the end of the comments sections. To follow the usual pattern this shouldread 'Correspondence Professor Emeritus Noel Entwistle Email: [email protected]'Incidentally, Mike Prosser is surely a Emeritus Professor too, and his e-mail address needs to be added = [email protected]

Biggs, J.B. & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for qualitylearning at university (4th ed.). Maidenhead, Berk-shire: Society for Research into Higher Educa-tion and Open University Press.

Brown, T.L. (2003). Making truth: Metaphor in science.Urbana, IL.: Illinois University Press.

Davies, P. & Mangan, J. (2008). Embedding thresholdconcepts: From theory to pedagogical principlesto learning activities. In R. Land, J.H.F. Meyer &J. Smith (Eds.), Threshold concepts within the disci-plines (pp.37–50). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Entwistle, N.J. (2009). Teaching for understanding atuniversity: Deep approaches and distinctive ways ofthinking. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Entwistle, N.J. & Tait, H. (1995). Approaches tostudying and perceptions of the learning envi-ronment across disciplines. New Directions inTeaching and Learning, 64, 93–104.

Gibbs, Jr., R.W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurativethought, language, and understanding. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Hay, D.B. (2010). The imaginative function inlearning; Theory and case study data from thirdyear neuroscience. Psychology: The Journal of theHellenic Psychological Society, 17, 259–288.

Hoveid, M. & Grey, P. (Eds.) (forthcoming). Inquiryin science education and science teacher education:Research on teaching and learning through inquirybased approaches in science (teacher) education.Trondheim, Norway: Akademika Forlag.

Karagiannopoulou, E. & Entwistle, N.J. (underreview). Influences on academic understanding:Intentions, approaches to learning, perceptionsof assessment, and a ‘meeting of minds’.

Kövecses, Z. (2010) Metaphor (2nd ed.). Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by.Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in theflesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to westernthought. New York: Basic Books.

McGilchrist, I (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Westernworld. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Pask, G. (1976a). Styles and strategies of learning.British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46,128–148.

Pask, G. (1976b). Conversational techniques in thestudy and practice of education. British Journal ofEducational Psychology, 46, 12–25.

Perkins, D.N. (1998). What is understanding? In M.S.Wiske (ed.), Teaching for understanding: Linkingresearch with practice (pp.39–57). San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.

Perkins, D.N. (2008). Beyond understanding. In R.Land, J.H.F. Meyer & J. Smith (Eds.), Thresholdconcepts within the disciplines (pp.3–19).Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Wiske, M.S. (Ed.) (1998). Teaching for understanding.Linking research with practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.



References

Notes for contributorsThe Psychology of Education Review is published twice yearly (Spring/Autumn). The aim is to publishmaterial in the area of Psychology and Education. Submissions in the following form are welcomed.

The Open Dialogue: This is a mechanism whereby there is simultaneous exchange of views on an issueof substantial interest. It includes: An Initial Paper, outlining a distinctive position; Peer Review, in whichpeers comment on the position; Author’s Reply, offering a final response. Anyone wishing to contributeshould contact and discuss preliminary ideas with the Editors.

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(1) peer-refereed reports on on-going research by established researchers (750 to 2000 words); (2) reports on on-going research from research students (up to 1000 words).

Book Reviews: The Psychology of Education Review aims to provide reviews of relevant books as soonas possible after their publication. Authors should alert the Book Reviews Editor (see inside front cover)if they wish to see a particular book reviewed – either of their own writing or if they feel it is relevantto our readers. Authors may be invited to respond to reviewed books.

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Editorial addressIndividual Papers and Work in Progress submissions should be sent to one of the Editors.

Dr Debbie Pope, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Department of Social and Psychological Sciences, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire L39 4QP.Email: [email protected]

Dr Debbie Mainwaring, Lifelong and Comparative Education, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL.Email: [email protected]

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© The British Psychological Society 2013Incorporated by Royal Charter Registered Charity No 229642

Contents

1 EditorialDebbie Pope & Debbie Mainwaring

3 Obituary:Remembering Emeritus Professor Margareth SutherlandHazel Francis

Open Dialogue:5 The nature and experience of academic understanding


Open Dialogue peer review:15 A response to Entwistle & Nisbet – Peter Davies18 A response to Entwistle & Nisbet – Hazel Francis21 A response to Entwistle & Nisbet – Michael Prosser23 A response to Entwistle & Nisbet – Alan Bainbridge26 A response to Entwistle & Nisbet – David Perkins

Open Dialogue:28 Authors’ response to peer commentary


The nature of academic understanding

Documents

Transcript of The nature of academic understanding