Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

482 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
seems a good example of this form of creation. Each generation of American youth seems to
have generated some new understanding that has had an impact on the culture at large.
PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
The enactive framework, dealing as it does explicitly with issues of cognition, has implications
for educators, in terms of both how we understand learners and learning and how we approach
the process of design for learning.
Implications of Organizational Closure and Structural Determination
Learning is very much under the control of, and the responsibility of, the learner. The educator
orients or points learners in desired directions. The symbol systems we use (e.g., language) are not
conveyers of meaning; they are orienting devices. They effectively constrain, but do not determine,
the possible interpretations that can be made by another of a given situation. In pedagogical
interaction attention needs to be placed on learner understandings. Educators may also ask
learners to reflect upon their own learning, to experience it as a learner-owned construction.
Implications of Structural Coupling
The foundation of the relationship between educators and learners is structural coupling. The
excellent educator is one who is well adapted to his or her charges, and the students, in turn, are
well adapted to their educator. The most obvious implication is that learners need to be provided
opportunities for structural coupling that are consistent with learning goals. The converse is also
true: the environment must scaffold the teacher’s understanding of the learner’s experience. As a
history of structural coupling involves not just changes in the living system, but in the environment
as well, learners should be provided an environment rich enough to afford reorganization by the
learner (learners as designers) in pursuit of his or her learning goals.
Implications Effective Action
In addition to pointing learners in particular directions, educators also act as mediators between
learners and the worlds of meaning to which they have oriented their charges. Worlds of meaning
are metaphorically conversations among the members that comprise these worlds. Educators
scaffold the ability of learners to enter into conversation with members of these worlds, to engage
in effective action within the domains these worlds encompass. This suggests that learners have
access to various communities of practice and other ongoing worlds of shared understanding. It
is important to remember that the classroom is an environment in which learners can create their
own shared worlds of understanding and their own communities of practice. While this activity
is already present in the classroom, the educator may wish to make it visible so that learners may
experience it reflexively. Contributing to the development of this shared world once it is visible
requires that the environment be rich enough to afford problem setting as well as problem solving.
DESIGN IMPLICATIONS
Problems with Prescription
When I prescribe I create a number of problems from the enactive perspective. First of all, we
know that instruction (transmission of information or knowledge) is not possible. So, prescription
is a matter of so constraining the possibilities available to learners that their responses will fall