March 2003
Volume 16, Number 3
Educational Study Takes on New Text With Semiotics
 Donald J. Cunningham is the Barbara Jacobs Chair in education and technology and member of the faculties of education, cognitive science, semiotic studies and informatics at Indiana University in Bloomington. He teaches graduate courses and seminars in the learning, cognition, and instruction program in the department of counseling and educational psychology. He pursues research and development in computer mediated instruction and is a leading contributor to the development of semiotic/ constructivist theories of learning and instruction. |
I completed my doctoral program in educational psychology at the University of Illinois in 1969 under the supervision of Richard C. Anderson and moved to Indiana University, where I am today.
I began my career as a behaviorist, a staunch advocate of B.F. Skinner and the programmed instruction movement, just like my mentor. I was deeply enmeshed within and committed to the scientific study of learning and to systems approaches to the design and development of instruction. I believed that with the proper application of rational canons of science and utilizing an evolving arsenal of methodological tools, we educational psychologists would be able to generate lawful descriptions of the teaching/learning process and, eventually, deliver prescriptions for educational practice.
Although I changed my theoretical proclivities to cognitive information processing as the field of psychology shifted away from behaviorism, I maintained a strong commitment to the traditional model of educational research. During this period, I was carrying out a modest program of research on "prose learning;" that is, learning by reading. I wanted to know what features of prose materials lead to efficient and effective learning outcomes? What strategies should we teach students in order to optimize comprehension? My move away from traditional psychological models began when I wondered exactly what I (and others, as well) meant by prose, text, discourse, etc. To cut a very long story short, this inquiry led me through a maze of discourse theory, literary criticism, hermeneutics, genre, intertextuality, poetics, and inevitably to semiotics.
I remember attending a meeting of the Semiotic Society of America in Bloomington in 1979 and being dazzled by the magnificent array of theoretical conceptions on display. The notion of text takes on quite a different meaning when applied to such diverse phenomena as a ballet, a barroom conversation, the Empire State Building, a seating arrangement at the United Nations, clothing, and so forth. At the time, the majority of research on text learning relied upon perhaps two-dozen texts. (Old-timers will remember Circle Island, a chapter from Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us, etc.) Yet psychologists continued to make sweeping generalizations about text processing and reading as if text were a fixed effect in an ANOVA model. What an impoverished conception of text we had, and consequently what an impoverished view of cognition. I was appalled at my own insularity as a psychologist from the research and writing of so many legendary figures, such as Charles S. Peirce, Roland Barthes, Claude Levi-Strauss, Gregory Bateson, Thomas Sebeok, Umberto Eco, and many more too numerous to mention. I grew resentful of the fact that my training had been so narrow and biased toward a particular world-view of scholarship, and not a little depressed about how insignificant I had come to regard my own previous work and that of most of the rest of my close colleagues at Indiana and elsewhere. A crossroads in my professional - and, as it turns out, personal - life.
When I became confident enough in my own emerging understanding and began speaking and writing about what semiotics might have to offer to education, I was greeted with reactions ranging from benign tolerance from friends and close colleagues to total incomprehension and, at times, hostility from others. More importantly, there was no community of kindred spirits, no identifiable reference group with whom we could share our ideas, sharpen and develop them. In part to form such a community, Gary Shank and I founded Semiotics and Education, a special interest group within the American Educational Research Association. But to our utter amazement, others of a semiotic persuasion "outed" themselves and the rest, as they say, is history.
Although we semioticians are certainly a long way from occupying the position of "normal science" in Kuhnian terms, the term semiotic is slowly creeping into the discourse of educational theory and research. The renewed interest in Vygotsky, the re-evaluation of Piaget's constructivism and the increased availability of primary and secondary sources on Peirce's work are only a few of the factors contributing to the gradual emergence of semiotics. We have even reached the point where recent textbooks on the psychology of learning and instruction (e.g., Driscoll, 2000) give extended and sympathetic treatments. Indiana University is exactly the kind of open and inclusive environment for alternative conceptions to flourish, and I am today professor of Educational Psychology, Cognitive Science, Informatics and Semiotic Studies, as well as Jacobs Chair in Education and Technology. That seems nontraditional to me.
REFERENCE
Driscoll, M.P. (2000). Psychology of Learning for Instruction (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
