Vygotsky’s perezhivanies with Dewey’s occupations: Improving integration of teaching and assessing via creative learning units

ABSTRACT

The work of teachers is regularly quizzed and questioned. The responses called for commonly implicate assessment, as this provides answers about learning, which many believe directly translate into answers about teaching. We question teaching differently, beginning with the basic what, how and who questions, while also posing the why question: ‘Why do you teach?’ This enables us to draw student engagement and achievement of intended learning outcomes into closer relation via an improved integration of teaching and assessing. In our exploration of these questions, we engage with aspects of Vygotsky’s and Dewey’s educational theories, highlighting correspondences and differences. Our aim is to illuminate convergence around two key concepts: perezhivanies and occupations. Both speak to recognition of a unit of life as a unity of person in context that can function as a unit of study in educational terms. We bring this theoretical convergence to teaching practice via creative learning units. This unit planning framework offers a coherent approach that entwines student engagement and the achievement of intended learning outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Vygotsky
• Dewey
• occupations
• perezhivanies
• creative learning units

Introduction

This article is organized around three basic questions: ‘What do you teach?’, ‘Who do you teach?’ and ‘How do you teach?’ that may be addressed to teachers as a part of their everyday working lives by parents and other teachers. We explore these questions to unpack the types of responses that teachers today may generally provide, in order to highlight the need to introduce further concepts that may support teachers in their attempts to articulate what they do and aim to achieve, and to suggest developments in teaching practice that may enable them to better achieve their goals.

We source these further concepts in the educational theories of Vygotsky and Dewey. Both Vygotsky’s advances in the field of educational psychology (and philosophy and paedology) and Dewey’s contributions to educational philosophy (and psychology and pedagogy) have impacted and continue to impact conceptions of education, including processes of learning and development, and thus teaching.

Our aim is to extend an argument presented in a previous article (Quay et al., 2022), which emphasized the level of scrutiny applied by teachers to the question ‘Who do I teach?’ This level of scrutiny influences the ways in which teachers design and conduct their teaching, with potential for diminished student engagement, alongside affects in motivation, agency, and voice. As a consequence, the achievement of intended learning outcomes across a cohort can be impacted (Abbott-Chapman et al., 2014).

This argument extension includes assessment, which has a complex relation with student engagement (Nichols & Dawson, 2012). And yet assessment is ostensibly the process of measuring student learning and, by proxy, teacher performance. We build on the argument made in the previous article by focusing more intently on how assessment can be better integrated into teaching in practical ways that embrace ‘learning as a social, collective … phenomenon’ (Lave, 1996, p. 149), in order to enhance student engagement and improve achievement of learning outcomes. We do this via further elucidation of the creative learning unit (CLUe) planning framework introduced in the previous article. The article therefore has two main parts, beginning with more theoretical concerns and then applying these to inform practical application.

PART 1: Theoretical concerns

Why do you teach?

Before we embark on exploring the three questions introduced above, a further question must be raised that sits underneath: ‘Why do you teach?’ This question is not frequently encountered in the everyday worlds of teachers, but it is crucial to comprehending the argument we are presenting here, and thus the teaching practices we are advocating in the second part of the article.

Exploration of this why question implicates both Vygotsky and Dewey, because each worked within a particular set of circumstances that contextualized their own ideas about education, a major intent of which was to help teachers better understand teaching. It could be argued that both Dewey and Vygotsky hoped to enable teachers to articulate more informed responses to the question ‘Why do you teach?’ – and also what, how and who questions—so as to improve their teaching, whilst also making contributions to the flourishing of democratic society in the USA (for Dewey) and communist society in the USSR (for Vygotsky).

It is well known that Dewey and Vygotsky were working in very different circumstances. Dewey’s USA and Vygotsky’s USSR were very different places politically and economically, but both shared the impact of evolutionary ideas laid out initially by Darwin and interpreted by others in various fields. For Dewey, Peirce’s interpretations and applications of evolutionary ideas were significant (Dewey, 1937; Nungesser, 2017); for Vygotsky, Marx’s played a pivotal role (Au, 2018; Nardo, 2021; Stetsenko, 2016).

‘Peirce lived when the idea of evolution was uppermost in the mind of his generation’, Dewey (1937, p. 416) reported. ‘He applied it everywhere. But to him it meant, whether in the universe of nature, of science or of society, continual growth in the direction of interrelations, of what he called continuity’ (p. 416). Drawing on Peirce’s work, Dewey emphasized the importance of this ‘principle of continuity or what may be called the experiential continuum’ in his own efforts to articulate a ‘philosophy of educative experience’ (1938a, p. 28).

Dewey acknowledged Peirce’s view that ‘science is the method of learning, not a settled body of truths’ (1937, p. 416). And he therefore declared that ‘the process of inquiry reflects and embodies the experiential continuum’, a continuum ‘which is established by both biological and cultural conditions’ (Dewey, 1938b, p. 246). Educative experience, for Dewey, was not just biological, nor just cultural; informed by evolutionary ideas, it was both.

Important for understanding differences with Vygotsky, Dewey described this process of inquiry as ‘a process of progressive and cumulative re-organization of antecedent conditions’ (1938b, p. 246). This position can be seen expressed in Dewey’s ‘technical definition of education’, where education is ‘that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience’ (1916, pp. 89–90). In this view, aligned with evolutionary ideas, education involves a progressive and cumulative re-organization of experience.

It is around this point that Vygotsky proposed a different view of education, specifically emphasizing the difference between learning, which is adaptive as Dewey portrayed it, and ‘cultural development’, which can move beyond the adaptive processes of ‘natural [or biological] development’ (Vygotsky 1997a, p. 223). ‘Culture itself profoundly refines the natural state of behaviour of the child and alters completely anew the whole course of his development’, Vygotsky (p. 223) stipulated. This meant that cultural development could not be considered as moving ‘along a completely straight line’; instead, ‘there are many leaps, breaks, and turns’ (1997b, p. 151). Hence, the concept of development certainly includes not just evolutionary but also revolutionary changes, regression, gaps, zigzags, and conflicts’ (1997a, p. 221).

As Stetsenko (2011) attests, ‘Vygotsky was strongly influenced by the Marxist account of human development and of the role of labour in it according to which the evolutionary origins of humans have to do with an emergence of a unique relation to the world’ (p. 32). This relation between humans and world was unique because it was not only biological but cultural as well, ‘realized not through adaptation but through the social practice of human labour—the collaborative (and therefore socio-cultural), transformative practice unfolding and expanding in history’ (p. 32).

For Vygotsky, learning is evolutionary, progressive, cumulative, and adaptive, as it is for Dewey; but development, by way of the imposition of culture, can be revolutionary, characterized by leaps. Importantly, these revolutionary developmental leaps are not disconnected from evolutionary development, for ‘revolution and evolution’ are ‘two mutually connected and closely interrelated forms of development’ (Vygotsky, 1997c, p. 99).

As Nardo (2021, p. 333) expresses it, Vygotsky is affirming ‘the distinction between learning as a continuous process, and development as a discontinuous process involving both biological inheritance [natural development] and its sociocultural transcendence [cultural development]’. This is due to the fact that ‘Vygotsky’s particular evolutionary perspective is based on the partial rejection of the Darwinian principle of adaptation’, as a result of ‘Vygotsky’s Marxist negation of a Darwinian adaptation paradigm’ (Nardo, p. 333). ‘This position assigns primary significance to human practice’, Stetsenko (2011, p. 38) argues, ‘with labour representing its generic form’; because ‘labour is capable of superseding and transcending adaptation’, for labour ‘transcends strictly deterministic forces of biological nature and allows for a leap [emphasis added] into the realm of freedom and self-determination’.

This difference between learning and development is central to our argument and informs responses to the question ‘Why do you teach?’ by challenging teachers to interrogate their own positions. Is teaching only for progressive and cumulative reorganization of experience occurring within a particular situation, without necessarily questioning that situation and its relevance to other situations? Or does teaching also work with the leaps and breaks achievable via cultural development that can transform such situations and others?

As we explore what, how and who questions posed to teachers in the next sections, unpacking responses that could be expressed by teachers today, we shall introduce aspects of Vygotsky’s and Dewey’s educational theories. Amongst teachers, Vygotsky is best known for the ‘zone of proximal development’ (Chaiklin, 2003) that has been used to inform discourses of ‘scaffolding’ (Verenikina, 2004), although these interpretations can be problematic (Gredler & Shields, 2004; Xi & Lantolf, 2021). Dewey is commonly known as the father of progressive education, yet he refused this title (Reese, 2001) and maintained that ‘the basic question concerns the nature of education with no qualifying adjectives prefixed’ (1938a, p. 90). The educational theories of both suffer questionable interpretations.

While Vygotsky, via his theory of development, explicitly challenged the founding of education on evolutionary ideas associated with processes of adaptation, Dewey, too, via his theory of experience, considered education to be concerned with significant social and cultural change. But rather than focusing on similarities, we intend to bring both theories into a complementary relationship, into convergence, around two concepts that have not featured prominently in teachers’ discussions of the work of Vygotsky and Dewey: ‘perezhivanies’ (Vygotsky, 2021a, p. 225) and ‘occupations’ (Dewey, 1916, p. 359).

Perezhivanie ‘is a self-moving entity: a unit of life that unfolds and affects itself’, explain Roth and Jornet (2016, p. 323), and ‘as such, perezhivanie not only offers new challenges and opportunities for research on learning and development, but also constitutes a distinct view of the kind of concrete psychology that Vygotsky began to initiate’ (p. 323).

Occupations also resemble units. Higgins (2005) points out that ‘no one lives in the world. We all live in a world, a world defined by what we notice out of the blooming-buzzing-confusion, and how we organize what we notice’, and ‘occupations, as complex purposive frames, are one of the chief organizing factors’ (p. 446). As Kliebard (2006) discerns, ‘occupations provide the starting point, not the end point, of Dewey’s curriculum’ (p. 125).

We endeavour to utilize these concepts to illuminate a more comprehensive theory of education that acknowledges the centrality of occupations, perezhivanies, as units of life. To support teachers further, we translate these ideas into practice via further elaboration of the creative learning unit (CLUe) planning framework introduced in the previous article.

What do you teach?

On meeting a local high school teacher during a school tour, an obvious question a parent may ask is ‘What do you teach?’ The expected answer will likely relate to a subject area of the school curriculum: ‘I teach science’, or ‘I teach history’. What a teacher teaches is informed by a curriculum framework that supports identification of knowledge and skill, commonly gathered into particular learning areas, subjects or disciplines, and beyond these into various capabilities or competencies. The same applies to teachers at any level of education: early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary. And what a teacher teaches cannot be dissociated from what a teacher assesses, because there is a logical throughline connecting them, expressed via ‘learning objectives’, sometimes referred to as ‘intended student learning outcomes’ (Anderson et al., 2001, p. 3fn). Teachers may apply specific interpretations of these as ‘learning intentions’, with more detail on achievement provided using ‘success criteria’ (English et al., 2022; Hattie & Timperley, 2007) or ‘performance criteria’ (Woods & Griffin, 2013, p. 332).

Many decades ago, Tyler (1949) argued that ‘the most useful form for stating objectives is to express them in terms which identify both the kind of behaviour to be developed in the student and the content or area of life in which this behaviour is to operate’ (pp. 47–48). This way of stating intended learning outcomes has been fairly common ever since, applying the general structure of ‘a verb and a noun’, which Anderson et al. (2001, p. 4) displayed using an example ‘from mathematics: “The student will learn to differentiate [verb] between rational numbers and irrational numbers [nouns]”’ (p. 5). In this example the verb is ‘to differentiate’, and the nouns are ‘rational and irrational numbers’. The verbs and nouns used to state intended learning outcomes can be further categorized, notably in the taxonomy achieved by Bloom et al. (1956), revised and augmented by Anderson et al. (2001).

This taxonomy of educational objectives was devised with the understanding that ‘teachers need a framework to help them make sense of objectives and organize them’ (Anderson et al., 2001, p. xxii). Such organization involves determination of the scope and sequence of the objectives, where ‘scope in the curriculum answers the question of what should be taught whereas sequence answers the question of when should diverse objectives and learning activities be emphasized’ (Ediger, 1996, p. 59). With a focus on units of study and specific lessons or sessions, teachers may frequently arrange this material in a ‘scope and sequence of topics’ (Moss et al., 2019, p. 29), with topics, operating as units, being the main organizing feature.

How do you know if the students have learned what your teaching intended?

Having been provided with this quite technical explanation of the structures informing what a teacher teaches, a persistent parent inquisitor may ask more searching questions, such as ‘How do you know if the students have learned what your teaching intended?’ The inquiring move is from what questions to how questions, particularly focused on assessment. What a teacher teaches cannot be separated from how a teacher assesses, with both aimed at learning. Intended learning outcomes are incorporated in some meaningful way by the teacher through the planning of sequenced, topic-orientated activities that students will undertake in a unit and lessons, including as assessment tasks. When these activities are ‘assessment activities’ they ‘signal what is to be learned’, and in doing so ‘they influence the approaches to learning that students take’ (Boud, 2007, p. 21). This means that, ‘in short, assessment frames what students do’ (p. 21), pointing to the integration of teaching and assessing.

There is a general awareness amongst teachers that assessing, as part of teaching, is geared towards “making judgements about students’ learning on the basis of evidence” (Yan & Boud, 2022, p. 11). In more detailed terms, this involves what we describe as an interface between the three types of artefacts involved—the intended learning outcomes, the assessment task, and the students’ work (Figure 1). Facilitating this interfacing of artefacts is the performance criteria. The performance criteria function in: (1) teacher design of the assessment task—by expressing the intended learning outcomes and other features of the product; (2) student performance of the assessment task—by guiding students’ interpretations of and responses to the assessment task; and (3) teacher evaluation of the students’ work—by informing teacher judgements about the students’ work and the inferences made in connection with the intended learning outcomes.

Figure 1. The assessment interface: performance criteria connecting the three artefacts.

More commonly, it is (3) above that is considered to be the ‘core of assessment’ (Joughin, 2009, p. 16): ‘(a) students’ work, (b) judgements about the quality of this work, (c) inferences drawn from this about what students know’. However, we argue that it is the performance criteria, facilitating the interface between the intended learning outcomes, the assessment task, and the students’ work, that is at the heart of assessment. The availability of performance criteria supports teachers utilizing ‘the assessed performance … to make inferences about intended student learning as it is described in the objectives’ (Anderson et al., 2001, p. 22). This means that the ‘performance is not the [learning] objective per se’ (p. 22), highlighting again the function of the performance criteria in support of the interface between the three assessment artefacts.

The assessment function of performance criteria supports making performance criteria transparent to students as an aid to learning (English et al., 2022). For, as Boud and Falchikov (2007) attest, ‘transparency not only invites analysis of task structure and purpose but fosters consideration of the epistemology of learning embedded in tasks; that is, the nature of what is needed to appreciate and execute the tasks’ (p. 183). This transparency is often achieved through teacher construction of an assessment rubric: ‘a document that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria … and describing levels of quality’ (Reddy & Andrade, 2010, p. 435).

Describing levels of quality pertaining to achievement of performance criteria can be challenging (Brookhart, 2018; Woods & Griffin, 2013). The challenge arises because quality descriptors for a performance criterion must have an acceptable level of construct validity: they must represent the actual capabilities of students in a cohort through performance of the specific criterion, within a particular task (Woods & Griffin, 2013). Achieving acceptable construct validity requires analysis of multiple iterations of performance over time. So, as Hattie and Timperley (2007) affirm, ‘teachers need to seek and learn from feedback (such as from students’ responses to tests) as much as do students’ (p. 104). An experienced teacher may have a broad sense of how students may be able to perform at a newly designed assessment task, but often without enough clarity to set quality descriptors that support accurate evaluation of performance, in line with a ‘developmental progression’ (Woods & Griffin, 2013, p. 339) mapped for instruction by scope and sequence.

How do you teach?—interpretations of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development

The workings of development

To continue this inquiry, it is worth shifting the conversation for a moment, from one between a parent and teacher, to one more likely between teachers themselves. The question ‘How do you teach?’ is not one normally posed by a parent to a teacher, yet it is of course a crucial question for teachers and others interested in theories that inform education practice. As mentioned above, when teachers discuss how to teach, assessment is often front and centre, and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development has played a significant role in assessment discourses.

Griffin (2007) recognized that student performance on an assessment task can be used by teachers—problematically – to emphasize deficit aspects, via those performance criteria students were unsuccessful in achieving, and hence ‘subsequent teaching tends to focus on what the students cannot do’ (p. 96). Importantly, Griffin argued that this way of utilizing assessment to inform teaching does not take into consideration ‘Vygotsky’s construct of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)—the zone in which an individual is able to achieve more with assistance than he or she can manage alone’ (p. 90). To move beyond a deficit approach, the teacher ‘needs to be able to identify the ZPD or “the state of readiness” [of the student] in the domain of learning being mastered’, Griffin pointed out, which has ‘implications for teaching and learning practice particularly as evidenced in studies of “modelling” and “scaffolding”’ (p. 90).

As implied by Griffin, Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development has been influential in generating greater understanding of how to teach, although not without interpretational challenges (Newman & Latifi, 2021; Veresov, 2017a). As Chaiklin (2003) advocated, ‘we need to understand what Vygotsky meant by development in general, if we are going to understand what he meant by zone of proximal development in particular’ (p. 46).

For Vygotsky, the heart of development lay in ‘the complex connections that develop between different functions in the process of development’ (Rieber & Wollock, , p. 92); that is, between the ‘lower elementary functions’ that are mainly the natural product of ‘biological evolution’, and the ‘higher functions … specific to humans’, that are the product of ‘historical development’ (Vygotsky, 2019a, p. 58). As Veresov (2021) portrays it, Vygotsky’s aim was ‘to understand and explain the relationship and interactions between lower (natural) and higher (cultural) psychological functions … through the reconstruction of the objective dialectics of the process of psychological development’ (p. 738).

Through his psychological investigations, Vygotsky found that ‘the higher psychological functions in the child … initially appear as forms of collective behaviour of the child, as forms of cooperation with other people, and only later do they become internal, individualized functions of the child’ (Vygotsky, 2019b, p. 83). Vygotsky (1993a, p. 296) described ‘the cultural development of higher psychological functions’ as occurring ‘in four basic stages’, which he exemplified using the example of arithmetic.

‘The first of these is the natural-primitive stage’, Vygotsky (1993a, p. 296) specified; for example, when a child ‘completes arithmetic operations through direct perception of quantities’, such as by spatially comparing groups of objects without actually counting them (cf., Piaget’s conservation of number task). ‘The second stage is the so-called stage of naive psychology, when a child accumulates certain experience about the means of cultural behavior, but cannot make use of those means’ (p. 296). An example of this is when a child sees someone counting on their fingers to help them solve a problem and copies this act but without understanding how this method works. ‘In the third stage of externally mediated acts the children already make proper use of external signs to carry out one or another operations (counting on fingers, and so on)’. And then, ‘finally, at the fourth stage external signs are replaced by internal ones and the activity is internally mediated (for example, in doing mental calculations)’ (p. 296)

For Vygotsky, this movement between individual and collective behaviour was a key movement of development. In educational terms, it highlights how the zone of proximal development is driven not by the actual level of development of an individual (what they can already do), but by the developmental movement (dialectic) achievable between collective behaviour and individual behaviour (what they could do within a collective). Vygotsky noted that, while it may initially seem contradictory to connect individual and collective in this way, these are ‘actually two aspects of one and the same process’, revealing ‘that only with an increase, an intensifying and differentiating of social experience does the personality of the child grow, become formed and mature’ (Vygotsky, 1997d, p. 250).

Voiced in more education-orientated language, Vygotsky argued that ‘what is important for the school is not what the child has already learned but what he is capable of learning’, and therefore, ‘school study should be determined not so much by what the child is capable of doing himself [sic] but by what he can do under guidance’ (Vygotsky, 2011, p. 206). A key educational feature here is the collective guidance designed as part of, or emergent within the work to be undertaken by all involved, including the teacher, because ‘the higher functions of intellectual activity arise out of collective behaviour, out of cooperation with the surrounding people, and from social experience’ (Vygotsky 1993b, p. 196). It is in this sense that performance criteria help scaffold approaches to achievement of an assessment task.

Central to the educational workings of the zone of proximal development is Vygotsky’s concept of imitation. Imitation is how he envisaged the child initially achieving maturing functions: through imitating the behaviours of others. ‘Aided by imitation, the child can always do more in the intellectual sphere than he is capable of doing independently’ (Vygotsky, 1998a, p. 201). However, ‘we do not have in mind mechanical, automatic, thoughtless imitation’ (p. 207), he stipulated, ‘but sensible imitation based on understanding the imitative carrying out of some intellectual operation’. Chaiklin (2003) pointed out that, for Vygotsky, imitation ‘is not a mindless copying of actions’ (p. 52); instead, ‘Vygotsky wants to break from a copying view, to give a new meaning to imitation—reflecting a new theoretical position—in which imitation presupposes some understanding of the structural relations in a problem that is being solved’ (p. 52).

The new meaning of imitation present in Vygotsky’s work dovetails neatly with a new meaning of habit that Dewey introduced, ‘one that goes deeper than the ordinary conception of a habit as a more or less fixed way of doing things’ (Dewey, 1938a, p. 35). For Dewey, habit expressed ‘that kind of human activity which is influenced by prior activity and in that sense acquired; which contains within itself a certain ordering or systematization of minor elements of action; which is projective, dynamic in quality, ready for overt manifestation’ (Dewey, 1922, pp. 40–41). It was imitation of a ‘system of habits’ (Vygotsky, 1997e, p. 112), expressive of matured functions, that Vygotsky was concerned with.

Personality and environment: force and source of development

With awareness of the important connection between individual and collective for development, Vygotsky (1998b) observed that, ‘we have studied inadequately the internal relation of the child to those around him [sic], and we have not considered him as an active participant in the social situation’ (p. 292). He pointed out that ‘if the child is a social being and his environment is a social environment, then it follows from this that the child himself is a part of this social environment’ (p. 293). With this in mind, Vygotsky coined another concept: the social situation of development. His aim was to better conceptualize the togetherness of individual and collective in the process of development.

The social situation of development of a given age is the starting point for all of the dynamic changes occurring in development during a given period. It determines wholly and entirely the forms and the path by following which the child acquires newer and newer properties of his [sic] personality, drawing them from the environment as the main source of his own development, the path by which the social becomes the individual. (Vygotsky, 2021b, p. 43)

Two concepts feature prominently in Vygotsky’s account of the social situation of development: personality (individual) and environment (collective). Vygotsky (2019b) was clear that the ‘environment serves in the development of the child in the sense of the child’s development of a personality’ (p. 79). And concomitantly, that ‘personality is a social concept; it encompasses what is supernatural [i.e. cultural] and historical in humanity. It is not innate, but arises as a result of cultural development’ (Vygotsky, 1997d, p. 242). Interestingly, Dewey (1938a) was also thinking about this sense of situation in similar ways, describing the importance of ‘both factors in experience—objective and internal conditions’, which, when ‘taken together, or in their interaction, … form what we call a situation’ (p. 42).

Apropos of the zone of proximal development, Vygotsky positioned the environment ‘as the powerhouse of development, i.e. it plays a role not as the setting, but rather as the source of development [emphasis added]’ (Vygotsky, 2019b, p. 79). And with environment as the source, he positioned personality as the driving force of development: source and force. ‘The key to the understanding of the psychology of age … is based in the problem of direction, in the problem of driving forces [emphasis added], in the structure of tendencies and aspirations of the child’ (Vygotsky,1998c p. 4), because ‘human activity is … structurally encompassed and regulated by integral dynamic tendencies—strivings and interests’ (pp. 8–9). He further stipulated that ‘such integral dynamic tendencies that determine the structure of the direction of our reactions can justifiably be termed interests’ (p. 8), utilizing a term—interests – that Dewey strongly emphasized in connection with education and experience.

Challenging educational interpretations of Vygotsky’s psychology

With this account of how Vygotsky’s work has been interpreted by many in education, it seems that Vygotsky and Dewey have quite similar views about the situation, about interest, about habits. However, as we disclosed earlier in this article, drawing on the work of Nardo (2021) and Stetsenko (2011, 2016), the important difference lies in the breaks, the leaps in development enabled by the process of development itself, when this is understood as more than adaptation. This poses a challenge for interpretations of ZPD that emphasize scaffolding, which, as Shvarts and Bakker (2019) point out, broadly refers to ‘temporary adaptive support’ (p. 5).

Vygotsky’s psychological investigations engendered an educational theory that went beyond comprehension of learning (arithmetic, for example), as if this ‘evolves [emphasis added] in the process of a child’s natural growth’ (Vygotsky 1993c, p. 166). ‘Now’, stated Vygotsky, ‘educators are beginning to understand that on entering a culture a child not only gets something from culture, assimilating it, inculcating something from the outside’; more than this, ‘culture itself reworks all the child’s natural behaviour and carves anew his entire course of development’ (p. 166). Consequently, ‘the distinction between the two paths of development (natural and cultural) becomes the fulcrum for a new theory of education’, he (p. 166) challenged. Vygotsky therefore concluded that ‘education must make an uphill climb precisely where it previously saw clear sailing; it must make a leap where before it seemed possible to limit itself to a step’ (p. 167).

In this way Vygotsky’s work presents a major challenge for theories and practices of education, which we aim to address by bringing Dewey’s occupations into conversation with Vygotsky’s perezhivanies, both plural here to emphasize concrete practices and not just theoretical concepts. In part two of this article, we apply the theoretical advances achieved through this conversation to considerations of educational practice via our elaboration of creative learning units. But prior to this we turn to issues surrounding the question ‘Who do you teach?’ that invoke specific aspects of Dewey’s work, leading to consideration of occupations.

Who do you teach? – Dewey’s child versus the curriculum

Returning to the parent on a school tour, now more aware of what the local high school teacher teaches and how they assess to gauge learning, the eager inquisitor may make a further questioning foray by asking, ‘Who do you teach?’ A common teacher response is to identify a particular year or education level: ‘I mainly teach ninth and tenth grade’, or ‘I teach in the middle school’. An elementary school teacher may respond with ‘I teach third grade’, a kindergarten teacher with ‘I teach four year old’s’, and a university teacher with ‘I mainly teach first years, the freshers’.

Who a teacher teaches is described in everyday language via these age, grade, or year-level categories; they identify who these people are. It is important to recognize that this identification is based on the age sequence, in years, as people move through early childhood, primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Who a teacher teaches is designated by this sequence of ages/grades/year levels. When this is brought together with what a teacher teaches, designated by the scope of learning areas/subjects/disciplines, the scope and sequence of a school curriculum is revealed, which teachers will then organize into topics.

Interestingly, this question and answer between parent and teacher might have played out very similarly nearly a century ago. Kliebard (2004) described the introduction of ‘a new curriculum device, the scope-and-sequence chart’ (p. 187) in various states of the USA in the 1930s, as a means of curriculum development. The ‘scope’ detailed ‘the actual subject matter of study’ drawn from ‘the “major functions of social life”’; while the sequence identified ‘centres of interest according to sequential grade level’ (pp. 187–188). Comprehending education via scope and sequence continues to inform teaching today, as revealed in the many support documents made available for teachers by education districts.

However, in pursuing education in this way, one side tends to be given priority by teachers and administrators: the scope—the actual subject matter of study. For this is what teachers and administrators can hold up as the substance, the material, the subject-matter that they work with and achieve. Individuals move through the system, represented only as sequenced subject-matter. As Dewey (1902) described it, ‘subject-matter furnishes the end, and it determines method. The child is simply the immature being who is to be matured’ or ‘the superficial being who is to be deepened’; and this ‘part is fulfilled’ when the child remains ‘ductile and docile’ (p. 8).

The ductile and docile child, the good student moving steadily through the sequenced subject-matter, is certainly not emblematic of the force of personality which Vygotsky described. But if this ductile and docile child does decide to invoke their strength of personality in a more agentic manner, the consequence, as Dewey (1902) observed, can be a conflicted education: ‘we get the case of the child vs. the curriculum; of the individual nature vs. social culture’ (p. 5). In order to dispense with this conflict, something has to give. In broad terms this tends to be the child, young person, or anyone being educated. They must be domesticated for life within the system, as student, as learner, which is generally achieved via practices of ‘classroom management’ (Sabornie & Espelage, 2023).

Alternatively, discourses of differentiation suggest that teachers can ‘proactively modify curricula, teaching methods, resources, learning activities, and student products to address the diverse needs of individual students and small groups of students to maximize the learning opportunity for each student in a classroom’ (Tomlinson, 2003, p. 121). Notably, however, differentiation strategies, while proactively considering the person being educated, still position this person as the student, the learner, with an emphasis on ‘academic diversity’ (p. 121).

Student and learner are the omnipresent collective nouns for people being educated. But such ubiquity hides a lack of words and will to indicate and enable more unique forms of agency, aspiration, and interest (Quay et al., 2022). The expectation, instead, is that they are chiefly there to be taught and to learn, as learners, and to have that learning assessed, an outcome of what Biesta (2019) calls the ‘ongoing “learnification” of education’ (p. 549) which, while seemingly favouring the young person, sits well with those more concerned with bureaucratic accountability (Biesta, 2015).

To go beyond this, more insightful and authentic conceptualizations are needed, of who students and learners are. Teachers are relatively well supported by the provision of resources to support their questions around what to teach, through institutional guidance and professional learning. Support for better understanding who they teach is less readily available, with the common assumption that teachers should be in a position to figure this out themselves, by meeting and talking with students, by getting to know them. Dewey’s sense of occupations, a term he aligns with vocations and callings, can provide teachers with a concept that enables them to think about and discuss who they are teaching in much more nuanced ways.

How do you teach? – Dewey’s occupations

Dewey articulated the basic position of occupations within his educational theory by speaking to how they may be applied by the teacher. ‘The young begin with active occupations having a social origin and use’, he related, and then ‘proceed to a scientific insight in the materials and laws involved, through assimilating into their more direct experience the ideas and facts communicated by others who have had a larger experience’ (1916, p. 227). This account is reminiscent of common interpretations of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, and it highlights Dewey’s sense of learning as adaptation.

In coming to an understanding of what Dewey meant by occupations, it is worth exploring the connection he made with interests. Dewey recognized that ‘an occupation … is often referred to as an interest’ (1916, p. 148). Dewey and Vygotsky both pointed to the importance of interests for comprehending a person, especially when considering their development, their learning. For Vygotsky, interests were not the aim or end of education, but rather the means to achieving these ends. ‘In education interests play the role of means’ (Vygotsky,1998c p. 24), he argued. As Dewey (1913) put it, ‘the genuine principle of interest is the principle of the recognized identity of the fact to be learned or the action proposed with the growing self; that it lies in the direction of the agent’s own growth’, so much so that the fact or action is ‘imperiously demanded, if the agent is to be himself’ (p. 7). And ‘just how to use interest to secure growth in knowledge and efficiency is what defines the master teacher’, he (Dewey, 1903, p. 31) proclaimed.

Interest is not some one thing; it is a name for the fact that a course of action, an occupation [emphasis added], or pursuit absorbs the powers of an individual in a thoroughgoing way. But an activity cannot go on in a void. It requires material, subject-matter, conditions upon which to operate. On the other hand, it requires certain tendencies, habits, powers on the part of the self. Wherever there is genuine interest, there is an identification of these two things. (Dewey, 1913, p. 65)

This connection between interests and occupations reveals a broader understanding of occupations than is typical in today’s vernacular. Dewey’s expanded meaning is often overlooked by teachers, leading to misunderstandings. To clarify what he meant, Dewey declared that there could be no ‘limitation of conception of vocation to the occupations where immediately tangible commodities are produced’ (1916, p. 359), which meant pushing back against ‘vocational education’ as ‘nothing but technical trade-training dignified with a high-sounding title’ (Dewey, 1915, p. 284). ‘For in schools’, Dewey (1916, p. 235) stipulated, ‘occupations are not carried on for pecuniary gain but for their own content. Freed from extraneous associations and from the pressure of wage-earning, they supply modes of experience which are intrinsically valuable’.

Dewey also argued against ‘the notion that vocations are distributed in an exclusive way, one and only one to each person’ (1916, p. 359). He used the occupation of artist to highlight how ‘no one is just an artist and nothing else, and in so far as he [sic] approximates that condition, he is so much the less developed human being; he is a kind of monstrosity’ (p. 359). This is because, as well as being an artist, that person ‘must, at some period of his life, be a member of a family; he must have friends and companions; he must support himself or be supported by others, and thus he has a business career’ (p. 359). His point is that a person’s life is comprised of a myriad of occupations. ‘We should not allow ourselves to be so subject to words as to ignore and virtually deny his [sic] other callings when it comes to consideration of the vocational phases of education’ (p. 359). These other callings are also occupations, which again broadens the everyday understanding of occupations in use today.

Why do you teach? – Dewey’s continuity and Vygotsky’s discontinuity

Occupations as perezhivanies as units

Returning to the question ‘Why do you teach?’ we recall Nardo’s (2021, p. 333) point, building on Stetsenko’s insights, that Vygotsky’s theory of education emphasizes ‘the distinction between learning as a continuous process, and development as a discontinuous process involving both biological inheritance and its sociocultural transcendence’. Notably, Dewey (1916) defined ‘an occupation’ as ‘a continuous activity having a purpose’ (p. 361), affirming that ‘occupation is a concrete term for continuity’ (p. 359), while making the further point that ‘education through occupations consequently combines within itself more of the factors conducive to learning than any other method’ (p. 361). In his own words, Dewey’s was ‘an educational scheme where learning is the accompaniment of continuous activities or occupations which have a social aim and utilize materials of typical social situations’ (p. 418).

Importantly, discontinuity is not separate from continuity. As Vygotsky (1997e, p. 99) asserted, ‘revolution and evolution’ are ‘two mutually connected and closely interrelated forms of development’. This position is recognized by Veresov (2017b), who argues for exploration of ‘the dialectics of evolutional and revolutionary aspects’ (p. 68) of development, as a feature of Vygotsky’s work. Veresov makes this point as an extension of his ‘analysis of perezhivanie as a theoretical tool’ (p. 51) employed by Vygotsky, acknowledging that this term ‘is quite difficult to explain and almost impossible to translate’, with ‘no English equivalent’ (p. 47). However, key to comprehending perezhivanie are Vygotsky’s ‘methodological questions’ concerning ‘the study of unity’ (Vygotsky, 2021a, p. 209).

Veresov explains that these questions involve distinctions between ideas of unity, unit, and element, pointing out that ‘a psychology that decomposes the complex mental whole into elements … will search in vain for the unity that is characteristic of the whole’ (N. Veresov, 2017b, p. 63). Speaking of perezhivanie, Vygotsky recognized ‘that it is necessary to study personality and environment in the child as a unity’; but problematically, ‘wishing to study a unity, we first break it up, and then try to link one thing with another’ (Vygotsky, 2021c, p. 236). Vygotsky’s message is that unity cannot be maintained via an elemental analysis as the unity is then broken apart, creating the further problem of how to put it back together. Instead, ‘a psychology concerned with the study of the complex whole must comprehend the necessity of analysis by units and not elements’ (N. Veresov, 2017b, p. 63). Units maintain the unity of the whole, as instances of the whole. In this regard, ‘perezhivanie is presented not as a unity (eдинcтвo), but as a unit (eдиницa) of the personality and the environment’ (p. 63).

We argue that Vygotsky’s understanding of perezhivanies as units can inform an interpretation of Dewey’s understanding of occupations as units. While Dewey did not define occupations as units, he did state that ‘active occupations should be concerned primarily with wholes’, where ‘wholes for purposes of education are not … physical affairs. Intellectually the existence of a whole depends upon a concern or interest; it is qualitative, the completeness of appeal made by a situation’ (1916, p. 232). Occupations in this sense are units and may be aligned with perezhivanies as units. An occupation, a perezhivanie, is a unit as an instance of life, as a ‘unique ontological realm’ (Stetsenko, 2011, p. 34), and in this way both are key to educational theory and practice.

We may identify a unit for the study of the personality and the environment. This unit in pathology and in psychology is known as perezhivanie. Perezhivanie is thus a [sic] simplest unit in relation to which we cannot say whether it presents in itself the influence of the environment upon the child or the features of the child himself; perezhivanie is a unit of the personality and the environment as it is presented in development. So in development the unity of environmental and personality moments is accomplished in a series of perezhivanies of the child. The perezhivanie must be understood as an inner attitude of the child as a person to this or to that moment of reality. (Vygotsky, 2021c, p. 238)

Importantly, through his educational theory, Vygotsky went beyond accounts of learning as continuity in the form of adaptation. Comprehending perezhivanies, occupations, as units, also affords a way of understanding discontinuity, the leaps in development, that Vygotsky described. Hence, ‘perezhivanie is a powerful concept allowing us to study development in its dialectical complexity’ (Veresov, 2017b, p. 68).

Education as evolution and revolution

Via his ‘attentive study of critical ages’, Vygotsky (2021c) was aware that in the move from one critical age to another, ‘there occurs a basic change in the perezhivanie of the child, in the basic type of his perezhivanie’ (p. 212). ‘Development in these periods resembles a revolutionary rather than evolutionary course of events’, he observed, where ‘the flow of development takes the form of acute crisis’ (pp. 26–27). He described ‘the crisis at three’ as presenting ‘an early moment of transition or turning, which is realized in this: from one type of perezhivanie, that is, one manner of experiencing the environment, the child proceeds to another. I would put it something like this’, he shared: ‘every crisis itself heralds, first and foremost, a change of perezhivanie’ (p. 212). For Vygotsky, this meant that ‘the environment for the child has become different, that the unity of personal and environmental moments has become completely new’, which ‘is to say that completely new perezhivanies have arrived, that old perezhivanies are replaced by the new ones of the critical age’ (p. 221).

Speaking of ‘the crisis at [age] seven’, Vygotsky (2021c) observed that ‘preschool perezhivanie is changed into that of school age’, which means ‘that there emerges a new unity of the environment and personality moments which yields the possibility of a new stage of development’. In developmental terms, ‘for the child, the relationship with the environment has been transformed [emphasis added], which means that the environment itself has changed, and therefore the course of the child’s development has changed, and a new epoch of development has arrived’ (p. 236). In such transformation, ‘there appear new drives and new motives’ for the child; ‘in other words, the engines of his activity are undergoing a reassessment of values’, meaning that some things of vital importance may now become ‘relatively unimportant in the following stage’ (p. 241).

Vygotsky’s account of critical ages highlights major crises in the lives of those children participating in his psychological investigations, each leading to the arrival of a new epoch of development. We suggest that these crises are precipitated by significant life events, such as starting school, that broadly impact the interplay of biological and cultural functions, and thus the zone of proximal development, across a vast array of perezhivanies, of occupations, that comprise the lives of those participants. In addition, there are new perezhivanies created by such significant life events adding to the person’s repertoire of perezhivanies, of occupations. And these have the potential to impact other perezhivanies, to transform them. But these major crises are not the only ones to transform perezhivanies, or to introduce new perezhivanies.

We argue that there exist other crises, other critical events, perhaps described as minor rather than major. These minor crises occur during the ‘stable ages’ (Vygotsky, 2021c, p. 27), still indicating transformations, but not as significantly across the majority of perezhivanies of the child. Minor crises are not the same as the gradualism of learning, as adaptation, occurring within an occupation. But they occur when such occupational learning creates conflict with other occupations, where meanings are different, where values are incompatible, then minor crises can arise, leading to a reassessment of what, how, who, and why, in relation to life.

Interestingly, Dewey (1916) acknowledged these forms of occupational evolution and revolution in his quest for ‘a measure for the worth of any given mode of social life’ (p. 96), which he derived from ‘two traits’ (p. 96) of social groups. The first: ‘how numerous and varied are the interests which are consciously shared’ (p. 96) amongst the members of a social group, which ‘signifies not only more numerous and varied points of shared common interest, but greater reliance upon recognition of mutual interests as a factor in social control’ (p. 100). This is a measure of an occupation, when only that occupation is considered. The second: ‘how full and free is the interplay with other forms of association’ (p. 96), which ‘means not only freer interaction between social groups … but change in social habit—it’s continuous readjustment through meeting the new situations produced by varied intercourse’ (p. 100). This is a measure of an occupation when it is juxtaposed with other occupations. And for Dewey, ‘these two traits are precisely what characterize the democratically constituted society’ (p. 100).

Evolution with revolution is the answer to the why teach question, a response that comes through from this analysis of Dewey’s and Vygotsky’s educational theories. But with this understanding, there remains the task of translating these theories into the practice of teaching. We do this via units of study, or perhaps better, units of work, acknowledging Dewey’s sense of occupations and Vygotsky’s understanding of ‘the general foundations of human labour’ (1997f, p. 188).

Many decades ago, Huebner recognized the importance of the unit of work in education, and its connection with life, referring to ‘the unit of study’ as ‘a “being-in-the-world”’ (Huebner, 1967, p. 175), referencing Heidegger who declared that being-in-the-world ‘stands for a unified phenomenon’ (Heidegger, 1996, p. 49). Being-in-a-world is a unit, an instance of this unity of being-in-the-world. Explaining further, Huebner advised that ‘if a curricular language can be developed so that the educator looks at the individual or the situation together, not separately, then his powers of curricular design and educational responsibility might be increased’ (p. 175). It is this that we are seeking via creative learning units (CLUes), which were introduced in a previous article (Quay et al., 2022), and further elucidated in the second part of this article.

PART 2: Practical application

Discovering and arranging occupations as perezhivanies: designing units of work

For teachers to employ occupations as perezhivanies in the design of units of work, they must confront the challenge of asking themselves what they will teach and who they will teach. With the first question, there is commonly a good deal of support; with the second, teachers are often left to their own devices. When both questions are considered together, they open up what Dewey identified as ‘the problem … of discovering and arranging the occupations’, so that occupations function as educational means to achieve the aim, the end, of learning the knowledge and skills required. But this is not a simple task. ‘It’s an extremely complicated psychological problem to determining [sic] how to discover a genuine interest’ (Vygotsky, 1997f, p. 84). Hence, Dewey shared that, in order to discover valuable educative occupations, teachers should be guided by three main points that describe such educative occupations.

Firstly, occupations ‘(a) that are most congenial, best adapted, to the immature stage of development’ (Dewey, 1933, p. 52). These educative occupations are not adult jobs but must be means for garnering interests inherently valuable to those being taught. In terms of Vygotsky’s educational theory, this means taking into account the unit as a perezhivanie, which means consideration of the unity of personality and environment, and the developing functions that can be supported by the social situation of development, acknowledging the zone of proximal development.

Secondly, occupations ‘(b) that have the most ulterior promise as preparation for the social responsibilities of adult life’ (Dewey, 1933, p. 52). This point has ramifications for education as evolution and revolution. These educative occupations must offer pathways towards future life, but these occupations are not themselves of this future life, because the meaning and values attributable to each as an ontological realm must be aligned with interests that connect at this time. However, when these educative occupations are juxtaposed with other occupations, this affords the possibility of considering issues of consistency and inconsistency between occupations, leading to transformations across multiple occupations. This revolutionary aspect is acknowledged by Dewey, who was clear that ‘education and experience cannot be directly equated to each other’, because ‘some experiences are mis-educative’, in that they have ‘the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience’ (p. 25), or, one could say, development. Such occupational juxtapositions should be planned as part of attending to the various educative occupations that may be offered, which is an aspect of arranging occupations as units of work.

Thirdly, occupations ‘that, at the same time, have the maximum of influence in forming habits of acute observation and of consecutive inference’ (Dewey, 1933, p. 52). These educative occupations must be supportive of the development of higher psychological functions associated with capabilities and competencies that support the use of scientific processes for problem solving and decision-making, many of which are expressed today as twenty-first century skills that will increase capacity for future learning and development. In the course of its conduct, an educative occupation must ‘present problems that awaken curiosity and create a demand for information’ (Dewey, 1933, p. 218). This is another opportunity for connecting occupations together, as this new information is likely to have been developed within another occupation, acknowledging that all of the academic disciplines are also occupational.

Planning with occupations as perezhivanies via creative learning units

Creative elements as what and who

As always, teachers must ask themselves the questions ‘What will I teach?’ and ‘What will they learn?’ and respond by collecting together the various descriptions of knowledge and skills they may teach, using relevant scope and sequence curriculum documentation if available. The CLUe process asks teachers to express the knowledge and skills they aim to teach as intended learning outcomes using the traditional verb and noun structure informed by Bloom et al. (1956) and Anderson et al. (2001). For example, ‘solve [verb] simple linear equations [nouns]’, which is a curriculum content descriptor commonly used in junior high school mathematics. A range of possibilities for intended learning outcomes can be identified to begin with, to be refined as the teacher contends with that other question: ‘Who?’

Before leaping straight to the question ‘How?’ – which is a temptation—teachers must ask themselves ‘Who will I teach?’ in the sense of ‘Who will I expect these people to be via my teaching?’ Like curriculum content descriptors, interests will be expressed using verb and noun, but with the verb ‘being’ replacing any other verb. For example, the mathematics content descriptor mentioned above could be expressed as an interest in the way of ‘being a solver of simple linear equations’, where ‘being a solver’ turns the verb ‘solving’ into the noun ‘solver’, but now in association with the verb ‘being’. However, being a solver of linear equations may not be an interest that a teacher believes will be significant to the 12- to 15-year-olds in a junior high school class in this community. Yet ‘being a maker of online videos’ might be.

The creative challenge for the teacher is to design a shared and relevant occupation which requires the solving of simple linear equations, and therefore the teaching of how to solve simple linear equations; but with the meaning of this activity now embedded within a broader and more genuinely significant occupation shared by the class. There is much scope here for the teacher to creatively play with the list of possible intended learning outcomes and the list of possible interests with the aim of seeking some possible pairings between the two lists that enable occupational crafting. ‘Being a maker of online videos’ could be paired with ‘solve simple linear equations’ in an occupation, in a creative unit design.

With these two lists, and the possible pairings between them, the teacher can now ask the question ‘How?’ ‘How will personality and environment, child and curriculum, come together in the unit as perezhivanie?’ This involves another verb and noun combination, built around the idea of ‘creating a creation’. If the teacher, for example, has paired ‘being a maker of online videos’ (who) with ‘solve simple linear equations’ (what), this may be expressed as ‘making [creating—verb] an online video about solving simple linear equations [creation—noun]’ (how) (Figure 2). This is a relatively simplistic example of the CLUe process, but it should convey the basic ideas behind bringing who-how-what together.

Figure 2. The who-how-what as being-doing-knowing of this example creative learning unit.

Creative enterprise as occupation

Who-how-what together, as in the example above, form a creative enterprise (Quay et al., 2022). This is the unit as a whole, as a broad occupation: ‘being a maker of an online video about solving simple linear equations’. This is not the unit title, which should be expressed in words that connect with those being taught; and it is very different from the more conventional practice of building the unit around a topic. In terms of how, as creating a creation, the enterprise can be described via its shared performance-product: ‘making an online video about solving simple linear equations’. This is the unit, the enterprise, having an end, a goal, that all are striving for. The unit as enterprise can also be described via its shared problem: ‘being a maker of online videos’ who can ‘solve simple linear equations’ as shown via achievement of the performance-product. This is the unit having a beginning that connects directly to the unit’s end goal, together conveying an enterprise that the people being taught are asked to engage with, to take on.

The use of the word ‘shared’ to describe performance-product and problem is deliberate. As Vygotsky highlighted, it is the social environment that is the source of development, while personality is the force of development. Together in perezhivanie as a unit, they are the social situation of development, with the zone of proximal development informed by this. In most institutional teaching and learning situations, the closest social environment is the class group. Even if a teacher works with children individually, all recognize that they are part of a designated class group. However, working with sub-groups inside a larger class group often enables a much richer social situation of development to be established, because social engagement is more frequent and more complex. But this then needs to be planned for and managed as part of the creative enterprise. And this points to the next planning consideration, which requires the teacher to ‘unpack the unit as a creative enterprise into episodes which build towards achievement of the final creation as shared performance-product’ (Quay et al., 2022, p. 642).

Creative episodes as occupations within an occupation

The planning process encouraged by CLUes does not leap from the creative enterprise straight to lessons or sessions. Instead, the creative enterprise is considered to be comprised of a collection of episodes or sections, not dictated by curriculum content cut to fit timetabled lessons (although fitting within time and other constraints will need to be addressed), but by the enterprise itself as an occupational undertaking. It is worth noting that even if the unit culminates in a formal examination, CLUes position this as a shared performance-product, with episodes structured appropriately.

Episodes are themselves occupations that unfold in support of achieving the overall, broad occupation as enterprise. This means each episode has its own shared performance-product and shared problem, arrived at by considering how to build towards achievement of the enterprise as a whole. Continuing with the example enterprise, ‘being a maker of an online video about solving simple linear equations’, then the final episode is the actual making the online video itself, about solving linear equations. The final episode is always the finalizing of the enterprise. But jumping straight into creation of this online video is to take too big a step; episodes are required. Each episode can function as its own occupation, contributing to the broader occupation as enterprise.

As mentioned above, setting up the unit to run with small groups or teams, teams that stay together for a significant duration, perhaps for the entire enterprise, may result in a richer social situation of development comprising more opportunities for imitation of others in terms of actions and judgements, in the zone of proximal development. For this purpose, higher (cultural) functions are embedded in the performance criteria. The first episode, then, should set up the forming of teams, where the teams know that they will be tasked with achievement of future episodes and the enterprise as a whole. This team-focused episode runs along for the entire enterprise, as it characterizes the whole. In this sense, the unit could be described as ‘being a member of a team making an online video about solving simple linear equations’.

Working backwards from the final episode, another episode can be added that will assist achievement of the enterprise: creation of a storyboard for the online video. Rather than tackling the video itself straightaway, a storyboard will assist teams to appropriately plan how they will show and teach others how to solve simple linear equations. This storyboarding episode is an occupation fitting within the purposes of the broader occupation as enterprise.

So, this unit as an enterprise will have three episodes. Some units may have two episodes, others may have three or more, depending on the complexity of the unit and the time available. Important to recognize is that the unit cannot be simply divided into episode one focused on learning about solving simple linear equations (thereby taking up most of the unit with the curriculum content) and episode two focused on making an online video (taking up less of the unit, with this as inducement). This would resemble a conventional topic-focused unit, with the online video offered as a carrot to entice engagement. However, such an arrangement does not champion achievement of a high quality performance-product, and devalues the interests of those involved.

Shared performance criteria as assessment interface

Like the enterprise, each episode will have creative elements, a shared performance-product and shared problem, articulated using the same verb-noun formats as appeared in the creation of the enterprise. In addition, for each episode, performance criteria will be generated. These criteria are crucial to the conduct of the CLUe, as we made clear in our earlier description of performance criteria as assessment interface, connecting the intended learning outcomes, the assessment task (performance-product) and the students’ work.

We are making a subtle but important distinction here between performance criteria and the quality descriptors that help to define them. These can be developed with input from all involved, informed by engagement with the performance criteria when the unit is underway. As Chaiklin (2003) recognized, ‘assessment procedures should be aimed at identifying the current status of these maturing functions’, and ‘because these functions are inadequate for independent performance, it is necessary to identify them through dynamic, interactive procedures that provide indications for estimating the extent of their development’ (p. 50). Identifying quality descriptors with such input assists all involved in working with the variance that can be a feature of the zone of proximal development.

With CLUes, however, the performance criteria encompass more than just expression of the intended learning outcomes. Some of the performance criteria will provide evidence, enabling judgements and inferences to be made regarding student learning in connection with the intended learning outcomes. But these will be complemented by performance criteria that exist for the broader purpose of achieving a high-quality performance of the performance-product itself, guiding creation of the performance-product. These will support learning, but perhaps not as outcomes sourced from curriculum documents.

The shared criteria are made transparent to all at the beginning of the episode. These criteria are designed to guide achievement of the performance-product for all involved, whether individuals or teams. And in this sense, they are a basic expression of the teacher’s understanding of the zone of proximal development for this class; they scaffold approaches to achievement of the performance-product. But more than this, the criteria enable a process of regular ‘feed up [where am I going?], feed back [how am I going?] and feed forward [where to next?]’ (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, p. 86) to be established, with the ‘feed’ derived not just from the teacher, but between and amongst the individuals and groups.

Building on the example enterprise occupation used above of ‘being a maker of an online video about solving simple linear equations’, and considering this as driving the final episode of the unit, the shared criteria may be as simple as, for example, ‘the online video runs for a set time’, and ‘the online video shows the steps needed to solve a linear equation’, and ‘the online video communicates in ways that engage the intended audience’. These criteria, or something similar, may also be in play for the episode focused on the storyboard, because this precedes and leads to the episode focused on the online video.

Feedback will be provided using these and other criteria, as individuals and teams are taught the draft work of others by these others, enabling them to understand this work in order to provide supportive feedback commentary, via the performance criteria. This feedback will primarily be yes or no in terms of achievement if there are no quality descriptors identified. However, as mentioned, discussions emanating from provision of this feedback can form the beginnings of determination of quality descriptors. The aim is for everyone to improve, so there should be multiple iterations of sharing draft performance-products as works-in-progress, all in service of creating higher-quality performance-products. If teams are used to structure the unit, then conversations between team members, as they work on their performance-product, will also be driven by these criteria and conversations around quality.

Such conversations reveal guidance being shared between people that informs not only actions but also judgements (Boud & Falchikov, 2007). This impacts who these people are, for the expectation is no longer that they be ductile and docile, but rather something approaching the opposite: determined and dynamic. Agency is central.

They have to determine what is to be learned, how it is to be learned and how to judge whether they have learned it or not. They would not expect to do this independently of others or of expert sources of advice, but it is required that they mobilise themselves and their own resources, taking a much more dynamic position in the tasks of learning and assessment. (Boud, 2007, p. 18)

These determinations are achieved with the input and guidance of the teacher and others, through multiple iterations of sharing work-in-progress, revealing enactment of the zone of proximal development wherein individuals are always considered part of some social situation, even if this is simply the class as a whole. Through these multiple iterations, there may be a determination that further knowledge and skill are required to achieve the performance-product which is not readily available amongst the class members. In these situations, intervention by the teacher through direct instruction of subject-matter will be supportive. But the advance here is that the class members, in being the people the occupation is expecting, have helped determine the need for this knowledge and skill, and the parameters defining this need.

Finally, it is worth stressing again how teachers can work to generate quality descriptors through CLUes. As mentioned earlier, these are challenging for a teacher to develop, especially before an assessment task has been completed, at least once. The multiple iterations of sharing work-in-progress enable determined and dynamic class members to themselves become involved in developing quality descriptors for relevant performance criteria, for the class as a whole, in an episode.

Conclusion

‘Who do you teach?’ ‘What do you teach?’ ‘How do you teach?’ Teachers must ask these questions of themselves. Each question is important, and all are found in the deeper and broader question ‘Why do you teach?’ In this article, we have stressed the necessity of asking these questions and provided theoretical and practical responses through the education theories and concepts offered by Dewey and Vygotsky.

Of particular interest to us has been the convergence possible around Vygotsky’s perezhivanies and Dewey’s occupations, both of which speak to the unit of work in education as a unit of life. This enables not only teaching to be reframed, but education more broadly, suggesting ways to better combine achievement of learning outcomes with engagement, as well as ways to consider pathways through education that are both evolutionary and revolutionary for the learning and development of those involved. Central to this quest is improved integration of teaching and assessing, which can be achieved via the assessment interface provided by performance criteria.

The challenge, then, is to bring this theory to practice in ways that make sense to teachers who are asking the basic questions we have identified. Key here is an emphasis on teachers’ creativity in the planning that is conducted around units of work. Creative learning units, CLUes, offer a way to consider implementation of theory that draws the complexity into a simpler frame. However, there is always more work to be done in thinking through the theory and the practices suggested. We encourage others to take this framework and play with it, and to continue to develop it for the benefit of all.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.