What is critical for transforming higher education? The transformative potential of pedagogical framework of phenomenography and variation theory of learning for higher education

ABSTRACT

This article reviews some key literature of Phenomenography and Variation Theory of Learning as an outline of a pedagogical framework for transforming higher education. Transformation implies change in ways that can deliver on the promise of social justice or what we call socially just pedagogies. It implies that one must understand what needs to transform and how transformation can be made possible in higher education. This process requires an understanding of how the object of transformation appears to people before and after change; what individuals, communities and societies need to learn to act as agents of transformation in and across societies. It is this specific question of ‘what is to be learnt?’ that is the key focus of the proposed framework in relation to specific groups of people, educational contexts, and educational purposes, rather than generic processes of teaching, learning, teacher education or generic skills, such as thinking skills, teacher competencies, teaching styles and methods.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• learning
• pedagogy
• phenomenography
• teaching
• transformation
• variation theory of learning

Introduction

Phenomenography was first introduced by Ference Marton (1981) as a qualitative research specialisation which focused on “content-oriented and interpretative descriptions of the qualitatively different ways in which people perceive and understand their reality.” ‘Phenomenography’ originates from the Greek words ‘phainemenon’, which means appearance, and ‘graphein’, which means description. A Phenomenon refers to ‘the thing as it appears to us’ (Marton & Booth, 1997). It started in the early 1970s when a Swedish research group of educational researchers conducted empirical studies on learning in Gothenburg (Marton, Dahlgren, Svensson, & Säljö, 1977). Their interest was in qualitative differences in learners’ understandings of the subject matter in the process of learning, rather than how much they learn.

While the classic research interest is in describing differences/variation in the ways in which the same object appears to different people in the same group, phenomenographic development has involved interest in theoretical explication of qualitative differences in learning and the nature of learning and awareness (Bowden & Marton, 1998; Marton & Booth, 1997). Focus shifted from the “second-order perspective” of describing different ways of understanding the world around us (Marton, 1981) towards first-order perspective of explicating the nature of learning itself and identifying what makes learning possible (Marton & Booth, 1997; Marton & Morris, 2002; Marton & Tsui et al. 2004). This development builds on phenomenographic descriptions of variation in understanding of the same phenomena and enhances it by identifying why understandings vary, what makes it possible to discern and focus on something, and identifies a way of experiencing something in terms of the critical aspects of the phenomenon as discerned by the learners (Pang, 2003). This shift in emphasis has been described as “two faces of variation” and the latter as “new Phenomenography” (Pang, 2003). This new development came to be known as the Variation Theory of Learning, which has been developed by Professor Ference Marton with his colleagues in the University of Gothenburg and the University of Hong Kong (Marton, 2015; Marton & Morris, 2002; Marton, Tsui et al, 2004). Furthermore, its application resulted in the “Learning Study” model for research on the classroom learning and is focused on “the object of learning” (Marton, 2015; Marton & Pang, 2006; Pang & Marton, 2003). Åkerlind (2015) reviews recent developments of Phenomenography and Variation Theory and describes the potential of Variation Theory for informing curriculum design and development in higher education. Recent discussions have focused on the relationships between Phenomenography, Variation Theory and Learning Study (e.g. Rovio-Johansson & Ingerman, 2016; Pang & Ki, 2016; Svensson, 2016; Åkerlind, 2017). Phenomenography has been characterised as a theory of awareness and Variation Theory as a “theory of learning” in terms of difference in focus, even though both are seen as interrelated (Åkerlind, 2017). Svensson (2016) emphasises a relationship between Phenomenography and Variation Theory in integrating research on teaching and learning as aspects of the same whole in its context. Pang and Ki (2016) highlight the concept of “critical aspect” as a “connecting thread” between the three research strands. For example, Hella’s (2007a, 2007b, 2008) phenomenographic studies identified variation in ways of understanding of Lutheranism presented in five categories of description amongst a group of Finnish Student’s and four categories amongst a group of Teachers’ of Religious Education in Upper Secondary School. Each way of understanding was analysed in terms of what the key meaning of Lutheranism was in the focal awareness as expressed by the students and teachers and how the meaning was constituted as a part-whole-context relationship. The aspects discerned and focused upon defined the critical differences between ways of understanding. (The categories of description formed an outcome space of inclusive hierarchy in a continuum of growing complexity, differentiation and integration from first category to the last. The critical differences between students’ understandings were described in terms of variation in focus across the five main aspects represented in each category: 1) religion vs. non-religion, 2) religious tradition (cultural differences, 3) true vs. nominal Christian way of life, 4) personal vs. mediated relationship with God 5) Core of Faith: Mercy/freedom vs. guilt. Furthermore, the critical differences between teachers’ understandings were described in terms of variation in focus across the four main aspects represented in each category: 1) historical, 2) socio-cultural, 3) doctrinal and 4) spiritual aspect, by which the key meaning of Lutheranism was discerned. The aspects that mark variation and critical differences between ways of understandings were identified as critical aspects, which correspond to dimensions of variation, within which the aspect was discerned through experienced variation and can be opened for further variation to improve learning.

Phenomenography has become increasingly popular in various disciplinary fields of educational research (See, Åkerlind, 2015, 2017; Pang & Ki, 2016; Rovio-Johansson & Ingerman, 2016; Tight, 2015). Tight (2015) points out that it is “arguably the only research design (so far) to have been developed substantially within higher education research by higher education researchers” (Tight, 2015). Phenomenography has played a key role in informing the development of the pedagogical framework for scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education (Booth & Woollacot, 2015; Trigwell, Martin, Benjamin, & Prosser, 2000), and it is here wherein lies its transformative potential and the possibilities for what we call socially just pedagogy in higher education.

This paper suggests that this pedagogical framework has the transformative potential to widen awareness of differences in people’s understandings of complex, contested subject matters or contents of social phenomena and their underlying theoretical commitments, values, and worldviews which relate to human behavior in their social environment. We will focus on the key concepts of Phenomenography and Variation Theory as tools for identifying what is necessary, and what is important for learning about the world and how such learning takes into account variation in ways of understanding the world. This idea is the basis for socially just pedagogies because the focus is on the student learning and not on personal markers of difference. Collectively, the framework and its tools allow us to think about how to enrich pedagogy with ideas pertaining to social justice in education. Our first foray in presenting socially just pedagogies in relation to phenomenography.

Phenomenography—an approach to describing variation in ways of understanding

Nature and aim of phenomenography

The aim of Phenomenography is “to find out the different ways in which people experience, interpret, understand, apprehend, perceive or conceptualize various aspects of reality” (Marton, 1981). Phenomenography is “an instrument for description of the way people think in concrete situations and, from the collective perspective.” Marton (1981) clarifies that the intention is:

Not, however, to classify people, nor is it to compare groups, to explain, to predict, nor to make fair or unfair judgements of people. It is to find and systematize forms of thought in terms of which people interpret aspects of reality - aspects which are socially significant and which are at least supposed to be shared by the members of a particular kind of society. (Marton, 1981).

Phenomenography explores variation in the collective awareness of something in a particular situation, the ways of experiencing or understanding a particular object, in terms of ‘critical differences’ that can be discerned between understandings of the same object within a group of individuals. Variation implies relationality: something is different, yet something remains the same. Differences are due to different aspects of the same object that appear to the fore of awareness of different people in particular situations. (Marton & Booth, 1997).

Phenomenography has been described as a “theory of awareness” (Åkerlind, 2017; Marton & Booth, 1997). Awareness means a totality of person’s simultaneous experiences, relatedness to the world (Marton & Booth, 1997). It is structured: some things come to the fore in a particular situation and others are tacit. Therefore, is possible for a phenomenographer to analyse aspects that are focused upon, explicit in relation to aspects that are implicit in the context of expressed meanings. There is a limited number of different ways of understanding an object in every situation due to limitations of perception: “different people may notice, pay attention to or focus on the different features of the same thing”. (Marton & Pang, 2006)

The purpose of Phenomenography was to serve the pedagogical interest of understanding and improving learning. The early Phenomenography was informed by two research questions: (a) ‘What does it mean to say that some people are better at learning than others?’ and (b) Why are some people better at learning than others?’ (Marton, 1994a). The intention was to understand qualitative differences in learning and the nature of learning itself has led to the question of “what does it take to learn?” and thus the formulation of the Variation Theory of Learning (Marton & Booth, 1997; Marton, Tsui et al., 2004).

Non-dualistic ontology and epistemology

A way of seeing, experiencing or understanding something is the basic unit of phenomenographic research. It is a relational concept: it reflects our relatedness to the world. The nature of this unit is based on non-dualistic ontological view of the experiential relationship between the person and “the world.” Any change in this internal relationship change both the world as experienced and the person who experiences it. Learning means qualitative change in this relationship. Based on the notion of intentionality all mental acts are directed towards something, something beyond themselves (Marton & Neumann, 1989). This is the constitutionalist perspective of Phenomenography, “According to the idea of constitution, a cornerstone of ‘the phenomenological movement’, the individual and the world form a unity, we live in the world, a world which is an experienced, a lived in, a thought about world. It is both objective and subjective, a real world, the only world we have” (Marton & Neuman, 1989; Marton & Booth, 1997; Bowden, 2005).

Phenomenographic perspective thus provides an alternative to the dualism between the subjective ‘inner’ and objective ‘outer’ world of constructivism, according to which the individual creates the world which is separate from the real world and the constructivist focus on mental structures, whether individual (individual or cognitive constructivism) or social (social constructivism) which separate us from the world around us. (Bowden, 2000a; Marton & Booth, 1997). Phenomenography rejects both the constructivist view that our mental or material acts are the main source of knowledge and the empiricist notion of knowledge originating from “the outer reality through our senses impinging on our minds” (Marton & Neumann, 1989). Marton and Neuman (1989) state the phenomenographic position which “coincides with neither that of constructivism, nor that of realism (according to which true knowledge mirrors what the world is really like),” even though they agree with “Glaserfeld’s emphasis on the world-as-experienced as the realm of human thought” pointing out that even the radical constructivists do not deny the existence of a reality independent of the experiencing human being, but rather its accessibility and thus the notion of objective truth. In rejecting “the constructivist thinking that the individual can never get in touch with the reality that he is divorced from” Marton and Neumann (1989) point out that if “all knowledge is assumed to be derived from the individual’s constructing activity, it is very difficult to see how he can find out about the constraints imposed by the surrounding world that would lead to accommodation.” Although Marton and Neumann (1989) reference to realism seems to represent naïve realism, their criticisms of constructivism actually reside with the principles of critical realism, which affirms both the existence of ontological reality largely independently of the human beings, who being part of and in internal relationship with reality can gain knowledge of–even if only partial, limited by and relative to socio-cultural and temporal context.

Experience or understanding is conceptualized holistically as a person-world relationship, including all the ways in which the world is made sense of. According to Marton and Neumann (1989) “An experience always takes someone to do the experiencing and something to be experienced; the experience comprises a relation between them. Marton (2015) reminds us that “there is not description without someone doing the describing.” Marton (2015). Marton (1996) explains this as follows:

To experience the world is to participate in its constitution, even though the world is far more than each one of us can experience individually. But our experience is part of the world experienced, or simply, of the world. There are not two worlds, the real world on the one hand, and the experienced world on the other. There is one world, it is real, and it is experienced. That is not to say that our experience is all there is, but our (experienced) world is surely part of the world. And so it is our collective experience, the totality of all possible ways of experiencing it. In actual fact we experience the world as transcending our own experience of it. Seen in this way the dualist notion of the world out there (the real world) and the world in here (the world as perceived) is replaced by the world as experienced by me as a part of the world as a whole. When learning, my world is growing (Marton, 1996; Marton 2015)

Phenomenon is the “the thing as it appears to us”, not Kantian noumenon, as “the thing as such” (Marton, 2000). “Phenomena are fundamentally inexhaustible as far as possible descriptions of them are concerned” (Marton & Neumann, 1989). Focus is on “the second-order perspective of statements-about-perceived-reality, which is considered to have a complementary relationship to the first-order perspective of statements-about-reality” (Marton, 1981):

The discerning of these two alternative perspectives has nothing to do with the metaphysical distinction between the real and the apparent, or with arguments for or against as to whether there is a reality as such that is accessible to us. Neither the “realness” of a reality independent of our perception of it, nor the “realness” of our experience of this reality is thus examined and still less questioned here. (Marton, 1981)

Variation theory of learning—identifying and organizing the necessary conditions of learning

Necessary conditions of learning

What is taught and what is learnt is not necessarily the same thing. Marton and Pang (2003) address that for teachers to improve student learning, students must be able to distinguish what is necessary and what is contingent; what must be done and what might be done, because students only learn if the necessary conditions are met and thus learning is made possible. Variation Theory offers a pedagogical tool for teachers to identify necessary perceptual conditions for learning about a specific content. Variation Theory builds on the phenomenographic notion of learning as qualitative change in awareness of a particular content. Discernment involves grasping the relationships between parts within wholes and wholes and their context (Marton et al., 2004). According to Marton and Booth (1997) ‘learning proceeds, as a rule, from undifferentiated and poorly integrated understanding of the whole to an increased differentiation and integration of the whole and its parts.’ Furthermore, Marton and Pang (2006) describe discernment through experience of difference:

Noticing and giving attention to a feature of a situation amounts to the discernment of that feature, and the discernment of a feature amounts to experiencing a difference between two things or between two parts of the same thing. This is because we cannot discern quality X without simultaneously experiencing a mutually exclusive quality ~X. (Marton & Pang, 2006)

According to Variation Theory the theory, a meaning always presupposes discernment and discernment presupposes variation (Marton & Pong, 2005). We can only discern a new meaning through the difference between meanings (Marton, 2015). “Every feature discerned corresponds to a certain dimension of variation in which the object is compared with other objects.” (Marton & Pong, 2005). Its central conjecture is that “meanings are acquired from experiencing differences against a background of sameness, rather than from experiencing sameness against a background of difference” (Marton & Pang, 2013). According to Marton (2015) “The secret of learning is to be found in the pattern of variation and invariance.” The pattern of variation and invariance in teaching does not guarantee learning but makes it possible. (Kullberg, Runesson Kempe, & Marton, 2017) In a foreword of Lo’s (2012) book, Marton gives an example:

If you do not know what “a lively style of writing” is, and you read 100 articles, all of them written in the same lively style, you will still not know what “a lively style of writing” means. Learners are usually offered examples that have the focused meaning in common, e g “a lively style of writing”, but which differ as far as unfocused meanings are concerned, here the content of different pieces of writing. Variation Theory suggests that we “let the focused meaning vary, while the unfocused meaning remains invariant “Once the learners have discerned the focused meaning, we turn the pattern back to what is usually taken for granted and thereby enable the learners to generalize the meaning (of a lively style of writing) they have gained, across different examples (of content, for instance).

The object of learning

Variation Theory focuses on the question “what is to be learnt?” which is referred to as the “the object of learning.” According to Marton and Pang (2006):

To learn something, the learner must discern what is to be learned (the object of learning). Discerning the object of learning amounts to discerning its critical aspects. To discern an aspect, the learner must experience potential alternatives, that is, variation in a dimension corresponding to that aspect, against the background of invariance in other aspects of the same object of learning. (One could not discern the color of things, for instance, if there was only one color.)

The object of learning does not only refer to a specific content or objectives for learning, but capabilities to be developed in relation to a particular object or content and necessary conditions under which they can be developed. It is not about teaching methods or learning strategies and styles (Marton, Runesson, & Tsui, 2004). Variation Theory makes a distinction between the direct object, which refers to the content or the nature of the phenomenon to which learning is directed and the indirect object, the capability to be developed, which refers to the nature of the intentional act in relation to the object (Marton & Booth, 1997). Learning is approached from the learner’s point of view, so the intentional act or capability to be developed is not referred to as a generic capability, but something specific to a particular learner to develop in relation to a specific content and a specific learning situation and context. What is then generic might be revealed through contrasts between specific learning objects and capabilities “when we do something we experience both the situation in which we do it and that (or whom) in relation to which we act. But we hardly experience any conceptions guiding our acts” (Marton, 1996). Furthermore, “we cannot share each other’s experiences, but we might share the way in which we discern differences in what we experience”. (Marton, 2015)

The notion of the ‘object of learning’ is further specified by Pang and Marton (2005) as the intended, 2) the enacted and 3) the lived object of learning. The intended object of learning, the capability that is intended for students to develop in relation to a subject matter content. The enacted object of learning refers to making the object of learning available to the students to learn in in the classroom. The lived object of learning refers to the ways in which the object appears to the learners.

Phenomenographic approach is important in capturing the lived object of learning, i.e. how the same object is discerned and understood by the learners prior to and after teaching. First, it is the qualitative difference between prior understandings and the learning outcomes that can reveal what is actually learnt. Secondly, it is the analysis of what was intended and what was focused upon in enacting the object of learning that helps to understand whether teaching is in accordance with the plan. Thirdly, it is the relationship between what was taught (enacted object of learning) and what is learnt (the lived object of learning) that can reveal the impact of teaching on student learning.

Critical aspects

Marton (2015) formulates the object of learning to comprise three different ways of increasing precision: content about which it is important for students to learn, educational objectives in terms of capabilities that students are supposed to develop in relation to the content and the critical aspects that the learner must be able to discern and focus on simultaneously. Discerning the object of learning requires discerning its critical aspects in Phenomenography and Variation Theory (Marton & Booth, 1997). Critical aspects refer to ‘keys’ to be learnt, which are specific to each object of learning: “Whether or not it is possible for the learners to discern and make aspects their own determines whether or not learning can happen.” (Marton, 2015). Questions about processes of learning and teaching, such as “what is to be done? are too general to be answered without a specific aim in specific circumstances; it is better to start from what is to be learnt.” According to Marton (2015), what is critical in the observed action in order to achieve the goal is seeing the relationship between what is to be learnt, the outcome (end) and how: different ways of achieving it (means); “the pupil, who cannot tell what is critical and what is not, must be helped by someone who knows how to do so.”

Pang and Ki (2016) review variation in the ways in which the concept ‘critical aspect’ has been used in phenomenographic tradition. First, in Phenomenography it refers to an aspect that differentiate between qualitatively different understandings of the same phenomenon and identify a specific understanding. Secondly, in Variation Theory, a critical aspect refers to a dimension of variation, which is critical for discernment of the object of learning. Marton and Booth (1997) “that which once set in focus can no longer be taken for granted, becomes potentially open for variation in awareness”. Furthermore, aspects focused upon by the learner not only mark present understandings but are also critical for future learning, because if “you become aware that something is in a certain way, then you also become aware that it could be another way.” Thirdly, in learning studies, critical aspects mean those dimensions of variation or aspects that are critical to what learners are expected to learn but have not yet learnt to discern. “Educationally critical aspects” (Booth, 1997) in Phenomenography refer to important aspects for student learning. The teacher’s task is to identify aspects of content in the learning context from the learner’s perspective, rather than in the disciplinary context per se, that are relevant and meaningful to the learner’s relationship with the world (Booth, 1997). Kullberg et al. (2017) point out that:

It cannot be derived from the variation theory of learning how specific content should be handled in the classroom, what the critical aspects are, or what examples to use when it is the teachers who have to decide what needs to come to the fore of students’ attention, what the critical aspects might be and how these can become visible for learners. The theory can, however, serve as a tool for teachers when they plan and enact teaching.

Pedagogy of learning in higher education

Relational pedagogy of teaching for student learning

Phenomenography and Variation Theory provide a pedagogical framework that is characterised as a ‘pedagogy of learning’ (Marton et al., 2004): taking the object of learning as a starting point to explore the conditions that make learning possible. It is focused on developing teaching so that it improves student learning and results in qualitatively changed ways of seeing an aspect of the world (Bowden, 2000b; Trigwell, Prosser, & Ginns, 2005). Pedagogy means “a set of related acts that are aimed at helping another person, or other people, to learn (Pang & Marton, 2007). The aim of teaching is to make student learning possible (Ramsden, 1992). It takes learning as a point of departure and aims at creating a context in which students can develop their understandings of the aspect of the world under consideration. (Bowden, 2000b).

The constructivist paradigm puts the emphasis on the individual’s acts, while phenomenographic interest is in variation in the ways in which the same content as an aspect of the world is understood by different individuals. (Marton & Neumann, 1989). The alternative of Phenomenography “lends itself more easily to a ‘didactic ‘knowledge interest’: finding out about the implications of different ways of seeing a phenomenon should reasonably give us clues to what aspects of that phenomenon we should try to make visible in teaching” (Marton & Neumann, 1989). The question of how people learn is necessarily a question of what they learn, because the outcome of what is learned and how it is learned are internally related and thus cannot be separated from each other (Marton & Booth, 1997; Marton & Neumann, 1989. There is no teaching or learning without the object of what is taught and learned (Marton & Booth, 1997).

Phenomenographic pedagogy aims to enhance teachers’ awareness of how variation in their understanding and practice of teaching might be related to their students’ approaches to learning (Trigwell et al., 2005). Teachers’ ways of acting are related to the intentional nature with which they direct their awareness to aspects and people around them in the real world (Marton, 1994b; Marton & Booth, 1997). Many teachers pursue variation in teaching methods and techniques. This is often related to teaching of general thinking skills, learning processes and teaching principles regardless of content and context and varying methods is seen to result in better learning outcomes in a taken-for-granted fashion (Marton & Ramsden, 1988). Teachers’ intentions of what students should understand are related to how they expect students to learn and how they think that students can be helped through teaching (Martin, Prosser, Trigwell, Ramsden, & Benjamin, 2000). When teachers make decisions about what is to be taught and how it will be learned they do so in line with an explicit or implicit theory of what teaching and learning the subject matter involves (Martin et al., 2000). The ways in which teacher understands the object of learning is a critical precondition, as it is reflected in what is intended for students to be learnt for improved understanding of the subject matter, but it is in the meeting between teachers’ and students’ knowledge that understanding develops (Holmqvist & Mattison, 2008).

Teaching involves making judgements of what is to be learnt, identifying the necessary conditions for learning and organizing educational practices to support learning. (Marton, Tsui et al., 2004). If teaching is truly focused on improving student learning towards expanded awareness of different aspects of reality, the teacher needs to understand what their students understand about the content about which they are learning. What is critical for teaching is thus not their general subject knowledge or pedagogical knowledge, teaching style, methods, skills or competences in general, but what they intend their students to learn, what they understand their students’ need to learn so that can develop their understanding of the object of learning and how they see teaching can help their students’ learning. This requires understanding of different ways in which students make sense of the content prior to, during and after teaching. Furthermore, it requires continuous assessment of the different ways in which the content is understood by the learners in relation to the aims and continuous revision of plans to further improve students learning. (Marton & Booth, 1997; Marton et al., 2004)

“Phenomenographic research mirrors what good teachers do” as it tries to understand what students focus on in their learning (Bowden, 1986; Bowden, 2000b). The open nature of phenomenographic interviews allows the interviewee to focus on aspects of the question that appear relevant to them (Bowden, 2000a). Researchers and teachers are also in an internal relationship with the object of research and teaching. To ensure quality in qualitative social research, it is important that the researchers’ methodological awareness is made explicit (Seale, 1999). Sandberg (1996) talks about ‘interpretative awareness’ as a quality criterion for reliability in a phenomenographic study. This should include wider theoretical awareness of ontological and epistemological commitments that underlie different methodological frameworks. In the same way, teachers should also be aware of the theoretical and pedagogical frameworks, worldviews and value commitments with which they approach their subject, curriculum and their students’ learning. Trigwell et al. (2000) argue that the scholarship of teaching provides a research-informed framework for university teachers to make it transparent how university teaching can make learning possible:

We believe the aim of scholarly teaching is also simple: it is to make transparent how we made learning possible. For this to happen, university teachers must be informed of the theoretical perspectives and literature of teaching and learning in their discipline, and be able to collect and present rigorous evidence of their effectiveness, from these perspectives, as teachers. In turn, this involves reflection, inquiry, evaluation, documentation and communication. A model of scholarship of teaching offers a framework for making transparent the process of making learning possible.

This deep commitment to the process of what and how students learn (rather than how teachers teach) is a significant step in the direction of transforming learning in a way that is just for students. A commitment to putting in place a process of thought through pedagogic actions designed to enable all students to learn.

Teacher as a phenomenographer—making sense of different understandings

Variation Theory has clarified the conceptual framework of Phenomenography: every conception has got an internal structure, whereas Phenomenography is concerned with the collective structure of awareness which is presented in the “outcome space” of variation between “categories of description. A conception, or a way of understanding refers to all the related aspects simultaneously present in person’s focal awareness. A conception is described in terms of two interrelated aspects: a referential aspect is a meaning content of an object which is referred to, delimited and focused upon by subjects and a structural aspect, the combination of features discerned and focused upon by the subject” (Marton & Pong, 2005). In order to identify the critical aspects that constitute different ways of understanding the same object, teachers can ask two interrelated questions:

(1) What is the key meaning discerned and focused upon and

(2) How is the meaning discerned and constituted as part-whole-context relationships?

Meaning discernment can be analysed in terms of its referential aspect of the content in focus and the structural aspect of how it is constituted from its aspects (internal horizon of meaning) and discerned from its context of other objects (external horizon of meaning). These aspects discerned and focused upon are critical aspects as they identify different understandings in terms of part-whole-relationships (internal horizon) as well as the differences between understandings in terms of whole-context relationships (external horizon) of meaning. (Marton & Booth, 1997). In order to discern an aspect/a feature of an object, variation has to be experienced in the external horizon of meaning: between that aspect and other aspects of the same object (through separation between the aspects, and brought together as part of the internal horizon, the same dimension through generalisation of varying features or instances of the same dimension. Finally, understanding the part-whole-context structure of the object of learning requires fusion of all the critical aspects of the object of learning at the same time. (Marton, Tsui et al. 2004). Learning is seen as a qualitative change towards wider awareness of the object of learning in terms of deeper discernment of the object as a whole in relation to its aspects (internal horizon) and other objects (external horizon). (Marton & Booth, 1997).

For example, Wright (2018) studied four cohorts of student teachers investigating their understandings of Religious Education (RE) in a one-year Postgraduate Certificate in Education course of Teacher Education in Religious Education and asking them to identify what Religious Education is about and not about. A traditional phenomenographer would only have asked an open question about RE, but as the interview was considered a learning situation, the researcher used Variation Theory as a starting point in making the contrast between RE as an object “X” and “not X” explicit helping the student teachers to identify the external horizon of meaning as a whole-context relationship of RE. Similarly, student teachers were asked to identify what aspects or features of RE they saw as more relevant, “critical to X” than others “not critical to X”. The aim of the interview was two-fold: to identify student teachers’ understandings of RE, but also to help them identify the whole-context relationship of RE and its critical aspects, and to identify the relevance structure (Marton & Booth, 1997) of student teachers’ meaning discernment.

Conclusion

This article argues that Phenomenographic research specialization guided by the Variation Theory of Learning can serve a pedagogical framework for the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education in varying disciplinary contexts where it is necessary to make sense of the varying understandings, or the plurality of values and worldviews. This making sense of varying understandings is in itself a useful way to open up learning spaces, especially at a moment when much of higher education globally is coming under criticism for being exclusionary, Eurocentric and hostile to the other, (Flood, 2016; BBC, 2016; The Guardian, 2016). In addition, it is through the analysis part-whole-context relationships of the ways in which the meanings are structured, that Phenomenography can reveal critical aspects of different understandings, which can be opened for learning and transformation of society through higher education. This will help students to recognize that different understandings of the same concepts can be both differentiated deeper into smaller parts and related to wider perspectives, frameworks, value systems and worldviews. Potentially, this framework for teaching and learning can be used as a driver for developing democratic cultures in the university classroom. It can transform classroom learning in ways that are just for all because the focus is more on different understanding of the same phenomena, then on differences among students in terms of identity markers like race, gender or class to name a few. The climate for learning is enhanced and could potentially be experienced as inclusive and enabling for all.

Variation Theory can help teachers to understand what it takes to make learning possible. The proposed framework breaks the roles teacher, researcher and learner as it offers a research-and theory-based framework for studying how the same object appears to different learners to improve learning. This can be a collaborative process between a group of teachers working with a researcher as in Learning Study. Applying this framework to research on teacher or higher education means taking the part of the learner and learning from teachers and students. The shared aim of the teacher and the researcher is to learn to make the object of learning available to the students so that they can learn better. In this collaborative scholarly process, the roles of teacher, learner and researcher are shared and in some ways this shared way of meaning discernment democratises the learning in university classrooms. The focus is on making the object of learning available for the learners so that learning is possible. This is significant for teachers in higher education including teacher educators. This kind of a research led and research based approach to learning in higher education has the effect of being inclusive, democratic and just. More so, in societies where inequalities and exclusion from education is entrenched (Osman & Booth, 2015). Phenomenography and Variation Theory and foregrounding the object of learning unsettles and disrupts habitual approaches and introduces the idea that learning is viewed and experienced as an ongoing process where the teacher and the student are being transformed in ways that make it possible to think of a world order that is just, equal and democratic. Teaching and learning are brought into relation to one another, put another way the teacher and the learner are in relation to each other and not in a hierarchy; and where university teachers are actively challenging their own practices and based on what they learn from their students. The focus is on what is learnt and not on who is more powerful or whose voice or ideas are heard and whose voice is silenced or obscured. In university classrooms where teachers take a learning approach to teaching, and teaching which is framed by Phenomenography and underpinned by Variation Theory, the potential exists for teachers and students to harness diverse ways of seeing the same phenomenon and through this develop new intellectual perspectives. It also opens up spaces for new forms of contents and knowledge jointly constituted. A focus on learning and the object of learning is not just a pedagogical question but goes to the heart of what it means to how teachers and students relate to each other in the classroom and how modelling this way of relating to each other has purchase for such relations in the world outside the university classroom. It offers an opportunity to rethink what we value in the university classroom and how modes of learning and relating to each other in such classrooms lay the basis for socially just world.