Table Of ContentInna Semetsky Editor
Edusemiotics –
A Handbook
–
Edusemiotics A Handbook
Inna Semetsky
Editor
–
Edusemiotics A Handbook
123
Editor
InnaSemetsky
Institute for Edusemiotic Studies
Melbourne, VIC
Australia
ISBN978-981-10-1493-2 ISBN978-981-10-1495-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1495-6
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016941603
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This book is dedicated to the great
John Deely, a dear friend and colleague
whose research in the theory and history
of semiotics is unsurpassable. His work is a
lasting inspiration for generations of students
to come, in philosophy, semiotics, and now
edusemiotics.
Foreword
It is indeed a privilege to be asked to write a foreword for a handbook on
edusemiotics considering that the term was not even in use until 2010.
Edusemioticsisafastemergingfieldwithinbothsemioticsandeducationalstudies.
Ononelevel,therearequiteobviouspragmaticreasonsforthisincreasinginterest.
Most semioticians arealso educatorsandwelcome abranch oftheirdiscipline that
explores this aspect of their work. Meanwhile, many educators and educational
researchers are keen to find an approach that dissolves many of the tensions
between‘theory’and‘practice’thatoftencausedivisionswithintheirfieldandcan
serve to restrict the impact of their work in the public imagination.
Philosophically, edusemiotics offers a way of understanding education, in the
broadest sense, that does not rest on the legacy of strong Cartesian mind-body
dualism,alegacyevidentindebatesacrosstheboard,fromthedistinctionbetween
cognitivist and behaviorist learning theories, to the dismissal of much thinking
about education as ‘just theory’, or the strong status superiority still afforded to
activities involving students sitting still, reading and writing, as opposed to
undertakingphysicalorvocationalactivity,asifthehealthofmindandbodywere
two entirely separate activities. In place of these naïve dualisms, semiotics as a
distinctive philosophy offers a thoroughgoing relational view that acknowledges
dualisms in context but overall rejects strong either-or thinking and considers all
educational actors (teachers, students, even the subject matter) as open systems
evolving through changing relationships. On the edusemiotic account, knowledge
cannot simply be transmitted and teachers cannot simply ‘deliver’ or ‘instruct’ in
the crudest sense; nor do students ever learn quite what teachers teach. Teaching
and learning are about dialogue, discovery, and interpretation: in short, semiosis.
Neither teacher nor student nor subject matter is a fixed entity. The teacher’s
approachandunderstandingisdevelopedinrelationtointeractionswiththestudent
with respect to the subject matter. The student brings habits of response and
understanding to the classroom encounter that are modified by the encounter that
constitutes the lesson (thus learning is always a form of both discovery and disil-
lusionment, as that which was held to be so can no longer be so assumed). The
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viii Foreword
subjectmatteritselfismodifiedthroughitsiterationsinthestudent-teachermeeting,
suchthatthoseinductedintodisciplinesgraduallytaketheirinterpretationsforward
into their further uses and (at the top end, at least) development of the practices in
question.Inshort,theteachingandlearningencounterisoneoftransformation,not
of transmission.
While its rise has been rapid and remarkable, we should remember that
edusemiotics too is an open system, and not all commentators with interests in
semiotics and education may want to subscribe to it as a technical descriptor: it is,
after all, a broad container concept. It is useful, however, to distinguish between
purely applied empirical work in education that uses semiotic ideas for analysis
(some of it prestigious and important in its own right) from work that attempts to
reconsider and reconfigure education more broadly using philosophical and theo-
retical resources from semiotics. It is this latter approach that can be referred to as
edusemiotic.Furthermore,edusemioticsisnotaone-waystreet:inaskingquestions
about education from semiotic perspectives, edusemioticians are simultaneously
problematizingsemioticsbydeployingresourcesfromthephilosophyandtheoryof
education.‘Edusemiotics’isthuseffectivelyashorthandforthebranchofsemiotics
andeducationaltheorythatintendstodevelopsemioticphilosophyasafoundation
foreducation.Itwasformallyrecognizedasatheoreticalbranchofsemioticsatthe
12thWorldCongressoftheInternationalAssociationforSemioticStudiesinSofia
in 2014.
This work owes a great deal to Inna Semetsky’s seminal contributions, to
membersofthePhilosophyofEducationSocietiesofGreatBritainandAustralasia,
totheInternational Networkfor SemioticsandEducationand thenew Institute for
Edusemiotic Studies, and to other academics not formally aligned to any of these
organizations.Thedevelopmentofedusemioticsasadisciplineistheresultofthese
individual and collective efforts, many of which are represented in the following
chapters.
Andrew Stables
University of Roehampton, UK
Contents
1 Introduction: A Primer on Edusemiotics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Inna Semetsky
2 Academic Culture and the Science of Signs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
John Deely
3 ‘Diagrammatic Teaching’: The Role of Iconic Signs
in Meaningful Pedagogy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Catherine Legg
4 Semiotics in Mathematics Education: Topological Foundations
and Diagrammatic Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Rocco Gangle
5 Metaphors, Models, and Diagrams in Educational Theories
and Practices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Marcel Danesi
6 Education and Reasoning: Advancing a Peircean Edusemiotic. . . . 79
John Quay
7 No Surprise in the ‘Surprise Effect’ of Values Pedagogy:
An Edusemiotic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Terence J. Lovat
8 Semiotics and Meaning in the Aims of Education in Greece. . . . . . 107
Anastasia Christodoulou and George Damaskinidis
9 Edusemiotics, Existential Semiotics, and Existential Pedagogy . . . . 121
Jani Kukkola and Eetu Pikkarainen
10 The Embodied Mind: Education as the Transformation
of Habits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Inna Semetsky
ix
x Contents
11 Academic Pathologies and Anxieties of Knowing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Michael A. Peters
12 Interpreting Our Selves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Sandy Farquhar and Peter Fitzsimons
13 The Role of the Reader: Remembering the Possible Worlds
of Umberto Eco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Peter Pericles Trifonas
14 Reading History: Education, Semiotics, and Edusemiotics . . . . . . . 193
Alin Olteanu
15 Heteroglossia as a Dialogic Route to Metaphoricity
in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
E. Jayne White
16 Knowledge as a Sign: An Edusemiotic Theory of Learning
Heritage Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Saeid Atoofi
17 Julia Kristeva’s Semanalysis and the Legacy
of Émile Benveniste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Marga van Mechelen
18 Black Holes: Engaging with Negation Through the Semiotic
Chora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Cair Crawford
19 Erotica and Semiotica: What’s Love Got to Do with
Edusemiotics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Farouk Y. Seif
20 Learning from the Unconscious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Inna Semetsky
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Editor and Contributors
About the Editor
Inna Semetsky holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of education from Columbia
University, New York, preceded by an MA in counseling and Grad.Dip.Ed. in
maths/science. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Monash University,
Australia, and received the First Kevelson Memorial Award from the Semiotic
SocietyofAmerica.Sheisontheeditorialboardsofseveralacademicjournals.She
has over 150 academic publications including nine books. The recent book
Edusemiotics: Semiotic Philosophy as Educational Foundation (with A. Stables)
received a 2015 Book Award from the Philosophy of Education Society of
Australasia. She guest-edited seven special journal issues of Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Policy Futures in
Education, and Semiotica. She now serves as a chief consultant to the Institute for
Edusemiotic Studies (IES) registered in Melbourne, Australia.
About the Foreword Author
Andrew Stables is Professor of Education and Philosophy, and Deputy Director
for Research in School of Education, University of Roehampton, London. His
currentresearchincludestheAHRC-fundedprojectDesignMatters?TheEffectsof
NewSchoolsonStudents’,Teachers’andParents’ActionsandPerceptionsthathe
co-directs with Prof. H. Daniels from the University of Oxford. Among his latest
publications are Edusemiotics: Semiotic Philosophy as Educational Foundation
(co-authored with I. Semetsky) (Routledge, 2015, Winner of 2015 PESA Book
Award); Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/Practical
Opportunities (co-edited with I. Semetsky) (Sense, 2014); Be(com)ing Human:
SemiosisandtheMythofReason(Sense,2012);andChildhoodandthePhilosophy
of Education: an anti-Aristotelian perspective (Continuum, 2008/2011).
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