A Theory of Practice: Hermeneutical Understanding

Abstract

Arguments about learning commonly toss the buck back and forth between theory and practice, the pure and applied, the objective and subjective. Most such arguments have tried to find a reliable technical method to explain how we learn. Hermeneutics, with its roots both in sixteenth century theory of linguistic interpretation and modem phenomenological approaches to meaning, denies the claims of method ‐ rationalist or empiricist. It proposes instead to clarify the conditions in which practical understanding can take place. Unlike other approaches to learning, hermeneutics makes human language the core. It is in language that what I call in this paper the four major quadrants of understanding are realised. First, understanding is structured historically in the traditions, prejudices and institutional practices that come down to us. Secondly, understanding depends upon trying to find the unity in all the conditions that pertain to learning, in reconciling the whole with its parts. Third, hermeneutics reconceptualises the nature of practical application to emphasise the constitutive part played by individuals in modifying what is learned, such that to understand is to change as a person. Finally, understanding arises not from a solipsistic encounter between learner and material; it takes the form of a dialogue between a student and all those “others” who constitute the world of learning. In sum, both “cognitive” and “student‐centred” approaches to learning are transcended and fused in a wider horizon of understanding.

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