Lemmens The Virtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education Bernd Wächter (ed.) Aca papers on International Cooperation in Education The V irtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education

The project idea: productive, not reproductive
The project focuses on educational challenges in a time of educational
reform on a global scale. The term productive learning culture is used as a
negation of a reproductive culture of teaching and learning. In a productive
learning culture, the concept of knowledge and learning will be constructive
and knowledge perceived as something “man-made”. In a reproductive learn-
ing culture, knowledge is supposed to exist externally, it is simply there, as
something “given”. In a productive learning culture it is considered important
in any educational setting to build on what people know and bring with them,
instead of continuously correcting the mistakes they make. It is also con-
sidered vital to inspire people actively to improve, instead of rendering them
passive by telling them what they should and should not do. In a productive
learning culture, the focus will be on problem solving, not on correcting
mistakes.
Any choice of pedagogical practice implies certain conceptions of knowledge,
of learning and of the learning process. As Jerome Bruner puts it, “Pedagogy
is never innocent” (Bruner 1999:17). In traditional education, the teacher is
the active agent, in control of both the subject matter being taught and the
educational setting. Teaching is – often – synonymous with lecturing. In this
paradigm, the student plays a passive role, expecting both to be told what to
learn and how to reproduce it. The student is being assessed according to
how well he reproduces the subject matter that has been taught. This para-
digm can be depicted as follows:
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This traditional teaching paradigm is – in a Weberian sense – based on a
purposive and instrumental rationality presupposing that lecturing is instruc-
tion and that it is possible to plan for learning. What the students are
supposed to learn exists in the head of teachers, in books, computers etc.
Knowledge is a commodity that can be looked up. It is given and can easily
be reproduced. The students are being presented facts and theories they
should learn, remember and reiterate. It is supposed that procedural
knowledge and “know how” more or less follows automatically once a person
knows the facts, the theories or the “know that”. The paradigm rests on the
didactical assumption that the child is a
tabula rasa (that should be filled),
that the learner is passive (waiting to be taught), that knowledge is cumula-
tive (new knowledge builds on existing), that teaching is a one-way activity
and that learning is a linear process.
The philosophical ideal underpinning this paradigm is inspired by crude,
cumulative empiricism. It builds on an assumption that complex tasks can be
reduced to specific goals and that students must be taught the foundational