School Didactics And Learning: a school Didactic Model Framing An Analysis of Pedagogical Implication of Learning Theory

Unended Quest
that: “thoughts in the sense of contents or statements in themselves and thoughts in the
sense of thought processes belong to two different ‘worlds’” (1976, p. 181).
It is important to note Popper’s specific stand on the question at this point. He writes:
(1) That every subjective act of understanding is largely anchored in the third world.
(2) That almost all important remarks which can be made about such an act consist in pointing out
its relations to third world objects. This, I suggest, can be generalized, and holds for every subjective
act of “knowledge”: all the important things we can say about an act of knowledge consist of pointing
out the third world objects of the act—a theory of proposition—and its relation to other third-world
objects, such as the arguments bearing on the problem.
Thus, according to him, any psychological process that leads to understanding “must be analyzed in terms
of the third-world objects in which it is anchored. In fact, it can be analyzed 
only
in these terms” (op. cit., p.
163, italics in original).
This statement implies that it would not be possible to discuss the mind in terms of the processes of the mind.
Instead this should be done in terms of the content of the mind. In this interpretation Popper’s ideas cannot
function as a point of departure for the cognitivist. But what does Popper then mean by saying that there is
this distinction between the processes and contents of thoughts? The main point made by Phillips (1987) is
that researchers in cognitive psychology (a) often mix up the concepts of the cognitive structure of an
individual and of the content structure of a discipline and (b) draw conclusions from data that are not
included in the premises, i.e. the data are considered to indicate things which are not discussed in the
premises, thus leading to a logical gap in the argumentation.
As regards the first point, that the psychological realm and the public realm are mixed up, the following
notes can be made. Even if it is clear that the third world of knowledge is arrived at by creative thinking by
researchers in a discipline, one should not necessarily draw the conclusion that the structure of the result of
this work is isomorphic with the cognitive structure of the researchers. How a person publicly structures his
understanding of reality is not of necessity identical with the mechanisms or the structure of this person’s
psychological reality. How we express our understanding of a subject matter is concerned with numerous
factors such as the person we are discussing it with, rules of discussions in different contexts etc. (cf. Phillips,
1987, p. 140). Another point made by Phillips, relying on Popper, is that when students are trained in a
discipline, they are not trained to reproduce the structure of the discipline but in how the discipline is
handled in World 3 terms. The critique launched here is thus that there has often been a confusion between
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the logical and the psychological realm, i.e. between concepts and their internal relation versus the cognitive
domain. This argumentation falls back on a critical attitude towards the assumption that it is possible to
distinguish internal representations from behavioural data. As noticed by Kieras (1980):
It should be clear that internal representations can not be uniquely identified from behavioral data.
Unfortunately, many in cognitive psychology have not understood or recognized this basic limitation
on cognitive theory. Apparently their problem lies in a basic confusion on the logical status of various
sources of knowledge used in the process of constructing psychological theories.
Another objection is related to the possibility of describing performance in World 3 terminology. As
Phillips (1987, p. 145) notes, even though both successful and unsuccessful performance is describable in
World 3 terms, it is not reasonable to suppose that the cognitive processes which generate the performance
have the same structure as the public subject-matter. This can be exemplified by an analogy from the
computer world. It is quite possible that several different computers with different programs can generate
the same set of answers given the same stimulus-word. Thus the structure of the generated answer does not
tell us about the structure of the system generating the answer. The reason why it is possible to describe
these performances is one of conceptual necessity: there has to be a public framework in relation to which
performances are evaluated. 
When we consider the way in which conclusions are drawn in empirical research within some cognitive
science research, Phillips (1987, pp. 148– 149) has shown how logical gaps between premises and
conclusions have been accepted without sufficient reflection. The analysis is concluded in the following
way: