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2 Catering for Individual Differences: Building on Variation LO Mun Ling and PONG Wing Yan Introduction Instead of seeing the learner as a set of stimulus-response reactions, a bundle of nerves, or a number on the score sheet of a test or an inventory, some educators believe that we should be looking at the issue from a more humanistic perspective that enables us to explain learning from the possible “experiences” that the student has gone through in the process of learning. This approach of studying learning, though still not favoured by most psychologists (probably due to the lack of experimental control), is increasingly favoured in the field of education. In this book, we present a view of learning that stems from a humanistic interest and, as a result, addresses learning from a pedagogical perspective. In this chapter, we first explain our view of individual differences. We then illustrate how we understand learning, using a conceptual framework that is based on the Theory of Variation (Marton and Booth, 1997). We then put forth a theory of pedagogy which is premised on our view of teaching and learning; and finally, we explain how such a pedagogy can be used to cater for individual differences. Difference in learning outcomes and difference in the way of seeing the same thing In the past three decades, there has been an increasing interest in educational research on work related to students’ understanding of science concepts and theories. What emerged is a conclusion that students do bring their own ideas and beliefs about the world (especially about natural phenomena) into the classroom. These ideas and beliefs, which are often in conflict with the science concepts that the teacher tries to teach, have been a major obstacle to learning. Based on a similar interest, a group of 10 Lo and Pong researchers, led by Professor Ference Marton of Göteborg University, Sweden, developed a research perspective known as “phenomenography.” Its main research programme was to explore and describe the differences in how people understood, experienced, or thought about a particular phenomenon or an aspect of the world. Based on a large number of studies, they arrived at an important conclusion; that is, people often experience the same phenomenon in qualitatively different ways. However, when these differences are rigorously examined, they are always limited in number (Marton, 1977). A frequently quoted example is Säljö’s (1982) study on how people come to understand or experience a text. In the study, the researcher asked a group of university students to read a passage on the topic of learning, and then he probed how they understood what they had read. What he found was that, although these students were reading the same text, they actually derived different meanings from it. Eventually, two distinct ways of understanding the text were identified. Firstly, some students saw the text as having a sequential structure with different perspectives of learning being described but bearing no relationship to each other. The second view, as demonstrated by another group of students, was that the text contained a main theme (the forms of learning), illustrated by a number of sub-themes (different perspectives of learning). This group of students saw the text as having a hierarchical structure with clear relationships between the subthemes and the main theme. Säljö also found that the students who understood the text in the hierarchical way were better able to grasp the main idea of the text than those who understood the text in the sequential way, in the sense that the former group of students demonstrated a more organized and meaningful way of understanding. Seen from this light, it is not difficult to understand why learning outcomes often vary within a group of students. In fact, variations in learning outcome should be the norm rather than the exception, because, for the same learning material or teaching act, students might understand the material or experience the teaching act in different ways. For example, while some students may not see any relationship among the different parts of the teacher’s presentation, others may understand the same presentation as containing a theme with subsuming or related parts. For the same act of teaching, some students may see it as the transmission of factual knowledge that can be retained by regurgitation, but others may see it as challenging their existing understanding and requiring deep reflection in order to fully comprehend what has been espoused. Studies from the phenomenographic tradition have repeatedly provided a...

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