This paper originally appeared in Studies in Art Education, Volume 36, Issue 4, Summer 1995.
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), acknowledged founder of American semiotics, was asked a little over one hundred years ago to write a definition of the "university" for theCentury Dictionary. As was his habit, Peirce (in Houser, 1987) wrote precisely and in the style of his time:
An association of men for the purpose of study, which confers degrees which are acknowledged as valid throughout Christendom, is endowed, and is privileged by the state in order that the people may receive intellectual guidance, and that the theoretical problems which present themselves in the development of civilization may be resolved. (p. 255)
The Century Dictionary editors swiftly returned this definition to Peirce for revision, insisting that it should include the notion of "instruction," because without instruction, learning does not happen.
Peirce wrote back that if they had any such notion they were grievously mistaken, that a university had not and never had anything to do with instruction and that until we got over this idea we should not have any university in this country. (John J. Chapman (1892) in Houser, p. 255)
If Peirce is to be believed, and the university is a place for learning and not instruction, what happens to our conception of the roles of teachers and learners within a university setting? Clearly, the modernist, behavioral, and information-processing cognitive models that have traditionally served as primary foundations for developing instruction methods in this country are not adequate. (Cunningham, 1987)
Each of these models assumes that there is a correct body of knowledge for a teacher to communicate to students. These models assume a hierarchical architecture of facts and ideas with higher forms of knowing built through some concatenation of simpler forms.
In order to move away from the dominant hierarchical model, it is necessary to develop an entirely different framework. Pedagogy based on the semiotic work of Peirce, and exemplified by his definition of the university, forces a reconsideration of the roles which learners, teachers, and subject matter play within educational endeavors. This reconsideration may be called "semiotic pedagogy." Although Peirce argued for the place of learning at the university level, semiotic pedagogy is appropriate for all educational contexts, not only higher education, and not only classroom learning. Because of semiotics' emphasis on codes, signs, and their inter-actions, it is especially appropriate for those of us involved in the study of art education.
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