The nature of Understanding

One area of educational research is in exploring how people (such as students) understand particular topics.

Someone setting out on research in this area would need to consider issues of  ontology: What is the nature of ‘understanding’ (and/or related notions such as ‘ideas’, ‘thinking’, ‘personal knowledge’, ‘conceptions’...)?

One notion of understanding is that it is about making sense  - one’s understanding of a topic or concept is the way one makes sense of it (or the sense one makes of it).

Newton (2000: 15) points out that “the word ‘understanding’ commonly denotes a variety of mental processes, states and structures”

Newton, D. P. (2000). Teaching for Understanding: What it is and how to do it. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Drever & Wallerstein (1964: 306) suggest that understanding is “Apprehension of the meaning of phenomena, words, or statements; often employed loosely and indefinitely, as some sort of agency; general term, covering functions which involve apprehension of meaning.”

Drever, J., & Wallerstein, H. (Eds.). (1964). The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology (Revised ed.). Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

White & Gunstone (1992)..“Our definition of a person’s understanding of [some topic] is that it is

the set of propositions, strings, images, episodes, and intellectual and motor skills that the person associates with the label ‘[topic]’. The richer this set, the better its separate elements are linked with each other, and the clearer each element is formulated, then the greater the understanding…

White, R. T., & Gunstone, R. F. (1992). Probing Understanding. London: Falmer Press.

That is, understanding is a complex entity, composed of many components of different kinds.

These ideas are consistent with a personal constructivist theoretical perspective which considers each individual develops a (somewhat) idiosyncratic understanding of the world reflecting their unique set of personal life experiences - and given the iterative nature of learning (that we always make sense of the world in terms of the existing conceptual frameworks and personal constructs we have already developed).

Implications of ontology

Suitable research to investigate people’s understanding is therefore likely to be exploratory in nature (that is discovery research rather than confirmatory). As people’s understanding is so complex, it is likely to be idiosyncratic and therefore we might consider we need idiographic studies (rather than nomothetic research). 

This perspective supports a research question of the kind ‘HOW does this person understand the topic/concept...?’

An alternative understanding of ‘understanding’

However, it is possible to undertake research into understanding from a different perspective that reflects a more nomothetic stance. Instead of considering the complexity and individuality of personal understanding, this stance will compare the extent to which an individual’s understanding fits with a canonical understanding. This is the basis of much educational assessment that is carried out to test whether learners have attained the target knowledge and understanding considered to be set out in some curriculum.

This perspective supports a research questions of the kind ‘how WELL do learners understand the topic/concept...?’

This type of enquiry is more likely to adopt a positivist stance, and to seek to measure understanding, rather than to characterise and describe it.

Index of topics