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The qualitative outlook

In the qualitative outlook, it is assumed that students learn cumulatively, interpreting and incorporating new material with what they already know, their understanding progressively changing as they learn. Thus, learners' comprehension of taught content is gradual and cumulative, more like climbing a spiral staircase than dropping chips into a bag, with qualitative changes taking place in the nature both of what is learned, and how it is structured, at each level in the spiral. The curriculum question is to decide what meaning or levels of understanding are "reasonable" at the stage of learning in question.

As regards teaching method, the teacher's task is not to transmit correct understandings, but to help students construct understandings that are more rather than less acceptable. Content thus evolves cumulatively over the long term, having "horizontal" interconnections with other topics and subjects, and "vertical" interconnections with previous and subsequent learning in the same topic. The process of teaching is to help the learner undertake activities that involve progressive understanding of the meanings. The process is multidimensional, not linear: it is to intrigue the gourmet, not to sate the glutton.

Teaching here then engages the learning in constructive, in addition to receptive, learning activities. Typically, these activities involve (Biggs, 1989):

* a positive motivational context, hopefully intrinsic but at least one involving a felt need-to-know and a aware emotional climate.
* a high degree of learner activity, both task-related and reflective
* interaction with others, both at the peer level with other students, and hierarchically, within "scaffolding" provided by an expert tutor.
* a well-structured knowledge base, that provides the longitude or depth for conceptual development and the breadth, for conceptual enrichment

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john biggs theory