Teaching and Learning as 'Transaction' : A Study from Anthropological Perspetives

Abstract

Teaching and learning is cultural interaction between teachers and pupils. Anthropologist investigate it as 'transaction' and inquire its structure. This paper examines the theories of J.F. Hansen, an American educational anthropologist, and of two famouse deschoolrs, P. Freire and I. Illich and tries to make a theoretical framework about educational ' transaction' from anthropological perspectives. J.F. Hansen outlined educational 'transaction' in three main analytic components: identities and roles of participants, cognitive maps and stratitiegies, and communication. In his view education is an institutionalized means of effecting identity change. And cultural idea about knowlege, comunication, participants in the communication process and their mutual role-relationship contribute directly to the patterns of educational 'transaction'. P. Freire analyzed edcational 'transaction' philosophically as 'conscientizacion' through inter-subject communication. But, in his consideration, actual schooling is not inter-subject communication but transmission of knowledge from one subject to another, which he called 'the banking type of education'. In I. Illich's structural framework, educational 'transaction' is commercial transaction as a metaphorical structure, i.e. a teacher as a distributer sells curriculum to a pupil as a consumer. And through this process, the school system preserves society's myth, institutionalizes the myth's contradictions and produces and veils the disparities between myth and reality. Trough the consideration of these three theories in M. Yamaguchi's theoretical framework of 'transaction', some suggestions are made to understand teaching and learning as 'transaction' totally. The contents are as follows: I Introduction II 'Transaction' and dynamics of culture IE Aspects of teaching-learning as 'transation' (1) J.F. Hansen's theory (2) Theories of P. Freireand I. Illich (3) Relationship between view-points of Hansen, Freire arid Illich IV Conclusion