The Double Move in Meaningful Teaching Revisited

Abstract

It can be argued that the appropriation of academic concepts provides students with powerful tools for understanding and improving their life conditions. Since the works of Davydov in the 1970s on the formation of scientific concepts in primary school children, studies on meaningful education debated how academically approved subject matter knowledge can be meaningfully integrated into primary school pupils’ learning. However, Davydov’s solution of going from the abstract to the concrete is disputable. Hedegaard (The qualitative analysis of the development of theoretical knowledge and thinking. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 293–325, 1995), Hedegaard (Learning and child development. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, 2002) adjusted Davydov’s approach into a dialectic move from the general to the situation specific. This is now known as the ‘double move’. The reconciliation of a pupil’s personal notions and motives with academic concepts is, however, still an issue of struggle between researchers, teachers, teacher educators and curriculum developers. Recent re-conceptualisations of the notions of ‘the abstract’, ‘the concrete’ and the position of subject matter knowledge yield a revision of the double move. On the basis of our implementation of ‘Developmental education’ in primary schools, this article promotes the double move as a dialogic movement between meaning positions of novices and experts, prompting the recontextualisation of available knowledge and skills.