Accommodative learning

As already mentioned, accommodation concerns whole or partial restruc- turing of already established mental schemes. It is a form of learning we can activate when we are in situations in which impulses from the environ- ment cannot immediately be linked to the existing schemes due to some inconsistency or other, something that does not fit. To create the necessary context, we can carry out a whole or partial breakdown of the relevant schemes and, by effecting a change or restructuring, create the basis to allow the impulses to enter in a coherent way.

Accommodation thus implies a qualitative going beyond, or a tran- scendence of, the readiness already developed, and can be characterised as transcendent learning. When the necessary preconditions are present, the accommodative processes can be short and sudden: the learner under- stands immediately how something works. But it can also be a lengthy process, in which the learner struggles with a problem or a difficult relationship and gradually, or step by step, develops a new comprehension or a solution.

It should also be mentioned that while most accommodations are about overcoming a problem situation by creating a new context and, therefore, can be described as ‘offensive accommodations’, in special cases there can also be ‘defensive accommodations’, where the problem is solved by a transcending withdrawal that implies the establishment of a defence against a realistic experience and handling of the problem field in question. I shall return to this in section 9.3.

Under all circumstances it is, first and foremost, through accommoda- tive learning and restructuring that the character of the learning changes in a decisive way. The accommodative restructurings are characterised to a high degree by individual understandings and particular forms of comprehension, and even in relation to the clearest structures in, for example, the field of mathematics and formal logic, there will be individual ways of perceiving the subjects. Piaget declared that individuation – the differences that make us develop into separate and distinct individuals even under uniform external conditions – lies in the diversity of accommodations:

There is a great diversity in structures. – Accommodation gives rise to unlimited differentiations. – The fact that a number is the same for everyone, and the series of whole numbers is the same for everyone, doesn’t prevent mathematicians, taken one by one, from being unique as individuals. There is such diversification of structures . . .

(Piaget 1980b, quoted from Furth 1987, p. 4)

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However, the individuation of accommodation also leads to individuations in the assimilative processes. For when the schemes are individuated by means of accommodation they will, of necessity, take on an individual stamp, and when assimilation to individualised schemes takes place, the assimilations will very often be different, even though the influences are the same for several individuals. Therefore, there will always be differences in even the most educated logicians’ or mathematicians’ knowledge schemes: even if they apparently ‘know’ the same thing, they do so in different ways, which may lead to differences when this knowledge is recalled and what likelihood there is for it to be transcended.

It is thus equally important for a teacher to be interested in what the pupils already know as in what he or she wants them to learn. At the same time this approach makes it clear why pupils very often learn different things even though they have all received the same teaching: each pupil has unique and individually developed mental structures, and when the meeting between specific impressions and these different structures brings about learning, the results will, in principle, be different.

With respect to the relationship between the assimilative and the accommodative processes, there is an interesting difference between Piaget’s and Nissen’s conceptions. Piaget’s position is perhaps best expressed in the following summary by John Flavell:

However necessary it may be to describe assimilation and accom- modation separately and sequentially, they should be thought of as simultaneous and indissociable as they operate in a living cognition. Adaptation is a unitary event, and assimilation and accommodation are merely abstractions from this unitary reality. – Some cognitive acts show a relative preponderance of the assimilative component; others seem heavily weighted towards accommodation. However, ‘pure’ assimilation and ‘pure’ accommodation nowhere obtain in cognitive life; intellectual acts always presuppose each in some measure.

(Flavell 1963, pp. 48–49) It should, however, be noted that in spite of this basic view there are, nevertheless, numerous places where the two types of processes are treated individually in Piaget’s work.

This is almost the opposite in Nissen’s work. As I have done here, he starts by separating assimilation and accommodation as two essentially different forms of learning, but at the same time he makes a general reservation:

In the following, three forms of learning are postulated: cumulative, assimilative and accommodative learning. – They are less ‘pure’ than they appear, but examination of them may . . . be treated as an attempt

to construct search models that can perhaps point out important points in learning.

(Nissen 1970, p. 43) In following the same procedure as Nissen, I make the same reservation. In principle it is undoubtedly correct that assimilation and accommodation are more or less linked together and they are at any rate mutually dependent processes. But from a pedagogical viewpoint, there is much to be gained in considering and analysing each of them separately. In this way it is easier to see their different fundamental conditions and the qualities in the learning to which they give rise.

It is, first and foremost, important to be aware that accommodation in general is a considerably more demanding process than assimilation. It is far more straightforward to add to an already existing scheme than to perform the necessary complicated demolition, reorganisation and restruc- turing implied by accommodative learning. In particular, breaking down or giving up an insight or understanding that has already been acquired would seem to be a strain. We do not simply give up positions we have struggled to gain and which we at any rate have become accustomed to building on. This requires considerable mobilisation of mental energy and again requires the presence of subjectively convincing reasons to do so, or as Nissen himself has formulated it: ‘The actual accommodative learning process is a strain for the individual, characterised by anxiety, bewilderment and confusion, and requires a certain amount of strength’(Nissen 1970, p. 68). Accommodative learning, in general, requires more energy than assimila- tive learning, and therefore there is also a tendency to avoid this type of learning if we do not have any particular interest in learning the item in question, or for accommodations to be blocked by mental defence or resistance (I go further into this in Chapter 9). In return for these efforts, however, we build up some learning results through the accommodative processes that are generally more long-lasting and applicable in nature. Through the breaking down and reorganisation, a liberation from the established schemes can simultaneously occur that can lead to more coherent understandings that one remembers more easily and which can more easily be used to build on.

For example, when one is faced with a problem or one has been puzzled about something one cannot make any sense of for a long time and then one finds a solution through an accommodative process, then, at the same time, one establishes a more sustainable understanding that can be used across the lines of several mental schemes. To express it more simply, the learner has ‘realised’ the (subjectively) right context and this is an experi- ence that makes an impression and sticks. The Danish psychologist Jens Bjerg, who has worked closely together with Thomas Nissen, has expressed it as follows: ‘Accommodative processes provide the individual with

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opportunities for action, for use in various situations, whatever the context. Here we are dealing with the basis for openness, sensitivity, creativity, flexibility and the like’ (Bjerg 1972, p. 19).

In more general terms it can be pointed out that accommodative learning presupposes, first, that relevant schemes that can be reconstructed are already in place (e.g. presuppositions regarding a subject, attitudes or social relations); second, that the individual needs or is keen to mobilise energy for a reconstruction of that type; and third, that the individual in that situa- tion perceives sufficient permissiveness and safety to ‘dare’ to let go of the knowledge already established. These three kinds of preconditions for accommodative learning are not separately absolute in nature, but occur in a reciprocal interactive relationship, such that strong motivation for advancement, for example, can reduce the need for preconditions and security – or vice versa.

In more popular terms, accommodative learning can be related to concepts such as reflection and critical thinking (to which I return in Chapter 5), and it is clearly a form of learning of key importance for the current concept of competence (which will be discussed in section 8.4). It is, to a high degree, through accommodation that our learning obtains the general applicability in different, unpredictable situations that is precisely at the centre of the concept of competence.