The five epistemological types of coherence available in didactics of foreign languages-cultures

Full text

Christian Puren
https://www.christianpuren.com/bibliothèque-de-travail/058-en/
Original French version https://www.christianpuren.com/bibliothèque-de-travail/058/, October 19, 2022
THE FIVE EPISTEMOLOGICAL TYPES OF COHERENCE
AVAILABLE IN DIDACTICS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES-CULTURES
Type 1
Type 2
Type 3
Type 4
Type 4
"Coherence
closed "
"coherence
open "
"Coherence
multiple "
"Coherence
plural "
"Coherence
virtual "1
closed
open
multiple
plural
reticular2
unique
unique
juxtaposed
integrated
unique and plural
global
global
partial
complex
global and partial
strong
low
variables
strong
strong and weak
permanent
permanent
provisional
provisional
permanent and temporary
universal
universal
local
local
universal and local3
Historical examples of implementation
• traditional
methodology
• direct
methodology
• audio-oral
methodology
• audiovisual
methodology
• communicative
approach
• eclecticism at the three levels of
methodology:
- micro level, that of methods (cf.
Puren 008, 2011k, in French)
- meso level, that of the components
of the methodologies (cf. Puren
2019g-en)
- macro level, that of the historic
methodologies (cf. Puren 2022g-en).
action-oriented
perspective
project pedagogy
(see Puren 2022g-en)
• personal journeys effectively
carried out in hypernavigation,
on a CD-ROM or a learning
platform
• collaborative networked
learning
• design of the courses offered to
a learner in a digital
environment according to the
traces left by previous learners

NOTES
1 "Virtual coherence" in the philosophical sense of "in the making", "awaiting realization", like
the tree in the seed. Digital learning environments thus oblige their designers to design their
devices according to the different tasks and paths that users will be able to take according to
their personal desires or strategies (which they do not know) and the results (which they cannot
predict) of the interactions between these users and these devices. In other words, digital
virtuality forces language didactics to take learners into account in a way that is very different
from the way "programming" used to do. One of the forms of implementation of type 3
coherence, namely the modularity of materials or didactic units, already announces virtuality,
but its teaching orientation, the size of the modules (their "grain") and their management time
make it qualitatively different from type 2 coherence.
2 The reticular coherence is given by the set of activatable links between nodes in a network.
Examples: in a hypertext, one can click from the written form to the oral or visual form of a
word, from its form in L2 to its form in L1, from its lexicological form to its encyclopedic form
(by a reference to the corresponding entry in a scholarly work on history, geography, sociology,
etc.)
3 On all these paradoxes characterizing the coherence of this type 4, see Pierre LÉVY,
Cyberculture. Rapport du Conseil de l’Europe dans le cadre du projet « Nouvelles technologies :
coopération culturelle et communication » [Cyberculture. Report of the Council of Europe within
the framework of the project "New technologies: cultural cooperation and communication" ], Éd.
Odile Jacob/Éditions du Conseil de l'Europe, November 1997, 313 p. Cf. in particular, with regard
to the couple "universal and local", his definition of cyberculture as "a universal without totality"
(chap. VI, pp. 129 ff).
➔ This version of October 19, 2022, takes into account my latest work on multi- and pluri-
methodological modes of variation. The different epistemological types of coherence currently
available are now four: "closed coherence", "open coherence", "multiple coherences", "plural
coherence" and "virtual coherence".
A "complex didactics of languages and cultures" (cf. my 2003b manifesto article) must be able
to take into account in its analyses, and to mobilize in its proposals, the totality of these
modes of coherence.
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