Chapter 3 - Practical-Moral Knowledge and Regulatory Processes

Summary

In Chapter 3, we offer practical-moral knowledge as a theoretical frame that can be used to understand the dynamic transactions between the historical construction of a social context and regulatory processes of learning. Practical-moral knowledge is socially embedded and emerges in formal and in formal learning communities. This form of knowledge is socially constructed and reconstructed from a continually emergent and shared semiotic (sign) system of rights, responsibilities, and duties that establishes legitimate actions and interactions for competent participation. This sign system is composed of social and moral orders and gives rise to a community ethos involving a code of conduct for regulating behaviors, a code always under revision as learners and the community co-develop. Learners (and their mentors/teachers) use locally constructed practical-moral knowledge to guide engagement in processes of self-, other-, and co-regulation.