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communication process in order to realize the potential of grasping the other psychic
system's selection of understanding; this iterative process deals with students' as
well as teachers' selection of understanding. With that in mind we will focus on
design of teaching environments.
Thoughts never leave psychic systems as thoughts, but are linguistic recon-
structions. And the “risk,” as mentioned, is that these linguistic reconstructions of
thoughts may not be understood as intended. For example, the teacher just has to go
on trying to grasp the students' way of understanding her utterance. The requirement
on the part of the teacher is a pivotal point when designing teaching environments
because learning cannot be organized or controlled by the act of teaching or by
the teacher herself (cf. the systems theoretical basis) (Mathiasen, 2009). Learning
develops from the selections made by the psychic system. The question is how to
develop an environment, or communication forum, which supports and facilitates
students' learning processes and knowledge constructions. In addition to the inher-
ent complexity, we have to be aware of the systems theory approach, which means
that each student has preferences about learning media, teaching contexts, and types
of collaboration (Mathiasen, 2009).
The concept of teaching environment is a more precise indication than the con-
cept of learning environment because communication is regarded as the “disturbing
activity,” as communication. Teaching environments are seen as communication
forums, as social systems. We can only observe the first two selections in a com-
munication unit, and not the third selection, which is a conscious activity. This is
an important point to bear in mind when designing the actual teaching environment;
that is, the specific communication forum plays an important role in communica-
tion. If the communication is productive, ongoing, and is focused on the theme in
the concrete context, it can be seen as a possible way of facilitating learning and
thereby knowledge construction. This applies in the face-to-face (f2f) context as
well as in the many net-mediated communication forums (Mathiasen, 2007, 2008,
2009).
The determination of precisely which teaching environment (communication
forum) best fulfills the concrete aims, goals, and requirements of the specific cur-
riculum and syllabus is a job for the teacher, who is seen as the specialist. That
does not mean that the students themselves cannot design and use communication
forums instead of or concurrently to the institution determined conference system
or learning management system, for example. This in fact is what the literature tells
us. Moreover, the teacher has to reflect on the variety of learning media and their
potential for facilitating learning, and then select learning media and test possibil-
ities, here in the sense of testing understanding, which facilitates the intentions.
The traditional lecture given by a teacher to a class does not necessarily contribute
to an ideal teaching environment according to this theory of communication and
learning, since the point of departure is that every psychic system is unique, which
leads to highly complex environments when it comes to organizing the teaching
environment.
