Abstract:

Inquiry into the teaching epistemology for competence development aims to clarify the relationship between knowledge and competence, and the epistemology principles and teaching mechanism of their transformation. Competence is the moral ability of using knowledge to solve complex problems, and this learning outcome is based on knowledge and beyond, and depends on the fact that learners could transfer and utilize knowledge morally in complex situation. The nature of competence is practice which implies the epistemological meaning of the unity of knowledge and action, intellect and morality. This implication demands that teaching epistemology should handle well with the integration between ‘learning’ and ‘utilizing’. Although traditional teaching epistemology consistently advocates ‘learning for utilizing’, clamped by the knowledge creed of firm belief in rationalism, it struggled with the dualism cruces including the time sequence view, instrumental theory and mechanism in dealing with the relationship between knowledge and action, ‘learning’ and ‘utilizing’. The crux of dualism not only split the inherent unity of ‘learning’ and ‘utilizing’, but made it difficult to ensure the practicality of learners’ learning outcomes. ‘Utilizing for learning’ adjusts the sequence between ‘learning’ and ‘utilizing’ and aims to re-evaluate the epistemology meaning of action and practice, so as to promote ‘learning for utilizing’. ‘Utilizing for learning’ as the practice-oriented teaching epistemology, not only outlines the teaching mechanism of turning knowledge into competence, but reflects the practical turn of modern and contemporary epistemology research, the newest development of learning science and the action-based epistemology tradition implied in Chinese culture.

Key words: competence, relationship between knowledge and action, practice-based epistemology, utilizing for learning, teaching epistemology