The quality of quality: Toward a semiotics of quality in learning materials

The concept of "good learning materials" is an abstraction. Learning materials are always good for something and someone, and less good for other things and other people, depending on the situated interaction between actors and materials. This article attempts to frame and understand the basic normativity in the design, use and research of learning materials as a privileged example of how to understand complex and dynamic processes in teaching. The basic assumption is that research into learning materials enjoys a certain prerogative as the focal point for a study of quality in teaching that this analysis will elaborate as a semiotics of quality. This semiotics of quality will be elaborated and exemplified through: an analysis of the problem of representation in teaching; a multidimensional quality theory; a sketch of a meta-language on quality in learning materials; and finally an analysis of the quality of two sets of paradigmatic learning materials.