Enkele medebepalers van die betekenisomvang van 'n skoolvak

Inaugural lecture--Department of Education, Rand Afrikaans University, 5 September 1975@@The effectiveness of teaching depends upon its meaningfulness. Amongst the multitude of factors which influence the meaningfulness of a school subject and its content, one which has only of late been recognized as of vital importance, is structure. Discussing the ideas of Bruner and Klafki, it is pointed out that the structural form in which the teacher presents the subject content, should preferably be "fundamental ideas" ("elementare") which provide simplicity, insight, pattern, meaningful relationships, productive dynamism, etc. Only content that has been patterned upon fundamental ideas can really. provide the type of transfer which is of long term educational significance. As the school aims by its very nature primarily at intellectual gains, the structures employed in school teaching should be intellectual as well. The wide use of extrinsic structures is pointed out as well as their educational weakness. Curriculum designers should regard optimal structure as one of the decisive factors, relative to the group for whom the curriculum is designed. It is further argued that learning content becomes less meaningful also to the extent that the content taught by teachers do not relate to questions or problems on the part of pupils. Until pupils have been brought to regard the teaching content as problems-to-be-solved i.e. in school terms reality-to-be-understood, the teachers' presentation must remain largely meaningless. The teachers' attitude itself must be to question that reality represented in the teaching content. In this regard Schiefele's plea for a clear "Gegenstandstheorie" implies La. not merely a presentation of reality, but also a questioning attitude on the part of the teacher towards that reality which must also allow the time necessary for the child to develop the tension generated by active questioning. After Copei, the thesis is that answers (the content presented by the teacher) are meaningful only to the degree that they are related to questions (wonder, curiosity, exploration, the active striving to understand).