NAME OF PUBLISHER
Erickson (Orientamenti Pedagogici, 48,
2001, 223-234)
DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS
The paper is focused on the communication in the main environment of the learning: the school.
Three contents are presented by the author: 1. the language, 2. the requisites, 3. students’ interest and motivation
The language
Teachers should take in great consideration the language, independently on the discipline that they teach: they should use, as much as possible, words of the common language, at least initially (it means starting from the language of their pupils), and, at the same time, they should work to enhance the linguistic skills of their students. Pupils' linguistic problems occur since primary school, since the first day of school. It's just while attending primary school that the kid starts to not understand certain topics and thinks that at school he is not able to understand, so starting to memorize what the teacher says. This choice, in some way obliged, is irreversible. The choice is irreversible because if the pupil, by memorizing and repeating, gets good results, he continues and becomes increasingly able at this feature; to memorize requires less effort thus hardly he will put himself in the logic of understanding, which requires a lot of effort, especially from who has never exercised in this direction.
The requisites
When the users of the message do not meet the requirements necessary to receive it, this creates problems in the communication. In this case the author refers to the conceptual requisites, skills and abilities that are essential in order to understand what is being proposed. For this reason the choice of contents becomes an extremely important factor in school, a factor often overlooked in favor of the method. The method is certainly important but the quality of the contents that the teacher offers is also very important, as there are contents that need multiple requisites and contents that require the possession of less requisites.
The motivation
Once the teacher has created adequate conditions so that the message is understood as the teacher wants, there is the problem of passing from the so-called comprehensibility of the message to its proper understanding by the recipient. Interest and motivation are factors that influence the transition from comprehensibility to proper understanding. In fact, there is a strong relationship between learning and interest in learning: it could be argued that if pupils have no reasons to understand, the learning will be achieved very hardly. It is necessary to identify appropriate tactics and strategies to attract the interest of the students, to make sure that they feel the need to "look for explanations".
REVIEWER’S COMMENTS ON THE PUBLICATION
The author of the paper is Aldo Borsese, a professor of chemistry that devoted his life to research in the didactic of chemistry and to train teachers. The paper contains precious guidelines and suggestions addressed to teachers of every school grade. The author states that the primary task of the teaching should be to identify the conditions that can foster effective communication; in other words, it should help to identify the most appropriate conditions to minimize the difference between the meaning assigned to the message by the teacher and the one perceived by the student.
An efficacious teaching can only be achieved if :
- teachers use a language adequate to the language of their students
- they offer contents that find correspondence in the cognitive structures of students - the methodology used determines the active involvement of their students.
The suggestions gathered by Aldo Borsese in the paper are the result of years of research in the field of education and are valuable for each discipline and each school grade. They are above all valid in the case of chemistry, often pointed as one of the most difficult subjects because of the specific terminology and the contents, regarding a microscopic and almost abstract level.
