Education and the question about understanding: What's next: Curriculum 2005, 21, 2005 ...?

Abstract

In this article, I want to capture the puzzlement about understanding that is properly part of thinking about education. Phrased differently, I want to suggest that thinking about curriculum development, in general, avoid the problem of understanding at the peril of not grasping what is central to learning (and teaching). More particularly, I want to show how questions about the specifics of education, ie what to include and how to structure and time this, demand that we confront the problem of understanding in its many guises. I present some of these images against the background of an analysis of the concepts "educate" and "education", and in terms of the cognitive, linguistic and socio-political consequences of a meeting between the familiar and the strange or alien.


South African Journal of Higher Education Vol.15(1) 2001: 25-31