Quotations: Teachers and Their Tasks

«The teacher sees the student faced with the new object. He knows what needs to be discovered about it. But not just that. As a pedagogue, he also knows how the student can gain insight himself. Therefore, he does not tell him the final result, but rather guides him to carry out the cognitive act which he knows will lead to the desired result. (1961a, 142)

«There is a prevalent but erroneous opinion that a person who masters the subject matter is also able to teach.» (1982a, 111)

«Teachers of all levels should have knowledge of the psychological conditions of behavior and learning. Particularly important in this context are the psychology of cognitive behaviors, the theory of higher learning and achievement and learning motivation and the theory and practice of performance testing (in today's words: diagnostic skills, Aebli-Näf Foundation).» (1968b, 188)/p>

«In ‘Democracy and Education’, John DEWEY (1916) has given schools the task of shaping the experience of the upcoming generation in a simplified, socially balanced environment, as one cannot ‘impart’ experience. For teaching, this means guiding the students towards independent experience instead of teaching them theories.» (1986d, 306)

«Processes of construction do not simply occur. They need to be triggered and guided by people who know the end product and know how to lead to this end product.» (1969, 76/77)

«We interpret developments as the sum of the child’s learning processes and we claim that important developmental impetuses emanate from his social environment, especially the family, but also from school. Educators possess techniques that trigger learning processes in the child which would never emerge based on his spontaneous activities. Important mechanisms in this conscious steering of the child’s learning lie in the offer of structured behavioral role models, which, owing to his urge for action, the child imitates.» (1983a, 391)

«Thus, we see a substantial part of the child’s seemingly spontaneous development as being stimulated and guided by the interaction with adults in everyday life. If this stimulation is lacking, the child develops symptoms of cultural deprivation and his development suffers. The educational effects in the family and in school differ merely in degree. The triggering and steering of learning processes occurs more systematically in school than in the family and in other areas of everyday life outside of school. School learning moves forward rapidly, but at the cost of many risks. All too often, the outcome is merely hollow words, without a deeper anchoring in behavior, and equally frequently, there is a lack of consolidation through diverse practice and application. Therefore, the reactions acquired in school often also rapidly decay. The results of learning in everyday life, by contrast, are frequently practiced and applied thousandfold and are thus deeply anchored in general behavior. On the other hand, the individual insights are often isolated here and with little systematic interlinking.» (1983a, 391/392)

«We can see that this conception of education takes very seriously the culture and the society in which the child grows up and is educated, as well as the language in which their common knowledge is formulated. There is no possibility for the child to grow and mature without the educational support of people who model and exemplify the forms of action and thought, the attunements, and the orientations in an adult and mature way, and who help the child to build up the respective ordering in his own thinking, acting, and experiencing. Leaving the child to grow is no alternative.» (1983a, 392)

«Every mental act is built up progressively, starting from earlier and simpler forms of reaction. Each operation has its own history. In the development of children’s thinking, one can observe how operations, starting from simple action schemata, become more and more differentiated in order to develop increasingly complex and flexible systems, which are ultimately capable of interpreting the whole universe. The teacher’s task therefore lies in creating psychological situations for a child, in which the child can build up the operations he needs to acquire. The teacher must pick up the earlier schemata which the child already possesses, and develop the new operation from these. The teacher needs to provide the material that is suitable for this mental activity and monitor whether the new operation is being sought in the desired direction.» (1951/1976, 88)

«After seeking independently, the groups or the individually working students should always report on the results, and now the teacher has the opportunity to step in by revising and supplementing the data found. These reports which the teacher checks are of great importance because the weak students or those with little interest often do not come to the desired result in the course of independent seeking. The reports of their schoolmates and the amendments of the teacher then help them to keep up again.» (1951/1976, 99/100)

«Wherever there is a good teacher at work, the world becomes a little better.» (1983d, 3-13)

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