What is Learning?
According to Bruner, learning is this continuous process from childhood to adulthood. Children can learn bits and pieces of any concept as long as it is presented in a manner they can understand. This feels a lot like background knowledge, situated cognition, and several other theories. But, they all come back to this idea that learning is not stagnant. It is this evolving entity shaped by experience and action.
Teacher?
What can the teacher do? Allow for opportunities for students to discover and allow for opportunities for students to spiral their learning. In my math classes, I consider spiral curriculum each day when I write the bell ringer problems. They are always reminiscent of a prior class or sometimes will relate to an old topic which will, in turn, introduce a new topic. During my last unit in Algebra B, we have reviewed at the beginning of each class, problems that were missed on the previous test. This unit will have new material and old material. The students are finally starting to catch on to the old material, but are also enriching it with the new stuff.
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that's interesting. I think my favorite quote from bruner went something like this "Any topic can be taught to any child at any stage of development in an intellectually honest way." sounds like your strategies are very beneficial for your students.
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