Teaching for understanding

Zora Rutar Ilc

Summary:   The goal of the present paper is to create a foundation for developing conceptual understanding and complex thinking as the common denominators shared by many educational approaches. Furthermore, this paper seeks to identify the implications of applying these common denominators to the process of teaching conceptual understanding and to shed light on how different teaching strategies contribute to this understanding. First, we place conceptual understanding into a theoretical  perspective and then we consider the research findings so as to link conceptual understanding with the concept of transfer. Next, we confront various teaching strategies and estimate their appropriateness or effectiveness for stimulating conceptual understanding (as a condition for the transfer and as one of the most important educational goals). Finally, we make a few general suggestions about effective ways to teach that stimulates understanding and complex thinking, all of which follows from the research findings and the studies of learning, conceptual understanding, and the role of transfer. Full article is not available in English.