Reinhard Stach: Charta as the Didactic Segments of Reality

The author follows the history of charts mounted on classroom walls, from Comenius' textbook Orbis Pictus to recent developments. He examines how these figures have contributed to students' conceptual development. At a higher level of development, charts acquired an aesthetic function as well. In the development ofcharts, the first steps were taken by the phylantropists, following the wake of Comenius. For example, Chodowiecki's picture cycle, created for Basedow's Elementarwerk is well known. The beginnings of the factory-based production of charts was a breakthrough. The study of the history of the development of the figures reveals certain distorsions as well. For example, the segmentation of reality for didactic purposes emerges, e.g. by placing things that do not match next to each other or by shortening certain developmental processes (e.g. the coffee-shrub on Zerenner's picture). These representations eventually prove alien to reality. Their creators intended them to foster the process of understanding, but they carry inaccurate information and thus make the formation of correct knowledge structures difficult. The study of the history of the development of the figures yields interesting contributions to the attitudes and the pedagogical-didactic culture of the eras they were created in.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 99. Number 1. 39-59. (1999)

Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Gerhard–Mercator–Universität, Gasamthochschule Duisburg

 
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