The Notion of Schemata and the Educational Enterprise: General Discussion of the Conference

This chapter focuses on the implications of the concept of schema for education. Schema is an interesting concept only if there are structures which are more than aggregations of primitive elements. Returning to the arena of interest to educators and psychologists, the implication of schema theory is that the mental representations which are used during perception and comprehension, and which evolve as a result of these processes, have a holistic character which cannot be understood as simple functions of their constituents. This issue is currently the subject of vigorous debate and active experimental investigation. To perceive something is to place a construction upon it that plausibly accounts for the sensory input. To comprehend a message is to discover a formulation which coherently explains its contents. Socratic teaching would appear to force students to deal with counterexamples and face contradictions.