Chapter IV: The Six Facets of Understanding

In this chapter the author states 6 indicators of understanding which are, - Explanation: Here the student need to create links between ideas in order to be able to state a point of view giving reasons and argumments. - Interpretation: Students get involved in the task linking it with their previous knowledge and their feelings about it. - Application: there is an emphasis on performing what was learned putting it into practice. - Perspective: To make assumptions of what is learned and to be able to see the implications this carries. - Empathy: The capacity to conect ourselves (in terms of feelings) with others feel or think. - Self-Knowledge: References to how well we know ourselves. Here people can identify what they know and what they do not know. Appart from this facets, the author mentions that teachers cannot teach meaning because it is an internal process, but they can guide students to reach meaning by asking them for the meaning they have created. Here we help students to connect what they already know with what we expect them to learn guiding them to use it, makin this new knowledge meaningful for them. From my point of view, teachers forget that students bring experiences and feelings with them, so letting them explain what they know, and then letting them explain what they understood makes them be aware of what they really know. This helps them to reach metacognition, what makes students, and people in general, to understand their own ways of learning; an important tool for understanding that is not explicitly mentioned in the text.