Learning and Literacy Ch 11

Abstract

This chapter is about the second and third language dimensions of knowledge – learning and literacy. The difference and means of connection between the knowledge product and the thinking process are explained according to a naturalistic theory of mind. The connection occurs when the design of academic concepts according to their epistemic structure is mirrored in the building of the mind’s architecture or cognitive structure. The Curriculum Design Coherence Model (CDC Model) and TransAcquisition Pedagogy (TAP) methods engage directly with this connection between the type of knowledge and its specialised language on the one hand and the thinking process with the precise use of this language on the other. ‘Literacy’ is the third dimension in the knowledge-language relationship and is discussed in terms of the relationship of the concept to its symbol in script. Understanding concepts, especially highly abstract ones, is a cognitive act. This act requires two interdependent features that make up literacy. The first feature is reading comprehension. This requires the understanding of the academic concept, the very concept that aligns TransAcquistion Pedagogy and the CDC Model. The second feature, decoding the script in order to ‘extract’ the symbol’s meaning, is the competency practised in TAP’s sequential tasks and in Element 3 of the CDC Model – the ‘know-how-to’ competency.