Silke M. Kledzik
The teaching and learning by example principle and its semiotic basis
Howard Gardner
The development of symbol competence in children
Gerhard Schurz
Thinking, speaking and education: the current Piaget controversy
Enclosure
Werner Enninger und Stephen Scott
Carriages as things and signs
The semiotics of vehicle design
Study
Annemarie Lange-Seidl
Semiotics at the universities of the Federal Republics of Germany and Austria and
Switzerland
The teaching and learning by example principle and its
semiotic basis
Silke M. Kledzik, University of the Saarland
Summary. Teaching and learning by examples, one of the principal concepts of
didactics, has nearly disappeared from present-day pedagogical discussions.
Here, an attempt is made to revive this notion and to clarify it by means of a
linguistic and semiotic analysis. The semiotic features of examples are
specified, such as the simultaneity of possession of and reference to a given
property. In conclusion, the importance of teaching and learning by examples is
pointed out, especially as a "way of world-making" in the educational
context.
The development of symbol competence in children
Howard Gardner, Harvard Project Zero, Boston
Summary. The task for the analyst would be simple if there were a single symbol
system to be mastered, and only one kind of individual to master it. In fact,
however, research from several fields has now established that human beings are
capable of gaining proficiency in several symbol systems, that each symbol
system operates in part according to its own set of principles; and that
individuals of different ages and degrees of sophistication approach the task
of acquiring symbolic literacy in distinctive ways. In this paper, a normative
description of the course of symbolic development is provided. Following a
period of mundane symbol mastery in infancy, young children attain an initial
competence in dealing with a range of symbol systems in their culture (e.g.
language, gesture, picturing, numbers). Some psychological processes (called
"streams") prove specific to each symbol system, while others (called
"waves")
appear to operate in parallel fashion across some or several symbol systems. By
school age, the major task confronted by the child is the mastery of notations,
or second-order symbol systems. These systems entail features of reduction,
systematicity and legibility. The way in which mastery of notational
symbolization occurs reflects both the developmental stage of the learner and
his cognitive style: some children operate by using a narrative or dramatic
approach to symbol systems, while others employ a configurational or patterning
approach. At the conclusion of the paper, some pedagogical implications of this
perspective on symbolic development are introduced.
Thinking, speaking and education: the current Piaget
controversy
Gerhard Schurz, University of Salzburg
For my mother's 50th birthday
Summary. Piaget's theory of knowledge, his developmental psychology, his theory
of language, and his pedagogics are reconstructed and scrutinized here from
both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. The following theses
expounded by Piaget are shown to be problematic or untenable: (1) Logical
structures can be explained by psychological development processes; (2)
cognitive structures arise from action, not from perception; (3) thought is
independent from language and language plays a secondary role in cognitive
development; (4) cognitive concepts are learnable only through individual
discovery. In conclusion, two of Piaget's basic assumptions are replaced by the
following ones: (A) Cognitive development is not controlled by general
structures, but by content-specific (interpretationdependent) structures; (B)
It is not the level of structure, but the semiotic type of representation
achieved for a cognitive structure that is characteristic of a given stage of a
child's cognitive development.
Enclosure
Carriages as things and signs
The semiotics of vehicle design
Werner Enninger and Stephen Scott, University of GHS Essen
Summary. Carriages are not only antiquated things, but also complex signs. The
design features of carriages used in the Old Order communities in Pennsylvania
can be modeled as a codification of part of their social universe. Before the
interactional opening this carriage-code functions as a signaling system that
transmits to the interactants bits of information which are relevant for the
organization of the ensuing interaction.
