THE CONSTRUCTIVIST VALUES OF COMPREHENSION IN TEXT DIDACTICS

Abstract

The article explores the idea that constructivist education implies the building of relationships, the prevalence of the logic of liberty and plurality, the offering of cognitivist and constructivist models, which thus produce learning through research and construction. By stating the role of the real-life environment, knowledge is being created, based on the exploration of possibilities, skills, and attitudes. Therefore, the issue of pupils’ participation in this construction, comprehension, and interpretation, through dynamic interactive relationships, while appealing to research or solving problematic situations, is as relevant as ever. By adapting the constructivist methodology for pedagogical use we are able to objectify knowledge by confronting it with other solutions and interpretations.
When they are approached in the education space, texts become manifestations of norms with various degrees of power, since every text contains a “packed†meaning. Therefore, text interpretation is an activity situated within the relation between the text taken as reference, a real situation and a course of action that is being deliberated on. The degree to which a text that is being interpreted by a student may help in the understanding of a real situation, in order to help choose a specific course of action, constitutes the main methodological problem of text didactics. Thus there are several distinct taxonomies of comprehension we denote in the context of text comprehension: meaning-generating comprehension, cognitive comprehension, and significant comprehension.
The study illustrates the fact that denotative texts may have different functions in the educational process, but their main attributions are still two: informing and forming. The educational consequences of the denotative text materialise in the building of students’ capacity for observation. It is through such texts that the student will better access the realities of life. And therefore text didactics, as a dimension of general education, is concerned with educating the student through the application of various types of texts in educational practice. When used in education these texts have the mission of supporting the students’ search for answers to the challenges of today, their self-assessment and self-formation as readers that had been both informed and formed based on this type of text.