The Expert Blind Spot
Teaching specific topics or skills without making clear their context in the
broader fundamental structure of a field of knowledge is uneconomical.
—Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education, 1960, p. 31
Understanding the importance of transfer can help us make sense, then, of
those educators, like Bruner, who claim that typical coverage is “uneconomical.”
How can he say this? It seems so manifestly false: Teaching for understanding
is perhaps more effective, but how can it possibly be more efficient?
Can’t we address far more content through didactic teaching and textbook
coverage than we can by setting up inquiry-based work to help students come
to deeper understanding of the material on their own?
But this confuses the teaching with the learning. Consider Bruner’s three
reasons for why a traditional coverage approach is uneconomical in the long
run: