It is well worth for students to take an effort in learning if they realize that they make good progress in developing competence. They will gain confidence and trust their own capacity.

Improving one’s knowledge means integrating new items into basically acquired knowledge. This may happen in many different ways. Similar to a spider’s web students create their own personal network of knowledge. Lessons focus on showing out the structurally more important knots in this cobweb without paralyzing the students.

Structures on a larger scale become more easily apparent if one stays away from them at a greater distance and if one includes more distant items into one’s consideration. In lessons this may happen by simply pausing and reflecting on what has already been achieved. It can be amazing for both teachers and students to discover the network of knowledge and capacity, in which both the problem and the different ways of solution are embedded.

From the problem solution to the network diagram

Active learning: Asking questions and experimenting