From_Discipline_to_Constellation

Schools organise knowledge into disciplines, on the hypothesis that knowing can be divided and taught in parts. This essay argues that this form, while it eases teaching, may impede understanding, because it suppresses what constitutes meaning: the relation between concepts. It proposes instead a relational organisation of school knowledge whose elementary unit is neither the discipline nor the isolated concept but the constellation: an arrangement of concepts linked by justified relations. The proposal extends meaningful learning (Ausubel), concept maps (Novak and Gowin) and complex thought (Morin), and converges with Freire's critique of banking education; it is distinguished from them by making the relation — rather than the concept — the unit of understanding and of assessment. The article is explicit that the step from the relational account of meaning to a prescription for teaching requires a bridging premise, and that this premise is empirical and as yet untested. This is the third of three articles developing the Esteka research programme (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21539305).