Cognitive Theories of Learning Flashcards
Klahr, Chen, Toth 2001
Instructional innovations can raise new questions for cog science research. Wide gap between science educators and developmental psychologist.
Dev psych - universals and invariant, educators - what can change
Looking at a child in isolation (developmental psych), whereas educators work in a complex setting with many children.
Two-way flow between psych lab and classroom – idea in the paper
Teacher is co-orchestrating science learning cog processes at once (can’t isolate)
Content and process in science learning
Control of Variables Strategy (CVS) – a strategy used in scientific thinking.
Their study –
Used laboratory for a training period in CVS
Explicit training/probes
Implicit training/probes
No training/no probes
Found that without direct instruction, children did not learn the CVS. With direct and exploration, could learn and could transfer.
Children in the classroom where able to conduct controlled experiments , with procedural and conceptual knowledge increasing after direct instruction session (short) with hands on experiment.
Mixes direct and discovery learning
Moss & Case 1999 Math Learning, C’ism instuction
Math – learning fractions
Lack of conceptual understanding in children looking at fractions –
- too much time teaching procedures but not enough conceptual
- adult centered instruction
- representations that are confusing (pie charts)
- difficulty in learning notation is overlooked
must teach children in a meaningful way – use preexisting knowledge, things they care about and know about, own creations – active
Used percent first, then fractions
Used verbal social interaction – helped the children self-regulate (mc) as well as help teachers know what they are thinking
Bransford and Schwartz 1999
Big article on transfer -
thorndike - people don’t transfer well - general skills don’t improve by studying one area necessarily (general problem solving doesn’t necessarily develop - more specific to each context)
Degree of and manner of original learning is important to transfer
More MC helps to increase transfer (more skills and strategies are in place)
what you measure in the study will bring different transfer results - ie bald eagles - 5th vs. college - both failed, but in different ways (college transferred more) - I would say this is more about formal reasoning skills
PFL - preparedness for future learning - view transfer in an enriched setting (authentic) rather than sequestered problem solving - direct application.
Knowing WITH - learning illuminates a situation without reproducing that situation. you bring knowledge from your past experiences with you to new situations. For example - perceptual experiences - bringing different features to the forefront affects what we perceive based on our prior knowledge - comparing grids in a context of a meaningful framework.
Learning experience can be good or poor based on what taks on is eventually asked to perform. Transfer can be missed when not authentic situation (alignment between learning and assessment)
Variation is important to transfer better - more differentiated background provides better transfer in a new problem
Sfard 1998
metaphors lead to different ways of thinking and to different activities. It may perpetuate beliefs and confine thinking about important issues. Talks about the acquisition metaphor for learning
Palinscar 1998
Actual vs. potential levels of development ZPD
Phylogentic development –culture over time (evolution)
Onotgentic – individual development
Expert – constructivist perspective – someone that knows the discourse, the practices, of the community (not knowledge structures)
Bruer 1997
Synaptogenesis – synapses form in excess and then prune away. New development is often marked by a burst of synaptic growth
Critical periods – found for vision (cats), but while brain development may have some critical periods, we can’t say they are also for culturally transmitted knowledge
Early childhood – attend to sensory issues immediately – fine-tuning will be compromised if issues.
Brain plasticity – connected to synaptogenesis
Can’t draw conclusions about educational choices based on knowledge about brain synapse changes
Cognitive neuroscience is at the bridge between behavior and biology – study both
Brown and Campione 1996
On designing learning environments –
Instructional program – fostering communities of learners – inner cities, promotes critical thinking and reflection skills underlying many forms of literacy – reading, writing, argumentation, technology use (elementary school age)
Guided by sit cog. Conceptual understanding and practical dissemination – created learning principles
Students engage in research, share expertise and have a consequential task or activity 0 students must learn about all aspects of the joint topic
Reflect
Understanding deep disciplinary content
Use jigsaw
Many activities to support these principles – Research - reading, guided viewing and writing, expert consults, peer and cross-age teaching. Share info – jigsaw, crosstalk, distriubuted expertise, majoring, help-seeking, exhibitions, Consequential tasks – tests, quizzes, exhibitions, design tasks, publishing, authentic assessments
Phillips 1995
Varieties of c’ism can be located along three different dimensions – individual vs. public discipline (feminist epistemolgists)
Knowledge is constructed or discovered (humans are the creatures or nature the instructor)
Knowledge construction as individual cognition or as cosical political processes (Piaget, Dewey vs. Nelson)
Phillips’ view – Nature exerts considerable constraint over knowledge constructing activities and allows detection of error
Snow 1996
This article discusses Snow’s ATI theory (aptitude-treatment interaction). It is a conceptual article without an empirical study. He proposes that education ought to be treated as an aptitude development program. He says that education is meant to preserve, encourage, and communicate knowledge, to foster individuals’ preparedness for the next stage of life, and to develop readiness (or aptitude) for new learning. Snow argues that developing aptitude is the most important function of education. He points out that aptitudes include cognitive, conative and affective characteristics of a person that are needed for success in any given situation. He emphasizes that aptitudes are characteristics of person-in-situation interactions, not just individuals alone. Snow defines intelligence as being a developmental goal in which aptitudes need to be organized for learning and problem solving. He points out that individual differences in aptitudes moderate the effects of particular treatments (environments), and therefore in order to develop intelligence, aptitude-treatment interactions must be studied. He proposes different ways to assess intelligence. Rather than using global achievement assessments, he proposes using assessments that look at specific abilities rather than general overall achievement, and also distinguish conative and affective characteristics of the individual. He proposes that doing this type of assessment will lead to better diagnosis of what types of treatments individuals need to develop aptitudes for learning. He concludes that although there are several affordances provided in the schools for developing aptitudes, it has been spotty and unplanned in some cases. He also notes that some individuals come to school ready to utilize these affordances and others do not, pointing out that there may need to be more congruence between home and school affordances in order to optimize the development of aptitudes in education (poverty and parenting issues outside of school). He provides a hypothesized list of educational effects in home and school that produce intelligence development in three categories: general effects, curriculum effects, and metacurriculum effects, suggesting that these need to be identified, promoted, assessed and understood in research in order to improve educational practice. He cites several research sources that led to his generated list.
Rogoff 1995
Sociocultural – vygotskian
Personal interpersonal and community processes – apprenticeship, guided participation, participatory appropriation
Individual and context are intricately connected, can’t disconnect – Vygotsky. Look at activity as the unit of analysis – brings in individual, social partners and historical traditions and materials
Looking at learning situations as situated in a social and historical context – not how they HAVE to be but how they are – have to really look and tease out the obvious
Did a study in salt lake city – girl scouts – were the organizers and the observers
Appropriation – changes via individiual’s own participation – not internalization of something. Changing in a community.
Ericsson et al. 1993
expert performance comes from at least 10 years of practice. involves motivation, resources, effort. Not innate ability. Looked at violinists and pianists
Glaser, 1992
experts use chunking. Deep structures exist - elaborate systems. Chess masters. Experts have specific proficiencies, can use general problem solving tactics well to solve new problems - analogies
Collins 1993
Things to consider when designing learning environments:
Learning goals:
Memorization vs. thoughtfulness – there is a time for each
Whole tasks vs. sub-skills – best to use sub-skills when a weakness is IDed.
Breadth vs. depth – support both goals
Diverse vs. uniform expertise – specialize in meaningful for individual (c’sim)
Access vs. understanding – have tools to do more but also need to have understanding
Cognitive vs. physical fidelity – start with cog (models, simulations) and more to more physical
Learning styles:
Interactive vs. active vs. passive – need a mix of interactive (generates automaticity) and active (generates more thoughtfulness)
Incidental vs. direct learning – engaging task that incorporates info (Carmen San Diego – looking for criminals and learning geography on the way) – sometimes not very authentic (useless facts not organized into any particular structure – random)
All learning is not fun – effort is required, better to make meaningful tasks
Natural vs. efficient learning – natural is very functional but slow, so have to choose things when planning efficient learning that are still functional.
Learner control – more motivating, can choose challenging and interesting things, but sometimes don’t know what they know or what they don’t know, don’t know the field well, and don’t know how to learn effectively. Must provide scaffolding.
Children should learn in many contexts
Move from more structure to less structure
Start at optimum complexity of problems for each student (not too simple, not too hard)
Methods of teaching – coaching, scaffolding, modeling
. make children articulate what they know, reflect
Lampert 1990
what does it mean to know and teach math – changing the roles and responsibilities of teacher and student in classroom discourse
Right and wrong in math rather than discussing its assumptions
Engaging in mathematical discourse –three roles as a teacher – telling right or wrong, modeling, or doing math alongside them using the language
Doing math can come from mathematical argument, not just a book (justifications for doing what you are doing)
This article sounds like cognitive apprenticeship to me
Lave, 1988
Transfer - traditional studies of transfer’s problems:
sep. of cog from the social world
separation of form and content implied in the practice of investigating isomorphic problem solveing
strictly cog explanation from continuity in activity across situations
all disassociate cognition from context
all studies are done in the lab
problems that are not ill-structured (as in the lab) are not authentic
