Learning in the Classroom

Question 1

What did Piaget believe was important?

Answer 1

Self-directed learning - experience was very important

Child as an active learner

Question 2

What is cognitive conflict?

Answer 2

How you deal with conflicting information when with a teacher vs another child
when with a teacher, don’t go through active learning, just receive the information from the teacher and accept it
Cognitive conflict is the trigger for learning to be resolved - the process of resolution is the process of learning
When children are in a group and they question the info from their peers, to arrive at an answer

Question 3

What are behaviourist approaches at school?

Answer 3

They are often regarded as out of favour, but they are still a major focus in schools - rewards and punishment (praise, telling off etc), learning through observation
A lot more to it than behaviour - representation of the world

Question 4

What are the ambiguities in group learning?

Answer 4

Does someone need the competence in the group before the interaction? OR do you have a bunch of kids without the answer, and together, they arrive collectively
Is improvement merely a matter of imitation?
Who do we need in the group?
Is presence of another person sufficient?
Do benefits of peer interaction arise from cognitive conflict or are they the outcome of effective guidance?

Question 5

What does Bruner believe is going on in group work?

Answer 5

Believe that discovery methods were important (argues against instruction from teachers). Child is at the centre of the learning process by focussing on discovery
Came up with the idea of scaffolding
It is the child’s representation of the world which is changing

Question 6

What does Mayer believe?

Answer 6

Strongly argues against pure discovery - pure discovery may fail to promote the first cognitive process, selecting relevant incoming information
This is because when encounter a problem, they need to know what to focusses on (have to make sense of incoming info etc) - as soon as tasks get harder, not knowing the purpose is difficult, don’t know where the discussion is going so dunno what to pay attention too - need to know what to attend too then the task of problem solving begins
Three strikes against pure discovery - important role of guidance
Contrasts pure discovery with effective guidance

Question 7

Is adult guidance important?

Answer 7

Yes - to support and structure intellectual activity

When there is a point to the task, the need for structure becomes clearer

Question 8

What is Vygotskys sociocultural theory?

Answer 8

Focusses on the social environment as critical
Recognises the active role played by the environment
Learning involves internalising what is observed and experienced on the social plane
Cognitive development involves guidance by a more competent social partner - ZPD - someone who is more clever than you

Question 9

What is the ZPD?

Answer 9

Process of moving what you are capable of doing unaided by themselves, through zone of ZPD where they can do things with more competent other

Question 10

What are the implications of sociocultural theory?

Answer 10

Implications for instruction - scaffolding e.g. Woods focus on contingent instruction - what a adult is doing, is continent on where a child is doing, if they can’t do something give them more help, if they can, withdraw guidance

Implications for testing - dynamic assessment: focus on assessing where a child can be with the guidance of a more competent other

Question 11

Radziszewska and Rogoff - guided participation

Answer 11

Comparison of adult vs peer collaborators - working out the quickest way to do errands with 9 year old kids

Either had 2 kids together or a child with an adult

Results:
Adults more capable of bringing child on in understanding, children performed better after spending time with adults rather than peers, no progress with child
Why? peer dyads not sophisticated enough, maybe they don’t use sophisticated strategies

Question 12

Radziszewska and Rogoff - study 2

Answer 12

Went on to train one of the children in each dyad to be as competent as the adults, and put one trained child with one untrained child and looked what happened

Found: more sophisticated planning in dyad, training more sophisticated so dyad was a lot better, but in post test, the untrained child didn’t make as much progress as child with adult

Not simply just having someone with the right competence in a group, what they argue is that they were missing guided participation, adult was asking for input from child to scaffold learning, peer dyad didn’t do this

Question 13

What implications does guided participation have?

Answer 13

Implications for computer tutoring programmes - computer providing help when a child needs it on a task

Peer tutoring programmes at school - King et al found that there was specific characteristics of effective peer tutoring programmes, didn’t need high ability, just needed them to ask the right questions. Success wasn’t dependent on greater expertise of tutor - doesn’t matter who was student or tutor

Question 14

What are information processing approaches?

Answer 14

Range of processes and strategies involved in children’s problem-solving, writing, mathematics etc
Computer as metaphor for mind:
hardware: capacity, limits in speed
software: strategies, knowledge that we use in hardware
Focus on encoding, storage and retrieval - sensory memory, working memory, long term

Question 15

What did Craig and Lockhart find?

Answer 15

Levels of processing - better retrieval following deeper processing - if the word is based on semantics of written in capitals
consider implications for assessment

Question 16

What is the self-referencing effect?

Answer 16

Encoding stimuli with reference to the self promotes organisation and elaboration
for example, self referent encoding leads better recall than semantic
for example, recall advantage for self-performed rather than other performed activities - doing it yourself rather than watching someone

Question 17

What are the strategies for learning?

Answer 17

Levels of processing
Self-Referencing effect
Meta-cognitive strategies

Question 18

What does overlapping waves mean?

Answer 18

Using loads of different strategies at once

Question 19

What is variability of strategies predictive of?

Answer 19

Learning

Question 20

What is the micro genetic approach?

Answer 20

Dense observation in a short time period, over time to track changes
Found not as simple as using just one strategy at one age, not a stage model
Use multiple strategies, change from less to more advanced, but also more advanced to less advanced
Implications for notion of simple developmental sequences
Changes prompted by self-explantion and feedback
Same child will use a range

Question 21

How does the development of strategies happen?

Answer 21

In a domain specific way - more knowledge for the things you do a lot
For example, chess experts better than adults, because they have more knowledge on chess
But poorer on digit span
Expertise accounted for 32% of variance in recall of meaningful chess positions, age only accounted for 3%
Expertise accounted for 9% of variance in recall of random chess positions
Guidance in a domain specific way is good

Question 22

What are metacognitive strategies?

Answer 22

Thinking about thinking

Question 23

Do metacognitive strategies change?

Answer 23

Their metacognitive awareness increases with age
improvements in comprehension monitoring (knowing when they don’t understand something)
young children overestimate own memory capacity
they don’t rehearse and organise much
they don’t allocate study time effectively (e.g. time for hard stuff and less time for easy , do this with the help of teachers)
they are capable of using memory strategies and tend to recall better when they do so - but they just don’t do it spontaneously
It is hard though