COGNITIVE EXPLANATIONS

OF LEARNING AND

APPROACHES TO TEACHING

Education Foundations, SecEd, Week 6, Semester 1, 2012

Cognitive views of learning• What is learning?• Cognitivist vs. behaviourist view• Three models

Information processing model

Constructivism• Individual / psychological

constructivism

• Social constructivism

WHAT IS LEARNING?

Learning involves “the acquisition or reorganization of the cognitive structures through which humans process and store information” (Good and Brophy, 1990, p. 187).

Memory, conceptual learning, thinking, and problem solving

History and context

COGNITIVIST VS. BEHAVIOURIST VIEW OF LEARNING

LearningBehaviourism: Development of behaviour as

Cognitivism: Transforming understanding

LearnerBehaviourism: passively influenced

Cognitivism: actively choose, focus attention, ignore, reflect and make goal-driven decisions

What are the patterns?

THREE MODELS

From acquisition of knowledge to construction of knowledge

Information processing model

Personal / psychological constructivism

Social constructivism

INFORMATION-PROCESSING MODEL: MEMORY

Listen to the reading of two short paragraphs. As I finish reading each paragraph, write down as much as you can remember from what you’ve heard.

IMPACTS ON MEMORY

Meaning-making Concentration and interference Rehearsal Contexts of learning and recalling Motivation

FROM EBBINGHAUS TO THE COMPUTER MODEL OF THE MIND

Hermann Ebbinghaus

FORMS OF INFORMATION PROCESSING

Stage / multi-store theory

Levels-of-processing theory

Connectionist theory

STAGE THEORY OF MEMORY

Sensory memory / register

Salvador Dali’s Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire

Short-term or working memory

• Elaboration / organisation: -- Connecting the info to what you already

know• Rehearsal / repetition: -- Useful for retaining info you plan to use

and then forget• ‘Chunking’

Long-term memory

Executive control

USING THE INFO-PROCESSING APPROACH IN THE CLASSROOM (Krause, et al., 2011, p.207)

Principles Examples

Focus attention

‘Let’s concentrate on this.’ ‘This is a key point.’ ‘If there’s one thing you need to get out of this lesson, it’ll be…’

Use prior learning

Review previous lesson; brainstorm ideas

Present information in an organised manner

Show logical sequence to concepts and skills;Move from simple to complex conceptsUse concept maps to help organise information

Teach cognitive and memory strategies

Demonstrate chunking and elaboration; Use mnemonic devices such as rhymes for memorising

Review and practice

Revisit and connect concepts learnt from many sessions

CONSTRUCTIVISM

An umbrella term referring to a vast range of different theories

Piaget, Bruner, Ausubel, Lave, Palincsar, and Dewey

Is Vygotsky a constructivist? (Liu & Matthews, 2005)

CONSTRUCTIVISM, CONT’D Learner are active in constructing their

own knowledge Social interactions are important in

knowledge construction Individual / psychological constructivism Social constructivism

INDIVIDUAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

Individual thinking and knowledge development Not concerned with the ‘correct’ knowledge but

with meaning-making Knowledge originated from reflecting and

(re)organising thoughts Discovery learning Inquiry and problem-based learning

DISCOVERY LEARNING (WOOLFOLK & MARGETTS, 2010)

Scenario: You are being interviewed for a job in a school with

students of a wide range of ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. The principal asks: ‘How would you teach abstract concepts to a student who just arrived in the country and can’t speak or read much in English?’

An example of a discovery learning lesson: What is fruit?

Phase 1: Presenting data and Identifying concept

Phase 2: Testing concept attainment

Phase 3: Analysis of thinking

1) Teacher presents examples

2) Students compare attributes in examples and non-examples

3) Students generate and test hypotheses

4) Students statge a definition according to the essential attributes

5) Students identify additional unlabelled examples as yes or no

6) Teacher confirms hypotheses, names concepts and restates definitions

7) Students generate examples

8) Students describe thoughts

9) Students discuss role of hypotheses and attributes

10) Students discuss type and number of hypotheses

Woolfolk & Margetts, 2010, p.306

J. Bruner

Learning focusing on essential structure of a subject matter

Students identify and discover key structures and principles by themselves

Inductive reasoning

Intuitive thinking

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

Knowledge is constructed from social interactions and experience

Learning is contextualised by social and cultural environment

Development is the appropriation of cultural tools of reasoning and acting

COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP

Cooperative and collaborative learning Situated learning and cognitive

apprenticeship Reciprocal teaching An example: Apprenticeship in

mathematics problem solving

REFERENCES Good, T. L. & Brophy, J. E. (1990)

Educational psychology: a realistic approach, 4th ed., Longman, NY.

Liu, C. H. & Matthews, R. (2005) Vygotsky’s philosophy: constructivism and its criticisms examined, International Education Journal, 6 (3), pp.386-399.

Perkins, D. N. (1991). Technology meets constructivism: Do they make a marriage? Educational Technology , May, 18-23.

Woolfolk, A. & Margetts, K. (2010) Educational Psychology, Pearson, NSW.