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

 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

Learning Behaviourism: Development of behaviour as Cognitivism: Transforming understanding Learner Behaviourism: passively influenced Cognitivism: actively choose, focus attention, ignore, reflect and make goal-driven decisions

What are the patterns?

 From acquisition of knowledge to construction of knowledge  Information processing model  Personal / psychological constructivism  Social constructivism

 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.

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

Hermann Ebbinghaus

 Stage / multi- store theory  Levels-of- processing theory  Connectionist theory

 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

PrinciplesExamples 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 concepts Use 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

 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)

 Learner are active in constructing their own knowledge  Social interactions are important in knowledge construction  Individual / psychological constructivism  Social 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

 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

 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

 Cooperative and collaborative learning  Situated learning and cognitive apprenticeship  Reciprocal teaching  An example: Apprenticeship in mathematics problem solving

 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  Perkins, D. N. (1991). Technology meets constructivism: Do they make a marriage? Educational Technology, May,  Woolfolk, A. & Margetts, K. (2010) Educational Psychology, Pearson, NSW.