Learning is enhanced when teachers pay attention to the knowledge and beliefs that learners bring to a learning task, use this knowledge as a starting point for new instruction, and monitor students' changing conceptions as instruction proceeds.
HOW DO WE BECOME?
- Truth vs. truth (Christ in NT says, "I am the truth.")
- Triangle: Knowing---> Doing--> Becoming (how much focus do we have on becoming)
- We need our focus to become as God's is - that is what truth is God's viewpoint on Truth
- Pharisees were good at doing but their becoming was corrupt and limited their knowing
- Blended learning environments (we become as we interact with other people) - online offers some benefit (mostly efficiency), but we learn more as we process it through relationships (e.g. serving in a ward)
- Challenge in the USA (Science) --> how do we teach it so that it's IN you
- Is it possible to focus too much on knowing and doing that we lose focus on becoming?
- How do we really assess knowing and doing, if it's not through what someone is?
- Randy Davies - the question of intent (his PhD here at BYU)
- What about international development? Getting people to be change agents, not paper pushers?
- Agency: the ability to choose is fundamentally tied to these theories (behavioralism doesn't honor agency b/c it emphasize the right stimulus only - concentration camps vs. Frankl)
- TIMSHEL (choose out, choose up!)
- Behavioralism may honor some aspects of the human experience, but it doesn't create the becoming (to want the change and be the change you wish to see in the world)
- What kind of theory do we call transferance of focus on becoming (incentivizing becoming)
- The best teacher is one who IS the lesson, not one who knows or does the lesson
- Fish is Fish (children's book)
- Idea of a lens: we see things through our own perspective
- 7 Blind men feeling the elephant
- When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails
- But, the temple as an arena where learning is totally tied to previous knowledge and conception - there is no clarification except for that which the student brings to the table - yet, it is the Lord's university and greatest arena for instructional design
- Yet, "we would know more of the mysteries of Godliness if we talked about them less" - this is to take away the room for error (problems of human explication instead of relying on the Holy Ghost
- What about the role of the Holy Ghost as the greatest theory for instruction?
- Hugh Nibley talked about knowledge as exponential and accelerated. When our baseline is enriched, our springboard can launch us higher.
- Relevance of learning - how do we get away from didactic instruction into discovery learning? (e.g. active learning in science classes e.g. Dr. Bell and group problem-solving)
- Critical Thinking - in what ways can we get students to consider deeper
- When do we need to intervene to clarify when something is wrong?
A Private Universe
- misconceptions that block learning
- misconceptions can originate in the classroom
- everytime we communicate, new theories compete with preconceived ideas of our students
- we must make them aware and only then can we free them from their private universe
- design languages (terms mean different things in different contexts)
Natalie Merchant:
"I'm not saying I'm replacing love for some other word. I'm just saying we've mistaken love for thousands of words and for that mistake I've caused you such pain that I damn that word."
Cognitive Information Processing
- like downloading computer memory - copying files brings sameness - e.b. stuffing sausages in the mouth and pounding harder if they don't fit
- but, we have no knowledge of what the memory baseline is
- in participatory dialogue literacy classes, we try to find out baseline and springboard from what they know - but all learners may start at different places and they may still be holding on to false conceptions of reality
- the operating system, and if one disk is written one way, the other system can't read it - e.g. mac vs. pc
- we need to view people as all different operating systems and that any transferrance of knowledge will require translation or localization
- abstract learning is often too hard to grasp - we need to DO something, hear/see/feel
- all metaphors have their own limitations
How different are these theories from one another? Cognitive-Behavioral-Constructivist
These are all different lenses for looking at the same thing. We have different paradigms, different foci. We can apply our own expertise to explain/understand a paradigm. If we all join our different ideas, we may understand the whole picture better.
How can we help these lenses bring focus without living in the blur that comes from the lenses that don't work for certain arenas? (Theories focus on different dilemmas or different parts of the same universe.)
How do we avoid tribalism, territorialism, ethnocentricities?
Situated Cognition (models for understanding longterm memory)
What is Constructivism?
Meaning of the world is constructed by the learner according to experience and the tethering of experiences with new knowledge.
social negotiation, protocol, semantics influence what the terms mean (e.g. BLUE, "every fiber of my being") - red as scarlet being white as snow (transcribing this for Africans who don't know snow and for Eskimos who have 14 different words for snow).
Learning Theories focus on epistemologies.
EPISTEMOLOGY: the way we learn
- What is knowledge?
- How is knowledge acquired?
- What do people know?
- How do we know what we know?
ONTOLOGY: what there is to know
- What is true? What is real?
- Philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality
- What exists?
- Relativists have an extreme view of what is real, what exists (very skeptical)
Cognitive Constructivists (Piaget): experiments with little children (squatty cups vs. tall skinny cups)
CH 1 Bransford, Brown & Cocking
* Today, cognitive researchers are spending more time working with teachers, testing and refining their theories in real classrooms where they can see how different settings and classroom interactions influence applications of their theories.
* Research on learning and transfer has uncovered important principles for structuring learning experiences that enable people to use what they have learned in new settings.
* Work in social psychology, cognitive psychology, and anthropology is making clear that all learning takes place in settings that have particular sets of cultural and social norms and expectations and that these settings influence learning and transfer in powerful ways.
* The goal of education is better conceived as helping students develop the intellectual tools and learning strategies needed to acquire the knowledge that allows people to think productively about history, science and technology, social phenomena, mathematics, and the arts.
* Fundamental understanding about subjects, including how to frame and ask meaningful questions about various subject areas, contributes to individuals' more basic understanding of principles of learning that can assist them in becoming self-sustaining, lifelong learners.
* Reaction to the subjectivity inherent in introspection, behaviorists held that the scientific study of psychology must restrict itself to the study of observable behaviors and the stimulus conditions that control them. (e.g. Skinner Box)
* The cat that is clawing all over the box in her impulsive struggle will probably claw the string or loop or button so as to open the door. And gradually all the other unsuccessful impulses will be stamped out and the particular impulse leading to the successful act will be stamped in by the resulting pleasure, until, after many trials, the cat will, when put in the box, immediately claw the button or loop in a definite way" (Thorndike, 1913:13)
* Explanation of what appeared to be complex problem-solving phenomena as escaping from a complicated puzzle box could thus be explained without recourse to unobservable mental events, such as thinking. A limitation of early behaviorism stemmed from its focus on observable stimulus conditions and the behaviors associated with those conditions.
* Teaching practices congruent with a metacognitive approach to learning include those that focus on sensemaking, self-assessment, and reflection on what worked and what needs improving. These practices have been shown to increase the degree to which students transfer their learning to new settings and events (e.g., Palincsar and Brown, 1984; Scardamalia et al., 1984; Schoenfeld, 1983, 1985, 19911.
* As scientists continue to study learning, new research procedures and methodologies are emerging that are likely to alter current theoretical conceptions of learning, such as computational modeling research. The scientific work encompasses a broad range of cognitive and neuroscience issues in learning, memory, language, and cognitive development.
* What is known about experts is important not because all students are expected to become experts, but because the knowledge of expertise provides valuable insights into what the results of effective learning look like.
Other Chapter: 6
* Explores general principles for the design of effective learning environments suggested by the science of learning. It explores the degree to which environments are learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered.
NEXT TIME:
1 page theory about how I think people learn
Limit the scope
* What are the two most important factors that influence learning?
* How can instruction be structured to best facilitate learning?
* What examples can you cite?
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