Introduction to Cognitive
Learning Theories and
Learning Technologies
C. Candace Chou
CIED551
Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction
University of St. Thomas
Skinner Behaviorist Theories
• Before Skinner, learning theories are
dominated by Pavlov’s classical
conditioning concepts, S -> R
• Skinner identified three kinds of
conditions that shape behavior
• Positive reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement
• Punishment
Behaviorist Theories
• Implications for education
• Teaching is a process of arranging
contingencies of reinforcement effective to
bring about learning.
• Implications for technology integration
• Drill-and-practice software
• Praise correct answers to tutorial software
• Memorization of basic information
Information-Processing Theory:
The Mind as Computer
• Based on a model of memory and storage
proposed by Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968
• The brain contains certain structures that
process information like a computer
• Human brain has three kinds of memory or
“stores”
• Sensory registers: the parts receive all information
• Short-term memory (STM): working memory
• Long-term memory (LTM): hold information
indefinitely
Information-Processing
Theories II
• Implications for education
• Ask interesting questions and display eyecatching materials to draw student
attention
• While presenting information, give
instructions that point out the keys of the
new learning materials
• Give students practice exercises to help
assure the transfer of information from
short- to long-term memory
Information-Processing
Theories III
• Implications for technology integration
• Artificial intelligence (AI) applications, an
attempt to develop computer software that
can simulate the thinking and learning
behaviors of humans.
• Drill-and-practice software helps students
encode and store newly-learned
information into long-term memory
Gagné: Principles of Instruction
•
•
Translate behaviorist and information processing theories into instructional
strategies
Types of learning
1. Intellectual skills (problem solving, higherorder thinking, defined concepts,
concrete concepts, discriminations)
2. Cognitive strategies
3. Verbal information
4. Motor skills
5. Attitudes
Gagné II
•
Events of instruction
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Gain instruction
Informing the learner of the objectives
Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning
Presenting new materials
Providing learning guidance
Eliciting performance
Providing feedback about correctness
Assessing performance
Enhancing retention and recall
Gagné III
• Learning hierarchies: Learning is a
building process that the lower-level
skills provide the foundation for higherlevel skills.
• Math example: to work with long division
problems requires the prerequisite math
skills in number recognition, number facts,
simple addition and subtraction,
multiplication, and simple division.
Gagné IV
• Implications for education
• Widely used to develop systematic
instructional design principles
• Sequence skills
• Implications for technology integration
• Plan lesson for instructional software such as
drill, tutorial, simulation.
• Tutorial could be stand-along and accomplish
all of the events of instruction
Vygotsky: Social Constructivism
• Cognitive development is the result of
social interactions in cultural contexts.
• Focus on social factors in knowledge
construction
• Zone of proximal development: the
difference between difficulty level of a
problem child can cope with
independently and the level that can be
accomplished with adult help.
• Cognitive changes takes place in the
“construction zone.”
Vygotsky II
• Instructional Scaffolding: A teacher provides
students with selective help (e.g. asking
questions, directing attention, giving hints) to
enable them to do things they could not do
own their own.
• Implications for technology integration:
• Concepts of scaffolding and developing
individual’s potential
• Logo to virtual reality: using real-life examples
relevant to individuals’ needs to advance student
understanding.
Vygotsky III
•
Implications for education: Davydov (1995)
1. Education is intended to develop children’s
personalities
2. The human personality is linked to its creative
potential and education should be designed to
discover and develop this potential to its fullest in
each individual.
3. Teaching and learning assume that students master
their inner values through some personal activities.
4. Teachers direct and guide the individual activities of
the students but they do not force their will on them
or dictate to them.
5. The most valuable methods for student learning are
those that correspond to their individual
developmental stages and needs, therefore the
methods can not be uniform across students.
Piaget: Stages of Development
• Piaget believed that all children go through
four stages of cognitive development
• Sensorimotor stage (0 - 2)
• Explore the world through senses and motor activities
• Preoperational stage (2-7)
• Capable of speech communication, number
recognition, & self-control
• Concrete operational stage (7 - 11)
• Capable of abstract reasoning and observation tasks
• Formal operations stage (12 - 15)
• Can form hypotheses, organize information & reason
Piaget II
•
Ormrod (2000) summarized:
1. Children are active and motivated learners
2. Children’s knowledge of the world becomes more
integrated and organized over time
3. Children learn through the process of assimilation
and accommodation
4. Cognitive development depends on integration with
one’s physical and social environment
5. The processes of equilibration (resolving
disequilibrium) help to develop increasing complex
levels of thought
6. Cognitive development can occur only after certain
genetically controlled neurological changes occur
7. Cognitive development occurs in four qualitatively
different stages.
Piaget III
• Implications for education
• More of a philosophy
• Need more concrete examples in
explaining abstract concepts
• Implications for technology integration
• Logo simulation for learning programming
• Real-world simulation before real-life
experience
Seymour Papert:
Turtles and Beyond
• Integrating the control of a robot in the shape of
a turtle on screen into the Logo language.
• Implications in education and technology
• Discovery learning and “powerful ideas”: allow
children to teach themselves with Logo and develop
powerful ideas
• Logo and the microworlds concept: allow children to
see the cause and effect between programming
commands and the pictures that result. He called
microworld the “incubator of knowledge.”
Cognition & Technology Group
at Vanderbilt (CTGV)
• Based on constructivism
• Preventing inert knowledge: Inert
knowledge is knowledge that can
usually be recalled when people are
explicitly asked to do so, but is not used
spontaneously in problem solving even
though it is relevant.
CTGV II
• Situated cognition and the need for
anchored instruction
• Teachers can prevent the problem of inert
knowledge by situating learning in the
context of what they called authentic
experiences and practical apprenticeships
• “Anchored instruction provides a way to
recreate some of the advantages of
apprenticeship training in formal
educational settings
CTGV III
• Building knowledge through generative
activities
• Learning is most meaningful when it builds
(scaffolds) on experiences they have already had.
• Students are also most likely to remember
knowledge that they build or “generate”
themselves, rather than that which they simply
receive passively.
• Implications: Video-based scenarios posing
interesting but difficult problems for students
to solve, e.g. Jasper Woodbury Problem
Solving series.
Gardner: Multiple Intelligences
• Types of intelligence
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Linguistic
Musical
Logical-mathematical
Spatial
Bodily-kinesthetic
Intrapersonal
Interpersonal
Naturalist
Gardner II
• Implications for education and technology
• IQ tests may not be the best way to just a
given student’s ability to learn.
• Intelligent behavior is likely to take different
forms in children from different ethnic
backgrounds.
• Distributed intelligence: each student makes
a different, but valued contribution to creating
a product or solving a problem
• Group collaboration among students of
different intelligences
Schema Theories
• Schema are ...
• Scripts of plays (Schank & Abelson, 1977)
• Chunks of knowledge stored by patterns,
structures, and scaffolds (West et al., 1991)
• Can be “instantiated” by specific examples of
concepts or events (Bruning et al., 1995)
• Schema activation of learner’s prior knowledge in
similar fields , building upon previous knowledge
• Advance organizers employ the structure of materials
that learners are familiar with
• Implications
• Web-based instruction
• Computer-based instruction
Meaningful Learning
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Active (Manipulative/Observant)
Constructive (Articulative/Regulatory)
Authentic (Complex/Contextual)
Cooperative
(Collaborative/Conversational)
Educational Technologies
• 1950s-1970s
• Slide projector
• Radio
• Educational Television
• 1980
• Drill-and-practice on computers
• Productivity tools (desktop publishing, word process,
graphics programs
• 1990
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Communication and multimedia production
Computer-mediated communication systems
Audio-video conferencing systems
Virtual Reality
What is Learning Technology?
Your Definitions:
Learning Technologies
Engage learners in
• Knowledge construction, not reception
• Conversation, not reception
• Articulation, not repetition
• Collaboration, not competition
• Reflection, not prescription (Jonassen
et. al., 1999)
References
• Bruning, R. H., Schraw, G., J. & Ronning, R.
R (1995). Cognitive Psychology and
Instruction. Merrill Prentice Hall.
• Roblyer, M. D. & Edwards, J. (1999).
Integrating Educational Technology into
Teaching. Merrill Prentice Hall.
• Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L., & Wilson, B. G.
(1999). Learning with Technology: A
Constructivist Perspective. Merrill Prentice
Hall.