Bransford JD, Brown AL, Cocking RR, eds. How People Learn: Brain, Mind,
Experiences, and School; Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and
Education, National Research Council. 2000. Washington DC: National Academy
Press.
Chapter One
New theory of learning
Nature of competent performance
--problem solving
Principles for structure learning experiences to allow use in new settings
Learning is culturally/socially situated
High literacy:
--think/read critically
--express themselves clearly and persuasively
--solve complex problems
--know how to learn these skills (I’d add)
The paradigm is no longer “know and repeat” but “find and use” (including how to ask
questions)
Old paradigm: memorizing; new paradigm: understanding
Expert knowledge:
--connected and organized around important concepts
--“conditionalized” to specify applicable contexts
--supports understanding and transfer to other contexts (creative problem solving)
Constructionist theory of knowledge = existing knowledge is used to build new
knowledge (irrespective on how one is taught)
Devise test of
Preconceptions (pre-instruction)
Interpretations (during and post instruction)
Transferability to new context
Help people take control of their own learning:
--learn to recognize when they need more info
--strategies to assess whether they understand someone else’s meaning
--awareness of evidence they need to believe particular claims
--build their own theories of phenomena and test them
metacognition = ability to
--predict performance on tasks
--monitor current levels of mastery/understanding
Teaching approaches should focus on:
--sense-making
--self-assessment
--reflection (what worked, what needs improving)
Expert performance:
--see patterns, relationships, and discrepancies
--conceptual understanding that lets experts extract level of meaning from info not
apparent to novices
--help them select/remember information and identify what is relevant
--meta-cognitive monitoring (see p. 18 for details)
Metacognition to teach:
Goals: independence and self-regulation
Skills:
--predict outcomes
--explain to oneself to improve understanding
--note failure to comprehend
--activate background knowledge
--plan ahead
--apportion time and memory
frequent formative assessment
--make student thinking visible to ourselves, peers, teacher
--tap understanding vs. ability to repeat facts or perform isolated skills
students’ theories of intelligence – fixed or malleable? Universal or situational?
What does mastery look like? “Doing with understanding”
Chapter Two – Experts vs. novices
“expertise” = greater problem-solving ability
experts organize problems and information into organized conceptual structures/schemas
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experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed
by novices
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experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized in ways
that reflect a deep understanding of their subject matter
experts knowledge cannot be rescued to sets of isolated facts or propositions but,
instead, reflects contexts of applicability; that is, the knowledge is conditionalized
on a set of circs
experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with
little attentional efforts
though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that
they are able to teach others
experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approach to new situation
curriculum should be organized in ways that lead to conceptual understanding/structuring
assessment: assess degree to which students’ knowledge is “conditionalized” (ability to
specify the contexts in which a certain idea or knowledge will be useful)
110: synthesizing and summarizing – help students understand why we do this, what
rhetorical function do these serve? How does it increase persuasion? Various strategies
within each task. Contextualize these tasks.
Pattern recognition triggering relevant conditions
Exercise:
 Pick out the measurement statements
 Data versus interpretation
Instruction should focus on speeding pattern recognition
p. 48:
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adaptive experts:
approach new situations flexibly
learn throughout lifetime
use what they’ve learned
questions current understanding and attempt to move beyond it
Chapter 3: Learning and Transfer
Key characteristics of transfer (p. 53)
 Initial learning is necessary for transfer, and a considerable amount is known
about the kinds of learning experiences that support transfer
 Knowledge that is overly contextualized can reduce e transfer, abstract represents
of knowledge can help promote transfer
 Transfer is best viewed as an active dynamic process rather than a passive endproduct of a particular set of learning experiences
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All new learning involves transfer based on previous learning, and this fact has
important implications for the design of instruction that helps student learn
Structure-function relationship
110 revision exercise: use syntactic rules to revise a paragraph. First: ID important ideas
(use syntax rules to identify important ideas in the reading. Summarize these details.)
110 revision exercise: give ambiguous sentence (e.g., “But they didn’t even tell them they
were going” and then ask them to build a coherent paragraph that ends in this sentence).
110 paper: contrasting cases: intelligent design vs. Darwin
empirical vs. non-empirical
skeptical vs. faith
K vs. values
Material vs. nonmaterial explanations
What is science?
Student motivation is important: performance oriented (reluctant to take risks/make
mistakes) vs. learning oriented
Motivators:
Feeling that they are contributing to others
Usefulness of task
Context in promoting transfer:
 Teaching in multiple contexts facilitates transfer
 Ask learners to solve a specific case and then provide them with an additional,
similar case –encourage them to abstract general principles that they can use in
both problems
 Let students learn in a specific context and then help them engage in ‘what if’
problem solving designed to increase the flexibility of their understanding
 Generalize the case so that learners are asked to create a solution that applies not
simply to a single problem, but to a whole class of related problems
Transfer is an issue of assessment as well as instruction – relationship between what is
learned and what is tested
 Ask students to represent experiences at levels of abstraction that transcend
specific context
 to assess transfer, measure speed of learning of novel contexts, not early
performance attempts
See p. 64 for “flexible transfer” exercise/test
Evidence as a transfer issue – claim/support relationship across contexts
Goal of education:
 enhance transfer so students better understand nonschool environments in which
they must function
 explore ways to help student develop adaptive expertise
110: metacognitive pretest – ask students about their goals and their presumptions about
education
 Are the performance-oriented or learning oriented?
 What would an “expert performance” in writing biology look like?
 What is their attitude about the place of writing in disciplinary courses?
Read Maienschein -- summarize scientific literacy skills; turn in at beginning of class
-- then, at end of semester, give same instrument
355: First, look at DNR wildlife action/management plan – align 355 goals with
community and ensure students understand how data will help community
Then: self-guided observation trip
 note a phenomenon
 devise a hypothesis (can be from another investigator – from reading)
 devise a method to test
110: Scientists’ assumptions about significance (in the “importance” sense)–
 how can we read for clues about this – what details are significant/relevant
o look at controversies – what issues do they touch on? Ascertain
legitimacy of procedures by referring to known scientific principles
 how can we structure our writing to address these issues?
Let students produce rules for determining scientific significance
Scientific education: provide environment so that students can construct scientific
understandings by iterative process of
 Theory building
 Criticism
 Refinement based on their own questions, hypotheses and data analysis activities
 Question posing
 Argumentation
Students:
 Explore implications of the theories they held
 Examine underlying assumptions
 Formulate and test hypotheses
 Develop evidence
 Negotiate conflicts in belief and evidence
 Argue alternative interpretations
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Warrant for conclusions
For assessment (110, 355, citizens): ask learners to think aloud about open-ended realworld problems (Pre- and post-learning)
4 principles for design of an effective learning environment:
 learner centered – teachers build on knowledge students bring to learning
situation
 knowledge centered – teachers help students develop an organized understanding
of important disciplinary concepts
 assessment centered – teachers help make student thinking visible so ideas can be
discussed and clarified; by having student present arguments in debates, discuss
solutions to problems at qualitative level, and make predictions about phenomena
(instrument must be sensitive to comprehension and understanding vs.
memorization)
 community centered – teachers establish classroom norms that value learning with
understanding and students feel free to explore what they do not understand
expert teacher characteristics:
 firm understanding of own discipline
 knowledge of common student conceptual barriers (student cognitive roadmap to
guide assignments)
 knowledge of effective strategies for working with students
Bransford JD, Donovan MS. Scientific Inquiry and How People Learn.
In Bransford JD, AL Brown and RR Cocking, eds., How People Learn:
Brain, Mind, Experience and School. Washington DC: National
Academies Press. 2003; 387-590.
Guidelines for science education emphasize:
 Familiarity with discipline’s concepts, theories, models
 Understanding of how K is generated and justified
 Ability to use these understandings to engage in new inquiry
Metacognition = learning monitoring and critiquing their own claims and learning; asking
learners to reflect and explain what they’re doing and why
Developmental sequence of scientific knowledge:
 Stage 1: K =correct/incorrect facts
 Stage 2: K = “mere opinion”
 Stage 3: K = interpretations informed by evidence
Typical student conceptions of knowledge generation and justification that must be
addressed:
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Help students develop a conception of experimentation as testing ideas rather than
trying things out to produce a desired outcome
Students overlook need to hold all but one variable constant
Students attend only to confirmatory evidence; they ignore/distort evidence that
doesn’t conform to their beliefs
Believe models are “physical copies” of reality, not conceptual concepts
Don’t understand that you can test models by comparing their implications to
actual observations
Don’t know that changing model means adding new information or replacing the
wrong component
Believe correlation = cause
Believe single instances are determinant
Will accept arguments based on inadequate sample sizes, causality from
contiguous events, conclusion from statistically insignificant differences
See p. 409 for methods evaluation exercise
Students need to learn to distinguish fact from theory (interpretation)
Learning science involves
 Observation
 Imagination
 Reasoning
about phenomena under study
Framework for evaluating quality of inquiry
 Understanding main ideas
 Understanding inquiry process
 Being inventive
 Being systematic
 Reasoning carefully
 Applying tools of research
 Using teamwork
 Communicating well (learning scientific norms concerning data, explanation,
causal models, relationships)
Model = a set of propositions which can be confirmed/disconfirmed
Model assessment (Possible criteria for assessment)
Explanatory power
Predictive power
Internal consistency (with all aspects of the model)
External consistency (with common experience)
To learn scientific process, learners must have opportunities to
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Use prior knowledge to pose problems and generate data
Search for patterns in data
Develop causal models to account for data
Use patterns in data to make predictions
Make ideas public and revise initial models in light of anomalous data and in
response to critiques
Inferences = what’s observed (data) + prior knowledge/beliefs  conclusions
Common misconceptions in evolution
 Nature is purposeful, not random
 Variation (continuous) --there is a wide range of variability in populations
 Role of supernatural forces
 Lamarckian ideas (change due to needs of organism in extended exposure to
environment will result in morphological changes that will be passed on to next
generation)
110: Sunflower seed assignment
Count stripes on sunflower seeds –
What counts as a stripe? Count one side or both?
Can they write operational definitions that will enable another group to replicate
counts?
110: compare current model of germ theory to humors model of disease
110: research proposal to test hypothesis – write M&M and justifications of significance
of project – break down methods into component parts (objective, operational definition,
procedures)
Scientists are more persuaded by the absence of disproving evidence than the presence of
confirmatory evidence – e.g., black swan problem.
Engaging resilient preconceptions:
 Draw on knowledge/experiences not generally activated by topic
 Provide opportunities for students to experience discrepant events that allow them
to come to terms with shortcomings of everyday models
 Provide narrative accounts of discovery (targeted) knowledge of the development
of (targeted) tools
Organizing knowledge around core concepts of a discipline
Standards of evidence
What constitutes proof and disproof
Modes of reasoning
Modes of inquiry
Supporting metacognition
 Monitoring (across-group) of consistency between explanation and theory
 Both group work + individual reflection work best