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
Behaviourism: passively influenced
Learner
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 / multistore theory

Levels-ofprocessing
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
 Executive
memory
control
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 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
5) Students identify
additional unlabelled
examples as yes or
no
8) Students describe
thoughts
2) Students compare
attributes in
examples and nonexamples
3) Students generate
and test hypotheses
4) Students statge a
definition according
to the essential
attributes
6) Teacher confirms
hypotheses, names
concepts and
restates definitions
7) Students generate
examples
Woolfolk & Margetts, 2010, p.306
9) Students discuss
role of hypotheses
and attributes
10) Students discuss
type and number of
hypotheses
 J.
Bruner
 Learning
focusing on essential structure of a
subject matter
 Students
identify and discover key structures
and principles by themselves
 Inductive
 Intuitive
reasoning
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.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.