cep900 09.21.11
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Assignments & Announcements
Lecture: Cognitive Perspectives 2
Quick Research Activity
Public Intellectual 2
assignments
Readings
• Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated
cognition and the culture of learning.
• Resnick, L. B. (1987). Learning in and out of school.
review: information processing
appreciating the ip perspective
Appreciate: to see value in
Discuss in small groups
What is the value of the information processing perspective for
research or practice? Be clear about how this value is specific to the IP
perspective.
Volunteers to make a 30-sec point?
metacognition and strategies
Metacognition
• awareness of one’s own cognitive processing
• knowing what to do to facilitate cognitive processing
• an “executive process” in the IP model
metacognition and strategies
Metacognition
• awareness and strategies
Domain specific strategies
• actions that improve one’s performance in a particular
domain of learning. Examples?
• Although some aspects of the IP system cannot be
changed, strategies can.
• Teachers help students develop strategies
continuing to another cognitive
perspective…
Perspectives can be characterized by its metaphors,
constructs, historical influences…
Information Processing - The learner is like a computer
Piaget – The learner is like a scientist
Constructivism – The learner constructs understanding
the influence of piaget…
Piaget saw the child as a “little scientist.” What does this
mean?
• Exploring, manipulating, and responding to the
environment
• Driven by a desire to understand, predict, and control
• Understanding through hypothesis testing and inquiry
• Able to think about the world abstractly
• Concerned mainly with rational, intellectual, intentional,
strategic, reflective activity
the influence of piaget…
The process of learning and Constructivism
• ism: a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically
a political ideology or an artistic movement
• Constructivism: A widely used, loosely defined term.
Much of it is inspired by Piaget’s work
the influence of piaget…
What develops if the image of the ideal learner is a scientist?
• Conceptual differentiation and organization
• Differentiation between self and environment
• Intentional, self-regulating
• Knowledge of properties and relations among object
• Capacity for abstract/symbolic thought
the influence of piaget…
Motivation
• Most constructivists inspired by Piaget believe that
humans are intrinsically motivated to construct sense of
information.
the influence of piaget…
Piaget and Constructivism
• Concerned mainly with rational, intellectual, intentional,
strategic, reflective activity
• These are the basic qualities of most constructivist views
of learning
constructivism
Knowledge is constructed:
Evidence that knowledge is “constructed”?
How might you gather evidence that knowledge is
constructed?
constructivism is a popular but vague
idea
Constructivism is often associated with vague, often incorrect
assumptions.
• Learning is by discovery, active not passive, activity based,
project-based, hands-on, inquiry based, student centered
• The teacher cannot be didactic, is a guide on the side not a
sage on the stage, not a transmitter of information
• Students must come to their own understanding, develop
their own interpretations
individual & social constructivism
meaning, concepts, structures
Conceptual understanding
– an important kind of understanding in the cognitive approach
– various definitions, but most have to do with connections between
pieces of information to form a “deeper” understanding
– often contrasted with rote understanding
Misconceptions research
concept learning
Ways to learn concepts
• through multiple examples
• through inquiry and discovery
• through problem finding/problem solving
• exposition
strategies & reflection
Cognitive and constructist perspectives emphasize the
importance of being intentional and thoughtful during
learning. This importance is reflected in constructs such as:
• metacognition
• strategies & heuristics
• reflection
jerome bruner
Bruner, educational psychologist
• Bruner's “structure”
• If students have a limited time with education, what should
we teach?
• “To learn structure is to learn how things are related”
• Powerful ideas that represent key relationships in a
discipline and apply to many different phenomenon
• Knowledge ofå structure facilitates memory,
comprehension, transfer, etc.
• Examples of “structure” in a discipline?
jerome bruner
Bruner’s bold claim about learning structure
• "Any subject can be taught effectively in some
intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of
development”
• Example: quadratics
jerome bruner
Bruner: Key ideas of ”A Process of Education”
• Spiral curriculum
• Structure of a discipline
• Intuitive and explicit forms of knowing
• Learning by inquiry/discovery
transfer
the problem of transfer
motivation constructs
Cognitive perspective on motivation
Goals
-learning/mastery and performance goals
- intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Self-regulation
Strategies
Beliefs
Self-efficacy, expectations
Epistemology
motivation
cognitive constructs related to outcomes of motivation
such as:
achievement, persistence, strategy use, task choice,
attributions
quick research
Assess someone’s level of conceptual understanding.
quick research
Information processing tasks
In teams, collect data using one of the IP tasks described in
class, in the readings, or one you’ve created. Collect data
from at least 3 participants. Report results and what you
learned.
Might be an opportunity for Public Intellectual 2!
discussion
The computer metaphor for human learning has been
criticized as inaccurate or limiting.
What would you say in support of this statement?
What would you say in disagreement?
This might be a topic for Public Intellectual 2!
quick research
Constructivism
Gather evidence that knowledge is, indeed, constructed.
jean piaget
• From his biography, most of the
central ideas of his work can be
appreciated.
• http://www.piaget.org/aboutPiag
et.html
influences on piaget's ideas
• Reaction to mother’s hysteria, losing touch with
reality
• Freud's focus on the unconscious
• Philosophy of Immanuel Kant
• Study of mollusks; training in biology
skinner and piaget
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It’s hard to believe they were contemporaries
Piaget (1896-1980)
Skinner (1904-1990)
Consider how Piaget’s ideas advance our
understanding of L&D. What is gained and
lost in these new ideas?
piaget’s biology-psychology connection
piaget’s biology-psychology connection
Biology
• Organisms adapt behaviors and physical
features to their environment
• Organisms have parts which function in
dynamic relationship with other parts,
equilibrium
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Organisms develop from simple to
complex, progress through physical
stages
Development: Change in physical
structures
Assimilation: Adapting to the world
using existing structures
Accommodation: adapting to the world
by developing new structures
Psychology
• Humans adapt their cognitive
structures to their physical and
psychological environment
• Humans seek harmonious relationships
between various cognitive “parts”,
coherence, sense, integrity,
equilibration
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Genetic epistemology, emerging ways
of making sense, embryology of
intelligence, cognitive stages
Development: Change in cognitive
structures
Assimilation: Understanding the world
in terms of existing cognitive
structures
Accommodation: Understanding the
world by developing new cognitive
structures
genetic epistemology
• Genetic: emerging, evolving, development
• Epistemology: a theory of the nature and grounds
of knowledge
• Genetic epistemology: Piaget's effort to explain an
"embryology of intelligence”, the development of
knowledge
genetic epistemology
• Epistemology addresses "the problem of the
relation between the acting or thinking subject
and the objects of his experience."
• The epistemological “problems” include
– how do we come to know something
– is objective knowledge possible
– are there innate ideas or is all knowledge
acquired?
the problem of knowing
"Perhaps the most incomprehensible thing about the
world is that it is comprehensible" Einstein
• Look, listen, experience the world around you. It is
not a "blooming, buzzing confusion" (William
James). It is not like listening to static on the radio
that seems like an undifferentiated stream of sounds.
We perceive discrete elements and relations between
elements.
• Isn't this amazing? And, how does this happen?
• This is the problem of knowing.
kant & piaget
• Categories of thought: we are predisposed to perceive
the world in certain ways. We see "things as they
appear for me", never "the thing in itself" (Ding an
sich)
• There may or may not be causality, space, time, or
quantity in the physical world, "the world as it is". The
world may not be lawful, but our mind sees it as lawful
- "a self-fulfilling prophecy"
• Evidence that we have such predisposition…?
piaget’s big contributions
• The idea of pre-existing categories of thought…an
innate capacity to see sense of the world
• The idea of an the innate drive to make cognitive,
rational sense of the world
• The idea that development of thinking goes
through distinct stages
• The idea that thinking and understanding can be
revealed in carefully conducted tasks, observation,
and interviews.
piaget and constructivism
Piaget saw the child as a “little scientist.” What does this
mean?
• Exploring, manipulating, and responding to the
environment
• Driven by a desire to understand, predict, and control
• Understanding through hypothesis testing and inquiry
• Able to think about the world abstractly
• Concerned mainly with rational, intellectual,
intentional, strategic, reflective activity
• These are the basic qualities of most constructivist
views of learning
the idea of stages
• Often considered the most radical and
controversial part of Piaget’s theory
• Why did he include the idea of stages in his
theory?
sensorimotor period
• Birth to 2 years
• “Infants understand the world in terms
of their overt, physical actions on the
world. They move from simple reflexes
through several steps to an organized
set of schemes (organized behavior).”
• Object permanence: why is this such a
significant idea?
preoperational period
• 2 to 7 years
• “No longer do children simply make perceptual and
motor adjustments to objects and events. They can
now use symbols (mental images, words, gestures)
to represent objects and events. They use these
symbols in an increasingly organized and logical
fashion.”
• Egocentricism, centration, focus on appearance more
than reality, lack of reversibility
concrete operational period
• 7 to 11 years
• “Children acquire certain logical
structures that allow them to perform
various mental operations, which are
internalized actions that can be
reversed.”
• Operation: an internalized action that is
part of an organized structure
formal operations period
• 11 to 15 years
• “Mental operations are no longer limited
to concrete objects; they can be applied
to purely verbal or logical statements, to
the possible as well as the real, to the
future as well as the present.”
• Operations on operations, thought is
truly abstract, logical, and hypothetical
what develops?
• Look closely at the description of the stages
and see if you can discern themes that run
through the stages.
What develops: Logico-mathematical abilities
• General categories of thought (time, space,
causality, quantity) are the foundation for the
child's understanding of the world. As they
develop, they become more sophisticated in how
they operate in the world within these categories
• Older children are more able to…
what develops
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The image of the ideal learner: Child as a scientist
Conceptual differentiation and organization
Differentiation between self and environment
Intentional, self-regulating
Knowledge of properties and relations among
object
• Capacity for abstract/symbolic thought
the mechanism for change
• Adaptation & Organization: Innate intellectual functions
that spur development
• Organization: an innate drive for coherence, harmony,
biological and psychological. Kant posited the same
essential quality
• Adaptation: an innate tendency to adapt to the environment.
Seek equilibrium.
• To learn is to adapt, to find an “inner”psychological
equilibrium (coherence in the mind) and “outer”
equilibrium (coherence with the world)
• Learners are active, the world shapes our knowledge, our
knowledge shapes the our perception of the world; origins
of constructivism
piaget’s methodology
• Careful observation and interviewing of a small
number of participants. Participants were often
well-known to the researcher.
• Observed over a period of time.
• To understand cognition is to understand its
development, how it changes and adapts.
clinical interviews
The goal is to get at the underlying reasoning
of an individual's activity
Chain of questions. Questions contingent on
the preceding response
Participants/subjects often observed as well as
interviewed
Why Piaget is memorable
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Surprising predictions
Bold features of the theory
Distinctive tasks/studies
Appealing to our vision of human nature
the problem of knowing
Way of knowing the world, each with its problems…
• Inductive reasoning: infer general ideas from specific
observations. Has limitations, though (Hume)
• Deductive reasoning: from a general principle, derive
specifics. Where do general principles come from?
• Innate ideas: knowing as instinct; Platonic ideas learning as recognition of that which has always been
known. Could this be true??
• Direct knowledge: revelation
• Qualitative understanding: sense, intuition, feeling
kant's ”copernican revolution"
Revolution: not only does the mind conform to the world,
but the world conforms to the mind.
o Time and space - "forms of intuition" that precede
all experience. Similarly, causality, quantity, and
intention
o How do you "know" that something causes
something else?
o The rules of the "game" are specified ahead of time.
Our experience plays out and makes sense within
these a priori rules.
• a new way of understanding what we’ve been seeing all
along
• knowledge does not conform to objects, rather objects
must conform to knowledge
• if we assume that concepts come from objects, we can
never hope to find universal truths. Remember Hume’s
criticism: the limits of induction
• Leibnitz: a harmony between our pre-established ideas,
perception and the reality, made possible by our creator,
the supreme order. Kant disagrees.
kant: understanding has a priori rules
• our view of the world finds expression in a priori concepts,
to which all objects conform
• the rules shape and design the game, the reality, make the
moves meaningful
• the game is our experience, knowledge, consciousness, our
world
• one rule: principle of causality, the ultimate basis for all
science
• because it is a rule, all the game conforms to it
kant: The purpose of life
• the ultimate purpose of human action is to realize our
rational nature
• rational nature: we have purposes and ends, more than a
matter of needs or reflexes
• we are ends in ourselves
• we don’t simply use reason, we are the living embodiment
of reason
• we are legislators in the realm of ends
• reason is not a tool, but the very substance of life
ends and means
• since we are ends in ourselves, we have intrinsic value
• animals are means, whose value is relative to other things
• we possess special worth because they are ends in themselves, we
alone have purposes, we alone make and determine the value of our
own life
• for others life is a brute fact
• moral law: the highest expression of reason, embodies the ideal of our
rational nature
• for non-rational beings – moral law is meaningless, because they have
no consciousness, can be truly heedless
• the existence of moral law reveals our distinctly human nature
god and soul
We can never transcend the limits of possible experience
– categories shape our consciousness
– what about god or the soul, objects not part of our everyday world
“I have had to limit freedom to make room for faith”
We cannot say that God necessarily exists
necessity is only found in our reason
can’t experience super-natural necessities