Educational Psychology and Technology:
A Matter of Reciprocal Relations
GAVRIEL
SALOMON
AND
TAMAR
ALMOG
The University of Haifa, Israel
Technology and instruction have recently entered an alliance of reciprocal influences. Technology serves instruction and at the same time opens up novel opportunities. Concerning the former, a major justification for the employment of-computers
is the acceptance of constructivist conceptions and a growing understanding
of
learning as a social process. Technology thus comes to facilitate the realization of
the learning environments that emanate from constructivist conceptions. Concerning technology’s influence on education, ever-newer technological affordances pull
instruction in in and promising directions. However, many of-these lack purpose
or rationale.
Why, for example, should students design their own wWeb sites? New
questions arise that need to be answered, such as whether hypermedia programs offer
frail and casual webs of information that lead to the cultivation
of similarly flimsy
mental networks (the “Butterfly Defect”), or whether computer-mediated communication (CMC) might create virtual, faceless learning environments.
It also becomes
evident that the new learning environments rely more heavily than their predecessors
Can technology
on students’ proclivity for self-regulated and mindful learning.
facilitate the cultivation
of these? Educational psychology and technology are now
engaged in an intensive duet that, if seriously studied, explored, and evaluated,
may offer novel and improved instruction.
Technologies and prevailing psychological conceptions of learning, thinking, and instruction have always served and inspired each other in reciprocal ways. On the one hand, technologies in education have served to facilitate and realize the kinds of pedagogies that-emanated from the changing
zeitgeists and from prevailing psychological
conceptions.
On the other
hand, and possibly only recently, technologies have been imported into
education, challenging it and requiring novel psychological explanations
and pedagogical justifications.
Concerning technology as a means for the
realization of pedagogies, think of the Skinner box, educationaltelevision,
and LOGO programming.
Each of these was inspired by a particular psychological conception of learning-conditioning,
knowledge-transmission,
and learning-as-problem
solving, respectively. Little wonder that in its early
days, the educational applications of computer technology for drill and
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Record Volume 100, Number 1, Winter 1998, pp. 222-241
Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University
0161-4681-98/1002/222$1.50/0
Educational Psychology and Technology
practice and programming raised fears of dehumanization
and mechanization as realizations of some kind of Skinnerian nightmare (e.g., Cuffaro,
1984). Concerning technology as a challenge, we might think, for example, of students’ surfing the Internet and our need to find proper usages
and justifications
for that kind of previously unknown learning activity
quickly.
By now it is commonly understood
that although the employment of
technology in education does not lead to dehumanization,
it cannot be justified in and of itself except on the basis of a nontechnological
educational
rationale. Such a rationale-psychologically
or philosophically
groundedprovides the conceptual underpinnings
from which pedagogical implications and designs are derived. However, although technology is helpful,
sometimes even essential, for the realization
of these (e.g., Salomon &
Perkins, 1996), top-down rationales do not translate unequivocally
into
particular pedagogical implications and designs. Thus, much is left undetermined and open for the novel technological
possibilities that may be
suggested or afforded in a more bottom-up fashion.
The pedagogy that develops around students’ opportunity
to design
their own Internet Web sites is a case in point. It does not derive from any
superordinate conceptual rationale. In fact, such a technological possibility
needs educational psychology for rationales and persuasive justifications.
As technologies and educational usages develop, and particularly in recent
years when those developments have outpaced developments of our psychological conceptions, technology comes to challenge educational psychology. And it challenges educational psychology by both reawakening
old and partly dormant issues (such as transfer of learning or the roles of
intentionality
and mindfulness)
and by demanding new conceptions and
novel understandings of human behavior, learning, and instruction.
In this article we wish to describe this reciprocity
of relationships
between recent educationally relevant psychological conceptions and educationally oriented usages of technologies. On the one hand, we wish to
show how technology serves to realize psychologically guided pedagogical
conceptions. On the other hand, we wish to illustrate the ways in which
technology challenges educational psychology and some of the questions
and concerns it raises. No claim for exhaustion is made; we merely illustrate here the reciprocal relations between technology and educational
psychology.
TECHNOLOGY
REALIZES
PEDAGOGICAL
CONCEPTIONS
The appearance, often dramatic, of a novel technology on the educational
stage raises high hopes for rapid and profound effects. This was the case
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with film, educational
television, computer-based
instruction,
programming, intelligent
tutoring systems, and-most
recently-with
hypermedia
programs, the Internet, and computer-mediated
communication
(CMC).
All these were expected to make a difference by their very introduction
into an otherwise unchanged pedagogy. A paradox gradually became evident: The more a technology, and its usages, fits the prevailing educational
philosophy and its pedagogical application,
the more it is welcome and
embraced, but the less of an effect it has. When some technology can be
smoothly assimilated into existing educationalpractices
without challenging them, its chances of stimulating a worthwhile change are very small.
Domesticated technologies, such as -educational television, do not affect
life in the classroom much: The basic philosophy of one-program-fits-all
and the commonly practiced pedagogy of top-down knowledge transmission remain unchanged; thus, the addition of this or that means of delivery
cannot really “make a difference.” Much research on media in the classroom supports this conclusion (e.g., Salomon, 1994). Only so-called subversive technologies have a chance of stimulating a process of pedagogical
change as they affect the whole classroom culture, practice and atmosphere. As has been correctly observed by Papert (1987), if the addition of a
technology to instruction
is SO harmless that it can be easily assimilated
into existing instructional
practices without much changing them, then it
will be equally harmless in making an instructional
difference. Indeed, if
the same kind of practice sheet is given via computers instead of in a booklet, why should this affect the comprehension of mathematics?
Triggering a change for the sake of change is not a very convincing justification for imposing a new technology, shiny as it might be on education.
The argument “because it is there and available” (in- and out-of-school) is
often made nowadays to justify the adoption of novel technological offerings, yet this in itself produces nothing but the above-mentioned
muchado-about-nothing
paradox and disappointment.
Why, for example, should
children in school surf the Internet? Why should they engage in computermediated communication
with other students overseas? Or why should
they design new data bases? The fact that such activities are possible is certainly not much of a justification
and not much can be expected to result
from them unless they come to serve a purpose-beyond them. The paradox
mentioned above can be avoided only when there is a justification
that
transcends the technology itself and providesa
rationale for particular
kinds of technology employment that strongly and justifiably deviate from
pedagogical routine.
Recent developments
in educationally
relevant psychological
understandings of desirable learning, coupled with constructivist philosophies,
appear to offer precisely the kind of rationale needed for intelligent and
Educational Psychology and Technology
effective employment of technology in instruction
(e.g., Brown, 1992). As
we shall try to sketch out below, such developments suggest (although they
do not dictate) particular designs for education. The realization of these
designs is greatly helped, however, by the employment of technology. In
fact, the coupling of new psychological and philosophical
conceptions with
technological possibilities has led to a shift in the kinds of scholarship in
which many educational psychologists engage. Attention of many pioneering scholars in the field has shifted from the analytic study of single variables (e.g., anxiety, reading difficulties,
intrinsic motivation)
under relatively controlled conditions to the design and study of whole, composite
instructional
learning environments
(e.g., Brown, 1992; Chinn & Anderson, 1998; Salomon, 1996). Such “design experiments,” as they have come
to be called, are what Herbert Simon once described as “the science of the
artificial” (Simon, 1982). Specifically, this means that scholars attempt to
weave psychological, instructional,
curricular, interpersonal,
and organizational considerations
into new, workable, and effective learning environments manifesting a variety of constructivist approaches. Thus one finds
the CSILE environment
of Bereiter and Scardamalia
(in press), Ann
Brown and Joe Campione’s Community of Learners (e.g., Brown & Campione, 1994), and the design of similar learning environments in which constructivist philosophy, new psychological understandings,
and technology
meet each other in what appears to be a rather promising new integration.
Looking specifically at the psychological
member of the threesome,
there are at least three important developments that deserve special mention in this respect: Learning as a constructivist process, learning as (partly,
at least) an interpersonal,
often socially distributed, process, and human
ability as (again, partly, at least) context-bound.
LEARNING
AS A CONSTRUCTIVIST
PROCESS
Inspired to an important extent by Piaget’s work and by philosophical
perspectives, such as that of Von Glasersfeld (1990), there is a growing agreement among psychologists and educators that learning is essentially a
process whereby learners construct their own knowledge by applying their
existing knowledge and mental skills to novel incoming information,
constructing their own meanings as they go along. The knowledge that students finally acquire is only the knowledge they have actively constructed
themselves, not the information
transmitted to them ready-made. Learning-as-construction
thus contrasts with conceptions of learning as the relatively passive acquisition
or internalization
of ready-formed
bodies of
handed-down information
(e.g., Phillips, 1995).
One of the important underlying assumptions of this view of learning is
that learning is not to be seen and assessed as the acquisition of knowl-
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edge, and, by implication, instruction is not to be conceived of as the wellstructured, appealing presentation of information-to-be-acquired.
Rather,
learning is to be seen as the activities of constructing meanings and understanding within a particular context and situation (Duffy & Cunningham,
1996). What then would trigger these activities- ? Underlying the different
constructivist approaches is the conception of discrepancies, conflicts, contradictions, unsolved problems, or in short Piaget’s (1957) “disequilibria”
and Bruner’s (1960) “perturbations,”
which arc sensed by learners (not
necessarily the teachers!) and cause them intellectual uncertainty, annoyance, curiosity, or at least puzzlement.
It follows from these conceptions, for example, that contrary to common
lore, the acquisition of knowledge and the activities of construction (e.g.,
problem solving, designing) are inseparable (Perkins, 1992): One acquires
knowledge while attempting to solve a problem or design something new,
often as a result of experienced uncertainty or of a routine run aground.
Instruction, then, is seen not as the effective transmission of knowledge but
rather as setting the stage, providing some guidance, and offering the raw
information for the activities of problem solving and design to take place.
Related to the above, although not a necessary corollary, is the idea of
comprehension
or meaningfulness as the active construction of a network
of connections between nodes of knowledge. No single bit of information
can be meaningfully
understood unless embedded in a rich network of
relations. It is the causal, correlational,
part-whole, rule-example, associational, or sequential links connecting a bit of-information
to others that
give that bit its meaning. And, the denser, better organized, and less random the web of connections, the more meaning each part would-have for
the person. Following Geertz_(1973), we might call such networks “Webs of
Meaning” (Geertz called them “webs of significance”). Such webs are akin,
to some extent, to the older notion of "cognitive maps,” explicated by
and
Neisser (1976) as “orienting
schemata,” active information-seeking
organizing structures. But whereas for many scholars, cognitive maps concern mainly spatial relations, cognitions, and orientations
(e.g., Nadel,
1994), the webs of meaning alluded to here are far more general, pertaining to the way all kinds of information
units relate to each other. Entwistle
(1996) describes how students report the way they represent knowledge to
between nodes of
themselves as precisely such “webs” of connections
knowledge. Given a constructivist view, the emphasis is on one’s activities
of constructing one’s own weblike structures of knowledge rather than on
the acquisition of a ready-made one. This, then, implies the necessity of
engaging in activities intended to interrelate bits and pieces of knowledge
such that a rich web can emerge. This, in turn, has strong implications for
the social aspects of learning and for the interdisciplinary
nature of the
contents to be dealt with. To these we turn next:
Educational
LEARNING
AS AN INTERPERSONAL
Psychology and Technology
PROCESS
Traditionally,
students have been perceived as isolated entities and their
learning as a solo process. The interpersonal
context in which learning
takes place was usually ignored or, at best, seen as mere background, not
really part of the actual learning process (e.g., Cole, 1991). Hence followed individualized
instruction
and-even
more common-individual
testing. But at least two sources challenged this view. One such source was
Vygotsky’s (1989) theory according to which development
is, to a large
extent, a matter of interpersonal
interactions
becoming internalized
to
serve as cognitive tools. A second, and clearly not unrelated source, was the
growing conception of learning as situated rather than decontextualized
(Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Greeno, 1989, 1991). According to this
view, one’s cognitions are so tightly connected to the situational context in
which they are employed, to the specifics of the issue at hand, and to the
activity one is engaged in that in-the-head cognitions and in-the-world activity should not be treated as separate entities (e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Cognitions situated in the social context of some activity can be said to
be distributed in the sense that the social processes entail the shared coconstruction of knowledge. Learning is thus a socially distributed process
of meaning appropriation
(Newman, Griffin, & Cole, 1989). Whether it is
the individual’s solo learning that is facilitated by interpersonal processes,
or whether the learning process and the resulting knowledge are both distributed, emerging “in between” the participants (Pea, 1993), much of the
learning is due to the distributed mutual scaffolding afforded by the interpersonal activity.
In light of these conceptions, learning becomes understood as a process
for which social interaction
serves a variety of crucial functions. These
range from the provision of feedback and mirroring to mutual intellectual
stimulation,
instruction,
and correction, and from mutual scaffolding of
comprehension
to the socially shared construction of meanings. Research
on collaborative and cooperative learning generally tends to support such
conceptions, showing that under certain conditions and with particular
learning tasks, team work, collaboration,
reciprocal teaching, and the like
are beneficial for the learners (see, for a recent review, Hertz-Lazarowitz &
Miller, 1992; Slavin, 1996).
It might be argued that constructivist and interpersonal views of learning
are somewhat contradictory:
Constructivism assumes the dominance of inthe-head and transferable
cognitions with activity being subservient to
thought, while the interpersonal views of learning assume cognitions to be
situated in particular activities, being socially distributed
(Hewitt & Scardamalia, 1996). But this contradiction
may be more apparent than real.
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For one thing, solo cognitions and distributed ones are likely to be interdependent,
developing
each other in a recipocal
spiral-like
manner
(Salomon, 1993; Salomon & Perkins, in press). For another, the ideas of
learning-as-active-construction-of-knowledge
and as a social process do not
rule out each other, As a matter of fact, the newly designed “constructivist”
learning environments, to be described below, that realize the new psychological conceptions succeed in effectively integrating the two views.
HUMAN
ABILITY
AS CONTEXT-BOUND
Old conceptions according to which there is a clear distinction between
content knowledge (“knowledge that”) and abilities and skills (“knowledge
how”) have come under growing criticism. Although views and the findings
on which they are based leave much room for disagreement, it has become
increasingly common to view skills and abilities as less decontextualized
than traditionally
assumed. In the competition
between a well-mastered
abstract skill (say, a general problem-solving ability) and rich knowledge of
a particular field (e.g., knowledge of soccer rules), the latter comes out the
winner: It is better to know something than to be ignorant but equipped
with a general, decontextualized
skill (Glaser, 1990; Weinert & Helmke,
1995).
For some researchers, general, decontextualized
skills are of no interest.
Thus, for example, Lave (1988) disagrees with the conventional views of
abstract skill acquisition and transfer, arguing that “knowledge-in-practice,
constituted in the settings of practice, is the locus of the most powerful
knowledgeability
of people in the lived-in world” (p. 14). Such views are
supported by the relatively poor yield of research into transfer of training.
If abilities are decontextualized,
why does their deliberate training fail to
transfer to new situations, contents, and contexts? Other support comes
from research on the highly intelligent performance on the job-of otherwise poorly educated individuals (e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1951).
However, for other researchers, giving more credit to the long tradition
of psychometric research into the nature of human intelligence and other
relatively general abilities, the question is not an all-or-none one. Rather,
the questions they ask concern the interplay between general skills and
specific knowledge and the opportunities
when either one of the two
assumes dominance. For example, could it be that general abilities come
into play only when specific knowledge is-lacking? Or could it be that abilities serve as general levers for, say, problem solving, analogous to one’s
arms, whereas specific knowledge serves as the particular adaptations of
such levers to the specifics of a situation,
analogous to one’s fingers
(Perkins & Salomon, 1989)?
Educational
Psychology and Technology
Despite such differences of opinion, specific knowledge and activity
within particular contexts have recently gained a more central role in the
understanding
of human learning and intellectual activity. Skills and abilities are to be cultivated within a variety of particular contexts, and if transfer is desired, it itself needs to be cultivated within particular situations.
The generality of skills is not a given, and their cultivation
cannot be a
decontextualized
educational activity. One major implication that follows is
that learning is to take place within rich and complex real-world contexts,
rather than with decontextualized skill-building materials. It also follows that
learning is to take place through learners’ active and personally consequential interactions with peers and within particular, content-rich
contexts,
rather than through the training of abstract subskills (Greeno, 1997).
PEDAGOGICAL
IMPLICATIONS
There is an impressive congruence among the three psychological perspectives discussed above: Good learning is a process of socially based, active co-construction of contextualized knowledge and webs of relations among its nodes. The
translation of these underlying psychological conceptions and their pedagogical implications into classroom practices concerns the design of whole
learning environments that integrate these implications.
Indeed, a variety
of novel, constructivist
learning environments,
although differing from
each other in detail, entail a number of common elements and practices
that manifest these psychological perspectives. These are team-based collaborations
(communities
of learners according to Brown & Campione,
1994; knowledge-building
communities according to Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994), whereby students tackle real life-like rich and often interdisciplinary problems, while engaging for a significant amount of time in intensive search for pertinent information,
exchange of data, and the design of
hypermedia and other knowledge products that can be co-constructed and
shared, with the teachers serving as guides and consultants
(see, also,
Almog & Hertz-Lazarowitz,
in press; Cognition and Technology Group at
Vanderbilt, 1992; Salomon & Perkins, 1996). In these environments, teachers often work in teams, and learning becomes an interpersonal
process
whereby knowledge is jointly constructed, thus integrating the psychological conceptions discussed above.
The actual practice of the new learning environments requires a number
of major shifts-a
conceptual and cultural shift from teacher-led instruction to an interactive community of active learners; from a highly structured curriculum to an emerging, often improvised one; from knowledge
as the accumulation of discrete units to the tackling of whole issues; and
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from the acquisition of handed-down knowledge to the handling of information to be sought and processed (e.g., Brown, 1992).
What roles does technology play in all this? The shifts just mentioned
could not practically be carried out in real classrooms without technology
that serves a number of functions. One would need tools that enable the
gathering,
processing,
and construction
of information,
some of it
imported from afar; one would need design tools; and one would need
tools that facilitate these activities as social ones. Thus, the designs and
usages that serve these functions are numerous and varied. In some cases,
technology provides the forum in which the knowledge-orient&a
interaction and the explicit co-construction of that knowledge take place; in other
cases, technology offers a series of tools with which information
can be
sought, sifted through, processed, and designed (Hewitt & Scardamalia,
1996). In the case of the Israeli project SELA, much-of the learning
process consists of teams of students jointly designing hypermedia products (in this case-planning
the city of the future, avoiding current urban
plights). The hypermedia, serves as the stage-on which carefully selected
and formulated
information
becomes woven into a gradually -unfolding
plot. In yet other cases, technology is the means of accessing worldwide
information,
distance communication
with peers and experts, lab experimentation, and the like.
In all, the proper harnessing of technology-makes possible the practical
realization of those learning environments that are based on the relatively
novel psychological understandings
of learning. Technology is thus subservient to pedagogy, with a conceptually-based
pedagogy providing the
rationale, and technology, the means. This division of labor is not coincidental. The development ofpsychological
and pedagogical thinking, often
associated with the “cognitive revolution,” was inspired by developments in
computer technology, while the directions taken by the latter were clearly
inspired by developments of our understanding
of (and debates about)
learning and thinking.
TECHNOLOGY
CHALLENGES PSYCHOLOGY
Whereas, it is easy to see how technology manifests and realizes prevailing
views of learning and teaching, the reciprocal-namely,
the way technology
in education inspires and challenges educationally related psychology-is
less obvious. Technology, throughout history and in many fields, tended to
become developed quite independently
of economic, managerial, psychological, or educational considerations or, for that matter, independently of
any top-down planning. Education, perhaps unlike some other fields, is an
Educational Psychology and Technology
extreme case in point; it adopts existing technological
innovations
and
adapts them to its prevailing conceptions, philosophies, and practices.
However, as the development of information
technologies is becoming
increasingly rapid, outpacing developments of pedagogical thinking, and
as these technological innovations engulf the lives of children and adults,
psychological and pedagogical thinking cannot but attempt to catch up.
Indeed, what psychological wisdom do we have to deal with children’s surfing of the Internet, wandering through virtual MOO “rooms,” or entering
night-long chats with strangers?
Let us consider three prototypical examples in which recent technological innovations,
gradually penetrating
education,
afford new kinds of
learning experiences, thus possibly challenging
prevailing psychological
conceptions
and common understandings:
intellectual
partnerships
between technology and learners, the exploration and design of hypermedia, and computer-mediated
communication.
These cases illustrate how a
new educational reality gradually becomes possible and takes shape, leading to relatively novel pedagogical practices and roles. Existing psychological constructs, theories, and understandings turn out to fall short of what is
scientifically
desired and practically
needed. New technological
affordances open up novel pedagogical possibilities that need fresh psychological explanations and justifications.
INTELLECTUAL
AND
PARTNERSHIP:
EFFECTS
“OF” NEW TECHNOLOGY
“WITH”
Intellectual
partnerships with technology are manifested, for example, in
writing partners that provide metacognitive-like
guidance in computerbased laboratories, in interactive visualizations of difficult-to-imagine
physical processes, in collaborative construction of novel knowledge by means
of a specially designed interactive tool (e.g., Lajoie & Derry, 1993), and so
forth. Typical of such tools is the distribution
of cognitive
activities
between users and tools. On the one hand, nothing takes place without the
active participation
and intentional
guidance provided by the users. On
the other hand, the technology offers semi-intelligent
help, affords the offloading of irrelevant menial cognitive tasks, provides intelligent feedback,
or affords rational organization
and clever ways of interrelating
participants’ input. Research and evaluation of such tools for partnership clearly
show that the learning students experience, the kinds of activities they
engage in, and the effects of these activities are diverse and profound (e.g.,
Jonassen, 1996). Such effects may range from greater team interdependence to more intensive metacognitive activity, and from increased motivation to higher levels of thinking.
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But not all effects are created equal, and thus the daily meaning of the
term effect has come to mean two things: the effects attained during partnership with a semi-intelligent
tool as contrasted with those that develop as a
consequence of that partnership and appear later on as a changed capability.
A new distinction had to be introduced, a distinction between effects with
a technology
and the more lasting effects of it (Salomon, Perkins, &
Globerson, 1991). Whereas the former pertains to the immediate changes
that take place while students engage in an intellectual partnership with a
helpful tool (e.g., better essay writing when a tool provides metacognitivelike help), the latter pertains to the more lasting changes that this partnership may lead to (e.g., improved tendency for self-regulation, independent
of that help; better essay-writing ability), This distinction raises a number
of new questions. One of these is whether effects with a tool are a necessary
condition for the attainment of effects of it. A second question concerns
the role of mindful or intentional
engagement-in the intellectual partnership: Could lasting cognitive effects be attained while one is less than
mindfully engaged in an intellectual partnership with a tool? A third question revisits an old dispute in education and psychology-the
issue of how
general (hence transferable) versus context-specific
one’s cognitive skills
are (e.g., Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996; Greeno,
1997; Perkins &
Salomon, 1989). The very mention of effects of technology, in the form of
some decontextual cognitive residue that transcends the tool and the situation in which it was first attained, assumes some generalized transfer of
learning to new situations and tasks. How does such logic square with the
growing acceptance of knowledge and skill as being situated and contextualized? As pointed out earlier, it might well be the case (and there is evidence to support it) that skill acquired during activities with a tool can
become generalized under conditions of varied and repeated experience,
and become detached from the original situation or tool that facilitated its
cultivation (e.g., Salomon, Globerson, & Guterman, 1989).
The distinction between effects with and of is clearly relevant and useful
to other educational interventions,
such as new curricula or collaborative
learning. In studying most educational
interventions
and innovations,
effects attained during an intervention
should not be confused with the
intervention’s
long-range cognitive residues, although such a confusion is
often the case. Why, then, was this distinction made-only in the context of
studying technology’s educational effects? It seems that what has stimulated the making of the distinction is the gap between the observable novelty of students’ activities during intellectual partnership with computers,
on the one hand, and the paucity of lasting cognitive effects that were
expected to emerge, on the other, but did not (see, e.g., Oppenheimer,
1997). Could it be that when it comes to the study and measurement of
common achievements
resulting from computer-related
activities, the
Educational
Psychology and Technology
results are less impressive than the learning activities students are observed
to egage in?
Herein lies the challenge: If students engage in genuinely novel activities
during intellectual partnership with technology, capitalizing on the novel
technological
affordances, what kinds of learning outcomes ought to be
expected and measured? Are the desired learning outcomes (effects “of’)
to be identical to the ones aimed at before the new affordances were available? Or, to put it differently, should all those technological novelties (with
the new communication
and information-access
possibilities they afford)
come to serve no more than traditional educational goals crystallized in a
much earlier era? Such questions echo to an extent the debate between
the “cognitive” approach, espousing more traditional skill training (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996) and the “situative” approach, espousing more
social-participatory
goals (Greeno, 1997). Although
that debate is not
directly linked to technology, it nevertheless reflects the challenges that
novel technologies pose. What educational achievements should we try to
attain and measure in the age of constructivist,
socially shared, situative,
technology-intensive
learning environments?
HYPERMEDIA:
THE CONSTRUCTION
KNOWLEDGE
NETWORKS
OF FRAIL
There is a potentially interesting affinity between cognitive networking that
underlies comprehension
and the network-like structure of hypertext and
multimedia.
As pointed out earlier, comprehension,
to an important
extent, is likely to be a matter of cognitive networking;
that is, the construction of a network of relations between nodes of knowledge (Entwistle,
1996; Salomon & Perkins, 1996). Hypermedia and related genres appear to
afford exactly that kind of web in the sense that they are constructed as
networks of interrelated
information
items allowing free movement from
one item to another, not necessarily adjacent, one. Thus, it appears that
hypermedia programs reflect a mode of knowledge organization that could
be isomorphous
with, or correspond to the cognitive webs of meaning
described earlier. The hypermedia students work with, even if only exploring an existing program, possibly serves as mirrors of their own minds-the
network they explore, or, better yet, the one they design may well resemble
the one they simultaneously construct in their own minds. Technology and
mind work together; one may be mirroring and scaffolding the other.
The distinction between effects with and of technology, described earlier
in the context of intellectual partnership, is relevant in the present case as
well. Mindful engagement in the design of a hypermedia product may
afford the opportunity
of higher-order
thinking about the logical ways in
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which the particular
information
components of a body of knowledge
relate to each other. Clearly, the effect attained with a hypermedia program, while working with it, might well be the construction
of a betterorganized and more meaningful domain-specific cognitive knowledge network (e.g., Lehrer, Erickson, & Connell, 1994). A more lasting cognitive
effect of the active construction of hypermedia knowledge maps may well
be an improved, relatively general ability, or greater disposition, for the
construction of logical cognitive webs of meaning. In other words, students
may become better able to construct for themselves interrelated networks
of knowledge and acquire the disposition to think of ways to logically link
bits of knowledge to each other.
The requirement to define relations among components of a hypermedia network explicitly would be expected to be internalized,
thus making
hypermedia “cognitive tools” (e.g., Lehrer, 193). Is this a viable possibility? Can interactive technological devices designed to handle information
become internalized,
to serve as cognitive tools the way, say, media’s symbol systems (Salomon, 1994) or statistical tools (Gigerenzer,
1991) are
claimed to serve? Research is badly needed to address such questions.
THE
BUTTERFLY
DEFECT
However, not all of the potential effects with and of learning by means of
multimedia and hypermedia are likely to be positive. There might also be a
downside to hypermedia.
One of the outstanding
attributes of typical
hypermedia programs, as well, as the Internet, is their nonlinear, association-based structure. One item just leads to another, and one is invited to
wander from one item to another, lured by the visual appeal of the presentation. In fact, surfing the Internet or hypermedia programs is a good example of a shallow exploratory behavior, as distinguished from deeper search.
The distinction between exploration and search was formulated by Wright
and Vliestra (1975) to describe a developmental sequence. Whereas exploration is greatly influenced by visual appeal, a bottom-up unsystematic hopping around, search is focused, goal-directed, and metacognitively guided.
Thus, developmentally,
exploration precedes search and is replaced by it.
Surfing the Internet and exploring hypermedia are activities that seem to
faithfully manifest the exploratory behavior as conceived by Wright and
Vliestra: a butterfly-like hovering from item to-item without really touching
them.
One may need to entertain the hypothesis that based on the affinity
between the network-like structure of comprehension
and that of hypermedia products, intensive interaction with the latter might facilitate the
construction of rather shallow associationist cognitive networks. Such net-
Educational
Psychology and Technology
works would consist of trivial, frail connections,
having no intellectual
merit. One piece of information
leads to another by virtue of some fleeting
association without much rational justification,
reflecting the aimless, visually-lured wandering though the screens of a hypermedia program, hence
the Butter-y Defect.
How would the cognitive Butterfly Defect be manifested? Although one
should be careful not to entertain doomsday predictions
of profound
changes in the hard-wiring
of students’ minds, there is still reason to
hypothesize
that students’ conceptions
of what knowledge consists of
might well be affected. Such conceptions
are likely to be amenable to
external influences. Thus, students might well come to believe that knowledge is a hypermedia-like
structure, the links of which are not the kind of
logical connections science is designed to construct. Similarly, students
may come to prefer to learn from sources that present fields of knowledge
in a hypermedia structure, thus sidestepping the acquisition of the logical,
hierarchically
structured connections and links that constitute science as
we know it. To the extent that intensive interaction
with unstructured,
association-based tapestries of information
can affect cognitive preferences
or conceptions of knowledge, one might hypothesize that hypermedia-like
minds are being cultivated by surfing Internet-like webs.
COMPUTER-MEDIATED
INTERNETED,
COMMUNICATION
FACELESS
LEARNING?
(CMC):
CMC is yet another technological innovation challenging educational psychology and pedagogy. Students can now communicate with each other
over immense distances and in real time, consult vast data bases and
libraries, surf the Internet, and gain easy access to an enormous variety of
discussion groups, clubs, and institutions of learning. CMC and the Internet add interesting new dimensions to regular school learning: Students
work in virtual teams, comparing freshly collected data and exchanging
views on controversial topics; jointly write papers; and, perhaps most interestingly, conduct continuous conversations and construct whole projects
(e.g., Hiltz, 1994).
Such technological
applications may appear to revolutionize
not only
classroom teaching, but also institutions
of learning, by challenging
the
traditional foundations of schooling as we know it, particularly the foundations of institutionalized
higher education. Suddenly the idea of a whole
society becoming “A Learning Society,” in which everybody has immediate
access to whatever source of information
one needs or desires, is not as
fantastic as it was only a short while ago (Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turoff,
235
236
Teachers College Record
1995). Remote participation
in virtual and inexpensive university and high
school courses and remote access to libraries, tutors, consultants, peers,
experts, and numerous other sources becomes the hallmark of the new
possibilities. As information
can be accessed all the time and from everywhere, learning becomes removed from its traditional citadel-like locations
of knowledge, freed from the constraints of place and time (Noam, 1996).
All this calls for the formulation
of new rationales to justify the novel
possibilities: Why should virtual classrooms replace face-to-face ones? Why
should students reach into virtual rather than real libraries or communicate with distant peers when they hardly ever communicate with those next
door? On the other hand, what psychological constructs can account for
learning via the new forms of CMC, Internet surfing, electronic communities of learners, and the like?
As for rationales, recent designs of constructivist learning environments
that emphasized the development of self-guided heavily interactive communities of learners make increasing use of the newly afforded communication possibilities. The need for interaction-d
communication,
as well
as the access to sources of information, provide the desired pedagogical
and psychological justifications.
As for the psychological processes that are
of particular importance for CMC-intensive learning, it becomes evident,
for example, that in the absence of a teacher, classroom- regulations, and
face-to-face contact, self-regulation
may become truly crucial. So do student’s disposition to be mindful learners. Individual differences that are
only mildly implicated in learning in traditional
classrooms are likely to
become of central importance
when CMC is involved. Indeed, in the
absence of students’ ability to monitor their own learning,
or in the
absence of sufficient motivation to become engaged in learning mindfully
and intentionally,
CMC-based pedagogy may be fun, but not very effective.
A NEW ALLIANCE:
COGNITIONS
NEED
CONATION
As pointed out earlier, although the introduction
of novel information
technology into classrooms was accompanied by high hopes for immediate
breathtaking effects, computer technology was often employed in unimaginative ways, based on conceptions of learning as a matter of “spoon-feeding.”
However, with the development of increasingly interesting usages of technology for education, the gap between high hopes and the actual (disappointing) outcomes grew wider, echoing the realization that opportunities given
are not necessarily opportunities taken (Perkins 1985). Thus, for example,
the opportunity to internalize a writing partner’s metacognitive-like guidance
is not always taken (Zellermayer, Salomon, Globerson, & Givon, 1991), nor
are the opportunities
to explore a rich multimedia program taken by all
learners (e.g., ROSS,1996).
Educational Psychology and Technology
Among the conditions that need to be met for such opportunities
to be
taken is mindful engagement in the activity afforded or demanded by the
technology. This, in itself, is not new. The questions of intentional learning
(Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989) and of mindful engagement in learning
(Langer, 1997) have been raised independently
of any technological
considerations,
concurrently
with a growing interest in the overlap
between cognition and conation (e.g., Snow, Corno, &Jackson, 1997).
Nevertheless, the design of novel, constructivist, and technology-intensive
learning environments of the kind mentioned earlier highlights the role of
self-regulated mindfulness in learning. In such environments, for their very
constructivist nature, much of the responsibility for learning is shifted over
to the learners, either individually
or in teams, while teachers’ control is
relatively weaker than in more traditional learning environments. Indeed,
one of our findings in a study comparing traditional classrooms with “constructivist” ones was that although measures of ability were the best predictors of learning in the former learning environment, measures of students’
disposition to engage mindfully in learning are the best predictors in the
latter. Volitional, motivated expenditure of mental effort, mindful engagement, and metacognitive self-monitoring
thus become crucial in the kinds
of learning environments that the novel information
technologies require,
not because of the technology in and of itself, but because of its conjunction with a more general constructivist pedagogy.
The new constructivist learning environments rely more heavily on students’ independent
learning, increasingly carried out in classrooms without walls or schedules. However, it appears that at least two psychological
forces may constrain the unlimited spread of distance learning in virtual
classrooms. One such force is students’ need for face-to-face, real (rather
than virtual) contact. There is only so much distance learning and impersonal access to information
that students are willing to tolerate. Thus, for
example, Rheingold (1993) while describing the experience of learners in
the San Francisco Bay Area electronic learning network (SFNET), observes
that many of them often organize face-to-face parties to overcome the electronic lack of intimacy. Similarly, all courses of the Israeli Open University,
which allege celebrating distance learning, had to add periodic, face-toface class meetings to alleviate the loneliness of the long-distance learner.
The second limiting factor is the difficulty many learners have with self-discipline and self-monitoring
in the face of routine learning tasks. Students
seem to need the boundary-setting,
guidance, and motivation-sustaining
functions that a regular classroom with its peer group and teacher usually
provide. Despite technology’s challenge, its possibilities are likely to be
tamed by human frailty.
237
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Teachers College Record
CONCLUSION
Educational psychology and technology have reached a fruitful alliance
under the umbrella of wider philosophical
conceptions espousing constructivism. This alliance has a number of manifestations. The most pronounced manifestation is the design of novel learning environments that
follow the new psychological understandings of what good learning (and
hence instruction)
is supposed to be, the realization
of which greatly
depends on technological
affordances. Indeed, it would be most difficult
to create the kind of team-based, interdisciplinary
problem-solving
and
information-rich
learning environment
of the kind mentioned earlier in
the absence of technology-enhanced
search for relevant information,
computerized lab simulations, data collection and analyses, semi-intelligent
tools for design and presentation, communication,
and the like.
However, technology does not serve only as the lever for the realization
of psychologically-based
novel learning environments.
Psychology and
technology come to play a game of reciprocalinfluences.
This reciprocity
takes place when new technological affordances, resulting from the amazingly fast development of electronic technology, challenge education by
offering it new tools, new usages, and new questions. Education must
develop rationales and psychology needs to provide conceptual handles for
these new affordances.
Some aspects of these affordances
look most
promising-think
of students communicating
with their peers overseas to
compare scientific data. But other aspects should perhaps worry us-think
of the possible cognitive Butterfly Defect resulting from the ill-structured
typical hypertext or of the poor value attributed to information
when it
comes without effort, without selection, and as a flood on the Internet.
It becomes clear that unlike previous times, educational psychology and
technology are now engaged in an ongoing duet.
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DIRECTIONS
B, ORAL
I.E.R. Intelligence Scale C A V D (Completions, Arithmetic, Vocabulary, Directions)
Levels A, B, C, D and E for grades K through 2. The directions for the above questions are the following: “7. Make two crosses, like these two. Make one here and
one here, pointing to the spots below the two crosses . . . )” (see above). “8. Make
the other arm on this man (pointing to the one-armed man . . .)” (see above). “9.
Make the other leg on this man (pointing to the one legged man . . .)” (see above).
“10. Make 2 lines, like these two (pointing to the two lines. . . )” (see above).
The test to which these questions belong had been created by The Institute of Educational Research, Teachers College,Columbia University, 1926.
The property
University.
of Milbank
Library,
Special Collections,
Teachers College, Columbia
241