Toward the Practice of theory-based Instruction

Current Cognitive theories and their Educational Promise

Anne McKeough, Judy Lee Lupart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136470806
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This unique contribution to the field of education offers a comparative look at the application of cognitive theory to instruction. Six leading researchers, representing the three theoretical positions which guide the study of cognition -- socio- cultural, information processing, and neo-Piagetian approaches -- discuss their theories and present empirical evidence in support of cognitively-based instructional practice. An introductory chapter describes the basic tenets of each tradition and its general educational posture, and a concluding chapter compares the contributors' views and draws implications for key educational issues. These open-ended discussions of the contrasts and overlaps in the various positions should stimulate readers to formulate personal opinions on cognitively-based instruction.

Chapter 1
Three Perspectives on Learning and Instruction
Anne McKeough Faculty of Education The University of Calgary

If educators were asked to identify the major concerns currently facing their field, the type of questions they would formulate would be fairly similar, regardless of their particular area of specialization or the teaching methodology they favor. All would be concerned with how children can best be taught (e.g., whether they respond best to a didactic or exploratory approach) and what children are most capable of learning at different grade levels or points in development. But if one continued the discussion by asking for answers to these questions, a good deal less consensus would be evident. The field is not entirely without organization, however, with three globally distinct positions co-existing – sometimes in a competitive way and at other times in a complementary fashion.

First there are those educators who see the learner as “a social being” who gradually becomes adept at using “the tool kit of the culture to express the powers of the mind” (Bruner & Haste, 1987, p. 5). Pedagogies such as the inquiry method, which advocates that the methods and tools of the discipline be offered to the students, reflect this line of thinking. Education is seen essentially as a social process where children are offered models and cognitive scaffolds in an effort to teach them how the knowledge of a given discipline is acquired (e.g., map reading in social studies or experimentation in science). Language is thought to play a central role in this process as it serves both a communicative function, being the vehicle by which teacher and learner make their thoughts known to one another, and a cognitive function, being the vehicle by which the child internalizes the concepts of the culture. The development of language and literacy skills has thus been accorded an elevated position in these curricula and has given rise to the literacy movement, which has recently become a focus at all levels of education and in all disciplines.

A second group of educators favor curricula that focus on specific task environments in which a detailed account of the steps involved in task performance or problem solution is provided. Traditional task analysis methods, where a task is broken up into its component skills, are examples of this approach. More recently, representatives of this school of thought have replaced the focus on skills with an emphasis on the strategies involved in problem solving. Although this group of educators also sees learning as a social process, in that new strategies are transmitted through social interaction such as modeling, they focus less on language and more on altering specific problem-solving strategies. In order to effect this transformation, a model of both novice and expert knowledge states is required, as well as a map of the steps in the sequence leading from one point to the other.

The third view that emerges in discussions of how children learn is the developmental one. The group who advocates this view sees the child as an active constructor of knowledge, someone for whom learning materials are optimum when operated on and explored in a self-directed way. Teachers who hold this view are currently found primarily in “child-centered” early childhood programs or in middle-level programs in science. Rather than providing the child with a social model or a detailed map of problem-solving strategies, these teachers attempt to offer developmentally appropriate experience wherein knowledge can be independently constructed by the child.

The pluralism that characterizes teachers’ understanding of how learning occurs and how it can be best facilitated is also present in the field of educational psychology. The volume before you reflects this pluralism. The purpose of the book is to present the work of six cognitive researchers and theoreticians who have been influenced by, and have subsequently shaped, one or another of these positions. As is the case with practitioners, some maintain a “pure” version of the position, in that the central tenets of only one position are recognizable, whereas others cross the traditional conceptual boundaries in their quest for the most effective cognitive model.

In the present chapter, a brief overview of these three theoretical approaches is presented, by way of introduction. Not surprisingly, contrasting positions are assumed by each of the frameworks on the two questions mentioned at the outset of the chapter, namely, how children learn and what they should be taught at different ages. Although there are also many points within each of the schools of thought on which there is no consensus – issues that are the substance of lively debate – these are not discussed here. Rather, the emphasis is on the issues on which there is consensus within each school, and the answers entailed by this consensus.

THE THREE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

How Do Children Learn? How Should They Be Taught?

For the cultural transmission school, learning is thought to occur as a result of a dialogue between the child and members of his/her social world. More knowledgeable members of the culture provide the child with frameworks for interpreting experience, which he/she initially uses on “the social plane,” that is, in situations where mental activity is mediated by the parent or teacher through discussion. Later, the child's use of the knowledge becomes increasingly independent, as it moves inward to “the psychological plane” to become a part of his/her individual system for constructing meaning (Vygotsky, 1962). These organizing frameworks are not invented by the child, nor are they copied directly from the adult's instruction. Child and adult negotiate a mutual understanding, within the categories available to the child and to the culture at large. Thus, the cultural transmission approach aims at both the social and individual aspects of the child. Individual psychological functioning is examined in the light of the social context that gives rise to it. Because it is in language exchanges that the dialectic between the child's individual mental construction and her social world is acted out, language is considered to be the most powerful of the various tools offered by a culture, and to play the most central role in the acquisition of knowledge. Not only is it a means for expressing thoughts, thereby permitting the adult to understand and elaborate on the child's representation, but it also defines the nature of the representation itself. Consequently, language is integrally involved in learning (Wertsch, 1989).

In contrast, the strategic learning school, holds that individual problem-solving strategies – not language – are what lie at the core of the educational process. Take, for example, the task of driving to one's office. For most of us, this procedure presents no challenge whatsoever, having become automated to the point of being transformed into something close to an unconscious activity. If, however, we were to move to a new city, the task of driving to work would take on an entirely new cast. Although the procedures for executing the various operations involved in driving a car would not change, the information on which these procedures would have to operate would no longer be so readily available. Consequently, in this novel situation, our automaticity would be lost and the activity would once again have to be brought under conscious control. The operations used in the old procedure would be applied to the new set of facts, and the new information would be temporarily held in attention, while problem-solving operations manipulated it. Through these strategic operations, linkages would be forged among the new items in the information store. According to the strategic learning school, strategic knowledge operates similarly in less trivial situations to facilitate the expansion of the knowledge base and so, in educational settings, it is the responsibility of teachers to actively instruct children in the problem-solving procedures and other elements of expert performance – especially those that are relevant for success in a high-technology society (Pressley, Snyder, & Cariglia-Bull, 1987).

According to the developmental school, differentiation and hierarchical integration are the mechanisms by which learning takes place. Although some developmentalists assert that this reorganization periodically results in the emergence of distinctly different views of the world (i.e., discrete stages), others believe its function impacts more locally, producing a domain-specific progression devoid of qualitative differences in thought. Nevertheless, either brand of developmentalist believes that the child constructs knowledge in a systematic fashion and this yields an invariant progression in task performance. In other words, the sequence of changes we observe in one child's performance are mirrored in the performance of others, and are orchestrated by processes of coordination and differentiation (Beilin, 1987). In support of their view, the advocates of this view point to the regularity observed in early language development, or in certain basic logical concepts. In spite of the immense variation in environments, children show similar patterns in early speech and thought (provided they are free of organic impairment). Moreover, if one assumes that this regularity is due to the active construction of knowledge by the child, then this view carries implications for how instruction should be carried out in formal settings. Activities should be designed to encourage exploration and independent problem solving and questioning, but the teacher should encourage children to discover the limits of their current views and to go on to construct more sophisticated ones. Whenever possible, curriculum should also be adapted to the developmental level of the child, in whatever areas he/she might be engaged.

As can be seen, then, each view of how children learn yields a distinct image of the learner. The advocates of the cultural transmission approach see the child as “an interior of cultural tools.” The strategic learning group see the child as a “processor of information.” Finally, the developmentalists see the child as a “constructor of knowledge.” Each of these images holds implications for the second question commonly voiced among educators: What should children be taught at different grade levels or points in development?

Development and Learning

For cultural transmission advocates, the development of language in the pre-school years allows “elementary” mental functions to be replaced with a “higher” or “cultural” variety of mental functions. Language itself not only develops but brings about changes in mental functioning. Prior to the emergence of language, the child is incapable of representing things which are not part of her perceptual or sensorimotor field. Language provides a socially shared symbol – a name – for the object which offers the child a way of representing objects and events that are not present. Thus, language initially appears in a social context where it is used to construct a shared meaning. Mediated learning offers the child a conceptual scaffold that helps him/her to internalize the symbols, that is, to transform them from their social (or oral) form into verbal thought. When this occurs, the developing cognitive system becomes not only better able to use language for its purposes but is also altered itself by the use of language (Kolberg & Wertsch, 1987). As a result, throughout the developmental course, the learner becomes capable of internal regulation (Diaz, Neal, & Amaya-Williams, in press) and can internalize increasingly complex concepts. The range of material that can be rendered meaningful with instruction is said to lie within the child's “zone of proximal development” defined by the child's current level of conceptual development, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by the symbols and tools that the culture has constructed over time. It is thought to contain cultural knowledge that lies just beyond the child's current performance capability and that is attainable by the child with the support of a cognitive scaffold. Thus, the zone of proximal development is the place where the child and culture meet, and the place where learning occurs (Vygotsky, 1962).

Under ideal instruction conditions, the zone of proximal development should foreshadow competence. The location of each child's zone of proximal development is understandably of interest to educators of the sociocultural school. In their view, the task of the instructor is to determine which aspects of the cultural heritage can be apprehended by the child and to build a scaffold, through dialogue, that enables the child to construct a new meaning, at first with the support of the social situation and later independently, as the scaffold is gradually disassembled and the instructor “sensitively withdraws” the support it once provided.

For the proponents of strategic learning, the type of knowledge the child is able to acquire at different points in his/her development is also bounded on one side by the child's current level of functioning and on the other side by the culture's knowledge. Here, however, the boundaries are framed in terms of the dichotomy between the novice's strategies and those of the expert. For this reason, it is considered essential to have a detailed model of (a) the child's current knowledge state and (b) expert performance. Take, for example, the task of reading. Expert readers draw on a wide range of knowledge sources, such as knowledge of word meaning, knowledge of text structure, and background content knowledge as they construct meaning from text (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). The beginning reader, however, is unable to integrate these sources, even at the level at which they exist in his/her memory store. With practice, however, lower level processes such as letter and word recognition become automated, and the child can entertain other information sources involving, for example, the content of the passage or story structure (Perfetti & Curtis, 1986). As a result of this integration of information, a new and more complex strategy results. With further practice, the coordinated procedures themselves become automated and, in turn, are again coordinated with other procedures. This hierarchical integration that results from strategy coordination yields increasingly more sophisticated strategies. Thus, another essential ingredient of good instruction is a careful sequencing of steps leading from novice to expert performance.

Although developmentalists also see hierarchical integration as central to the learning process, for them it yields a different type of curriculum. Rather than the novice/expert mapping proposed by the strategic learning school, programs of study are designed to follow what is deemed to be a “natural course.” Different interpretations are given to what this means, however. On the one hand, there are those who attempt to organize classrooms so as to foster the child's independent exploration, leaving the “what” of learning to the children. On the other hand, there is a group who use developmental norms to develop curricula materials that are age appropriate. Among this latter group some use didactic methods, whereas others rely more heavily on child-centered (i.e., exploratory) methods.

As is undoubtedly apparent by now, each of the three learning paradigms presented here holds a different view of how learning occurs and what children should be taught at different points in development. For the cultural transmission school, learning is socially situated and the child is taught that which the culture considers important to the child's functioning. The strategic learning group sees learning as a movement from novice to expert problem-solving strategies, and thus these strategies are what must be isolated and taught. Finally, the developmentalists advocate an ontogenetic route. In what follows, a discussion is offered of the way in which these points-of-view are reflected in the work of the six contributors.

OVERVIEW OF THE VOLUME'S CONTENTS

In chapter 2, David Olson addresses the issue of meaning construction as it relates to the acquisition of literacy. He discusses the historical progression of discourse in western culture and proposes that, as written text replaced the oral tradition, the properties of text changed. As a result, he believes a new type of thought was required for establishing meaning from text. The associative memory system used in oral discourse was not adequate for written text, which required a categorical system. Moreover, the “conception of meaning” that arose from oral discourse was replaced, in written discourse, by a new conception of meaning. In the oral tradition, meaning could be determined by making reference to the speaker's intention. The listener could seek clarification or appeal to nonverbal sources of information from the ever-present speaker. In written discourse, meaning has to reside in the structure of the text. Thus, writers must appeal to knowledge of “word meaning” or “sentence meaning,” as contrasted with the knowledge of “speaker meaning” or “intended meaning” required for oral discourse.

Olson asserts that a similar shift occurs in children's thought as they are initiated into a literate society. He describes a number of cleverly designed studies (both from his laboratory and from the laboratories of other researchers who are studying the child's theory of mind) that demonstrate children's early conflation of speaker meaning and sentence meaning, or as Olson states, children's failure to distinguish “what is said” from “what is meant.” Between the ages of 4 and 8 years, children gradually come to treat textual meaning (i.e., what is said) as autonomous. That is, they appeal to the text for meaning rather than to the speaker's intention.

The knowledge that the text can stand on its own permits readers to revise understanding on the basis of sentence meaning, by appealing to the contents of the text (e.g., “It says here that …”) and without reference to the knowledge of the writer's intended meaning or of the context surrounding its utterance. Further, the ability to treat the text as autonomous allows writers to revise texts in order to bring “intended meaning” (i.e., what I want to say) and “sentence meaning” (i.e., what I actually said) into congruity. These changes in the way meaning is constructed are thought to be driven by metalinguistic awareness – a type of knowledge central to literacy and typically achieved when children enter formal schooling.

For Olson, then, frameworks for interpreting experience are sociohisto-rically generated. The history of western literacy reveals a change in the basis of meaning construction: from the speaker's intention to what is presented in the text – a movement which necessitated examining word and sentence meaning, that is, taking a meta-position to the text. Individuals who are born into a literate tradition are given opportunities to sample this process in the course of language exchanges. Casual dialogue in a literate society is replete with words signifying meta-positions relative not only to language, in distinguishing what was said from what was meant, but also relative to psychological states themselves. Consider, by way of example, the following dialogue fragment, which is typical of conversations between school-aged youngsters and parents or older siblings: “I know you think I said I'd take you with me, but I said, Tf I can.’ ” In order to understand the statement, the listener must not only distingu...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Three Perspectives on Learning and Instruction
• Chapter 2 Children's Understanding of Text and Interpretation
• Chapter 3 The Problem of Meaning in a Sociocultural Approach to Mind
• Chapter 4 Scaffolded Instruction of Listening Comprehension With First Graders at Risk for Academic Difficulty
• Chapter 5 Three Conceptual Perspectives on the Connections Between Reading and Writing Processes
• Chapter 6 A Triarchic Model For Teaching Intellectual Skills
• Chapter 7 A Developmental Approach to the Design of Remedial Instruction
• Chapter 8 A Theory, By Any Educational Perspective, Is Still a Theory
• Author Index
• Subject Index