LRSC 500: Cognition, Instruction, Design of Learning Environments Learning and Transfer

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LRSC 500 Cognition, Instruction, Design of
Learning EnvironmentsLearning and Transfer
Part 1

• September 22, 2008

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Overview of Class

• Discuss expert interviews
• Big Ideas in Sociocultural Perspective
• Historical roots in psychology, sociology,
  anthropology, philosophy of meaning,
  communication
• Relationships to activity theory, discourse, and
  identity
• Orientation to Learning and Transfer
• Overview from Course Website noted six important
  ideas and
• Several issues and questions.
• The four centers and implications of work on
  learning and transfer for the design of
  environments.
• Focus this class mostly on the learning theory
  (associative, cognitive, situative) perspectives
  with some attention to social aspects
• Implications for design of learning environments
• Will spend last part of todays class exploring
  an environment

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Sociocultural Perspective Big Ideas

• Looks at learning as it occurs in a larger
  interpersonal system characterized by physical,
  social, and cultural properties.
• Learning and development are located in the
  interactions of individuals with the physical,
  social, and cultural worlds.
• Learning takes place in an interpersonal system
  in which people have identities, engage in
  activity, and use language for thinking and
  communicating.

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Historical Roots Perspectives in Psych

• Behaviorist the stimulus in the environment. No
  attention to the individual
• Cognitive How the individual operates on the
  environment.
• What does it attend to, process, store, etc.
• What strategies does the individual use?
• Ecological Psychology
• Looks at the systems within which an individual
  is located. Example from Bronfenbrenners work
• Russian Psychology
• Learning is mediated by cultural means,
  artifacts, and signs
• Community Psychology
• Looks at people within their social worlds

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Russian Psychology

• Originated in Lev Vygotskys work.
• Contemporary of Pavlov
• Vygotsky emphasized that learning was not simply
  coming to associate stimulus with response.
• Learning was mediated through cultural means,
  artifacts, and signs
• Cultural means includes people, language
  (discourse)
• Gave rise to Activity or
• Activity Systems Theory
• Contemporary view Engeström

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Activity TheoryCultural Historical Activity
Theory
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Engeströms Current View of Activity System
Downloaded 9/18/2006 from http//www.edu.helsinki.
fi/activity/pages/chatanddwr/chat/
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Bronfenbrenners Ecological Systems Approach
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Historical Roots Other Disciplines

• Sociology
• Emphasizes behavior of groups and interplay
  between the group and the individual
• Anthropology
• Emphasis on culture of communities and the ways
  of thinking and learning embodied in the culture
• Laves (1990) piece Views of the Classroom argues
  for expanding beyond the cognitive view to the
  social context of the classroom.
• Communication
• Emphasis on sending, receiving, interpreting
  messages. What is intended? What is understood?
• Discourse - a cultural tool. Obviously key in
  communication. Spans disciplines.

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Community Psychology

• McMillan (1976) McMillan and Chavis (1986)
• Four elements to community
• Membership
• Influence
• Integration and fulfillment of needs
• Shared emotional connection
• Sense of community is a feeling that members
  have of belonging, a feeling that members matter
  to one another and to the group, and a shared
  faith that members needs will be met through
  their commitment to be together.
• Gee discusses Discourse Communities
• You have to have the discourse to achieve sense
  of community.

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Cognitive and Sociocultural Summary of Basic
Contrasts

• Roots of sociocultural perspective lie within
  psychology but connect with foci of other
  disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology,
  semiotics (linguistics/philosophy of meaning))
• At its simplest the distinction between a basic
  cognitive approach and a sociocultural one is
  between in the head versus the head in the
  social, cultural, historical context.
• Focus on the learner versus focus on the broader
  social, cultural, and situational circumstances
• How do Cognitive and Sociocultural relate to four
  centers of hpl framework?

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Learning by Doing

• Affordances what are they?
• Small group activity
• Solve a mathematics problem

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Solve the Following Math Problemand Explain Your
Answer
105 - 79
Does the layout matter? How? Are there different
relations that you notice?
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A Second Math Problem to Solve and Explain Your
Answer
102 ?
32 x 15 ?
But this time I am going to give you a tool.
Units, tens and hundreds blocks.
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What does this diagram show?
v15sec
15 sec
v10sec
10 sec
v5sec
5 sec
v0sec
0 sec
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Affordances in Technology-Based Learning
Environments

• Quest Atlantis
• My World
• SimCalc
• ThinkerTools
• Inquiry Island

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Overview Important Observations

• 1. Transfer is difficult to observe in laboratory
  or controlled experimental circumstances yet we
  can all come up with many everyday examples of
  people using what they already know to reason
  about new situations.
• 2. Differences between everyday sense of transfer
  and researchers definitions of transfer.
• 3. There are many perspectives on transfer and on
  the relationship between learning and transfer.
• 4. Motivation, affect, identity influence
  learning and transfer as do social processes such
  as expectancies. Identity includes concept of
  self-as-learner. What influence do these
  phenomena have on learning and transfer? Do they
  change just the likelihood of it occurring or do
  they change the way it occurs?
• 5. Scaffolding and feedback on performance are
  critical elements of the learning process.
• 6. Some individuals demonstrate expert learning
  in informal settings (e.g., playgrounds, museums,
  street corner games) yet show little evidence of
  using this knowledge in formal school
  environments. Likewise, what is learned in school
  is often not used outside of school. How can we
  understand this phenomenon? What are the
  alternative views of learning and transfer and
  what position do they take on this apparent
  "lack" of transfer?

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Learning and Transfer A Generation Activity

• How are learning and transfer related?
• How are adaptive knowledge and flexibility
  related to learning and transfer?
• If learning is situated - rooted in context -
  what transfers and how does it occur?
• Why is motivation seen as playing a powerful role
  in learning and transfer?
• Your Challenge as indicated on the plan for
  today (20 min.)
• Use the readings for today to generate ideas on
  these questions.
• Refer to articles to support your ideas.
• Use the articles to pull out these ideas.
• Look at what you pulled out and compare with key
  points that we pulled out.
• Material in the powerpoint that will synthesize
  and summarize.

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Views of Learning and Transfer - 1

• Associationist Key to transfer is the presence
  of shared elements.
• Cognitive Key to transfer is the ability to
  match the relationship from previous learning to
  new concepts.
• Recap of important ideas from Cognitive
  perspective
• Situative Key is becoming attuned to features
  of the environment that support particular
  activities. Invariant features - meaning the
  relation for example between depth and
  displacement of water. (a principle)
• Improved participation in interactive system.
  Learning the affordances that are important to
  notice in a system. (Greeno, et al.1993)
• (Summarized in Dennis and Sternberg)

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Recap Learning Transfer Highlights from
Cognitive Perspective

• Features of learning affecting transfer
• Amount kind of initial learning
• Learning with understanding vs. procedural
  learning
• Well-learned or learned sufficiently to promote
  use?
• Motivation time - Sufficient practice over
  extended period of time
• Opportunities to use knowledge
• Feedback and awareness of learning processes
• Role of feedback and form of feedback
• Metacognitive monitoring
• Contexts for learning
• Multiple contexts (Help people see what
  principles are general)
• Contrasting cases (Make salient critical elements
  that are similar or different)
• Abstract representations
• Common elements

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Cognitive/Associationist Views of Learning and
Transfer

• Features of learning affecting transfer
• Amount kind of initial learning
• Learning with understanding vs. procedural
  learning -gt
• Sufficient practice over extended period of time
• Opportunities to use knowledge
• Role of feedback and form of feedback
• Metacognitive monitoring

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Procedures and Understanding Solve and Share

• A Caterer has four sheet cakes to bring to a
  party. Based on the number of guests, she decides
  to make the portions three-fifths of a cake. How
  many portions will this produce?
• Solve
• Consider following questions

What kind of problem is this? What procedure
works? Why does the procedure work? What other
way can you get the answer and explain it?
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Learning with Understanding versus Procedural
Learning

• Learning with understanding supports transfer
• More than just learning procedures
• Organized around principles in the domain
• Specific as well as abstract (representations
  become schematized over opportunities to notice
  important features of the learning situation)
• Tension between specific, situated learning and
  generalized or abstract learning that is not
  connected to prior knowledge and beliefs.
• Whats the process of transfer?

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Whats the Process of Transfer?

• Whats the process?
• Transfer-through-abstraction versus
• Transfer based on overlapping and more concrete
  features
• Concrete features become more idealized with
  multiple instances that systematically fade to
  the more stylized. Goldstone and Son (2005)
• Knowledge supporting transfer must somehow
  account for (rather than overlook) contextual
  differences across otherwise similar activities.
  (Wagner, 2006) Knowledge-in-pieces - increasingly
  come to be able to use the knowledge across a
  broader set of circumstances.
• Alternative View of Transfer Preparation for
  Future Learning.

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Transfer as Preparation for Future Learning

• A cognitive view that takes context into account
  to a degree.
• Bransford Schwartz, 1999 Schwartz Martin
  (2004) - read for next time.
• Basic idea Prior knowledge is used in every
  learning situation. This is a form of
  transferring in what you already know. What
  researchers typically look at is transfer out -
  what can be applied to a new problem solving
  task.
• Schwartz argues for a reconceptualization of
  transfer out as readiness to benefit from
  learning experience/event/ environment.
• The issue of transfer should be reconceptualized
  to look at how prior learning experiences get
  people ready to benefit from the next learning
  opportunity.
• What do learners bring to the next task from
  prior tasks?
• Represented in diagram (page 147 of Schwartz
  Martin, 2004 - reading for next class).

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Schwartz Martin (2004) Fig. 4
Transfer in helps people learn
Transfer out helps people apply what they learned
PFL can be interpreted as looking at different
affordances of learning treatments A and B for
subsequent learning and application.
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Views of Learning and Transfer - 2

• Situative
• Learner becomes attuned to or sensitive to the
  invariant features of the environment that
  support certain activities (Greeno, Smith,
  Moore, 1993)
• engaging an intentionally bound system such that
  particular goals can be accomplished (Barab
  Roth (2006), pg. 9)
• Transfer can occur when individuals begin to see
  different contexts as having similar underlying
  affordance structures - even in the context of
  differing contextual particulars. (Barab Roth
  (2006), pg. 11)
• Barab Roth provide something of a bridge
  between situative and sociocultural, as youll
  see next week.
• Given these various views on transfer, lets
  consider the teaching challenge.

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The Teaching Challenge

• How are adaptive knowledge and flexibility
  related to learning and transfer?
• An example from teacher education
• What are the conditions of learning that support
  adaptive and flexible knowledge?
• What are the conditions of instruction that
  support adaptive and flexible knowledge?

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Learning to Teach

• Students required to take courses in content,
  content pedagogy, development relevant to the
  grade level(s) they will be teaching
• Students placed in classrooms throughout
  preservice education so they can
• Observe teachers teaching and students learning
• Lesson planning, scope and sequence
• Create a vision of what they would like their
  classrooms to look like
• Students have an actual teaching experience
  (student teaching) prior to certification
• One semester, single placement (specific grade
  level, specific school)
• Model how to teach in the classroom placement
• Provide feedback on students lesson plan for a
  to-be-observed lesson
• Include opportunities for student to be observed
  and receive feedback on observations during the
  student teacher experience
• Model how to complete attendance sheets and other
  administrative forms, administration of required
  assessments, parent conferences
• How to establish classroom management norms

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Learning to Teach What to add and why?Comments
from class
Need a mentor during first years of teaching.
Any practice youve done that is close to the
classroom will help. In preservice you do
complete, bloated lesson plans but when you
actually have to teach, having done the extensive
ones you know what you need from them and
streamline them. What would a mentor teacher do,
say, provide? How would that help? Mentor would
affirm adaptations you make can also watch how
you do classroom management - and give you
feedback can give you context specific training
in that school. Mentor can tell you how our
school works knowledge of the learner and the
community. How do you know that someone is
learning how to teach in preservice coursework?
Hard to know until you are actually in the
performance. You cant prepare for everything
isnt that the purpose of student teaching? But
your own classroom is different -- autonomy
still following rules put in place by the
teacher. Suppose you did have autonomy - would we
be better able to determine how well people had
learned to teach? Somewhat. Why do we have
classes if you learn how to teach in your first
year? Is a semester sufficient time to learn all
these things? Is going from student teaching to
your first year of teaching a case of transfer?
Vertical transfer - building on prior
experiences attempting to apply theory you are
given. Not necessarily something you can apply.
What other supports for learning to teach might
there be? Peer interaction and evaluation of
teaching practices. Community within methods
course. I suggested what would happen if you had
a lot of video cases to look at, analyze,
critique. Making what the teacher is doing
visible to the teacher candidate.
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Design of Learning Environments to Support
Learning and Transfer

• Exploration of an inquiry environment for science
• WISE http//www.wise.berkeley.edu
• How is it designed?
• What kind of learning does it support and how
  does it support it?
• What will users learn that will transfer?
• Specific Project to explore Design an energy
  efficient house for the desert.
• Share with us your ideas on the questions.
• How does WISE deal with the 4 HPL centers
  (knowledge, learner, assessment, community)