Cognitive Acceleration

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Cognitive Acceleration

• Can teachers actually improve the thinking
  skills of young children?

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An elderly woman sucking eggs
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SUMMARY REPORT ON PHASE 2 OF THE
COGNITIVEACCELERATION RESEARCHKing's College,
University of London

• Results
• The overall effect size for each of the 12
  (actually 10) schools is given in Table 1 and,
  for
• illustrative purposes (due to space limitations),
  the mean scores for individual classes in the
  four
• schools which also provided the control sample
  are given i Table 2.
• 1 Note that this method of data-analysis rests on
  the assumption that on average the Y7 intakes for
  successive years in the
• same school will have the same mean and range.
  Although this is not 100 true, with four schools
  variation would be
• expected to cancel out, so that the expected
  systematic error is minimal, at the expense of
  some random 'noise' being
• added to the data.
• From Informal Proceedings 17-3 (BSRLM) available
  at bsrlm.org.uk

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THE 5 PILLARS OF COGNITIVE ACCELERATION

• Concrete Preparation - Setting the scene
• Cognitive Conflict - Providing a challenging
  activity
• Social Construction - Group problem solving
• Metacognition - the conscious reflection by a
  person on her or his own thinking processes,
  often after she or he has worked through a given
  problem. In other words - thinking about
  thinking.
• Bridging - Linking thinking to other situations

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• A 15 minute experience of
• Cognitive Acceleration

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Form a thinking group - 5/6 people -

• Sit close enough together to almost touch knees
• Find out your group members favourite sports
  personality and their favourite ball game

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• Ask each person for their experience of learning
  physics at school

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• A table,
• An impulse
• A rubber ball,
• A direction.

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• On your own, draw the path that you think the
  ball will take when bounced under the table.
• In your Thinking Group, share your ideas and
  decide on the one the group thinks will be
  nearest to the correct answer.
• Be ready to draw the final answer on the last
  sheet in 5 minutes.

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Metacognition Script

• In order to get the answer
• At first I thought that
• Then I realised that
• It helped when
• Being in a group meant

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Bridging Script

• If we had to do this again we would
• Other problems like this are
• I could use this way of solving a problem in