Educational psychology and technology: A matter of reciprocal relations PDF

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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 influ- ences. Technology serves instruction and at the same time opens up novel opportu- ...

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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 Teachers 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? O...