Educational psychology_ CH9 Complex cognitive processes PDF

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COMPLEX COGNITIVEPROCESSESMETACOGNITION Executive control processes Attention Rehearsal Organization Imagery Elaboration  Executive control processes are sometimes a called metacognitive skills because they can be intentionally used to regulate cognitionMETACOGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND REGULATION  Kno...

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EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES METACOGNITION  Executive control processes Attention Rehearsal Organization Imagery Elaboration  Executive control processes are sometimes a called metacognitive skills because they can be intentionally used to regulate cognition METACOGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND REGULATION  Knowledge or awareness of self as knower  Cognition about cognition  Thinking about thinking  Metacognition – higher order knowledge about one’s own thinking as well as the ability to use that knowledge to manage one’s own cognitive processes such as comprehension and problem solving  Involves three kinds of knowledge Declarative knowledge – knowing what Procedural knowledge – knowing how Self-regulatory knowledge – knowing the conditions, when and why to apply strategies  Three essential skills Planning – deciding how much time to give a task, which strategies to use, how to start, which resources to gather etc. Monitoring – real-time awareness of how one is doing and if the actions being done makes sense relative to the objective Evaluating – making judgements about the processes and outcomes of thinking and learning  Metacognition is most useful when tasks are challenging, but not too difficult INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN METACOGNITION  People differ in how well and how easily they use metacognitive strategies. Some differences in metacognitive abilities are the result of development Metacognitive abilities start to develop around ages 5 to 7 and improve throughout school  Not all differences in metacognitive abilities have to do with age or maturation

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Some individual differences in metacognitive abilities are probably caused by differences in biology or learning experiences DEVELOPING METACOGNITION  Like any knowledge or skill, metacognitive knowledge and skills can be learned and improved Metacognitive development for younger students • Focus on metacognitive knowledge and skills that help students develop the habit of looking in at their own thinking Setting goals Planning Evaluating achievements Self-reflection • It is advisable to include self-reflections to help students evaluate their writing and gain insight into themselves as readers and writers • Asking students two specific questions can help students become more metacognitive What did you learn about yourself as a reader/writer today? What did you learn that you can do again and again and again? • KWL – a strategy used to guide reading and inquiry in general which is a framework that can be used with most grade levels. It encourages students to look within and identify what they bring to each learning situation, where they want to go, and what they actually achieved K – what do I already Know? W – what do I Want to know? L – what have I Learned? Metacognitive development for secondary and college students • For older students, teachers can incorporate metacognitive questions into their lessons, lectures and assignments LEARNING STRATEGIES  Years of research indicate that using good learning strategies helps students learn and that these strategies can be taught  Powerful and sophisticated learning strategies and study skills are seldom taught directly until high school or even college  The way something is learned greatly influences how readily we remember the information and how appropriately we can apply the knowledge later. In order to do this, students need to: Be cognitively engaged Focus attention

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Invest effort Process information deeply Regulate and monitor learning Be metacognitive BEING STRATEGIC ABOUT LEARNING  Learning strategies – a special kind of procedural knowledge. Learning strategies can be Cognitive (summarizing and identifying the main idea) Metacognitive (monitoring comprehension) Behavioral (using an internet dictionary, setting a timer to work until time is up)  One may become more automatic in applying these strategies. It will eventually become one’s usual way of accomplishing that kind of task, until it does not work anymore and you need a new set of strategies  Using learning strategies and study skills is related to higher GPA in high school and persistence in college  Principles to take note of: Students must be exposed to a number of different strategies Students need to be taught selfregulatory knowledge about the conditions appropriate to use strategies Students must develop the desire to employ these skills Students need to believe that they can learn new strategies and that their efforts will pay off Students need some background knowledge and useful schemas in the area being studied Deciding what is important • Learning beings with focusing attention • Finding the central idea is especially difficult if you lack prior knowledge in an area and if the amount of new information provided is extensive • Teachers can give students practice using signals in texts such as using bold words, OUTLINES, and other indicators to identify key concepts and main ideas Summaries • Creating summaries can help students learn, but students have to be taught how to summarize • Suggestions in creating summaries: Find or create a topic sentence for each paragraph or section

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Identify big ideas that cover several specific points Find some supporting information for each big idea Delete any redundant information or unnecessary details Underlining and highlighting • Underlining and note taking are probably two of the most ineffectively used strategies among college students • One common problem is that students tend to highlight or underline too much • It is far better to be selective Taking notes • Taking notes focuses attention during class • Taking organized notes makes you construct meaning from what you are hearing, seeing, or reading, so you elaborate, translate into your own words, and remember • Notes provide extended external storage that allows you to return and review • Expert students match notes to their anticipated use and modify strategies after tests or assignments • Middle school and high school students with learning disabilities who used strategic note taking form recalled and understood significantly more key ideas from science lectures than students in control groups who used conventional note taking methods VISUAL TOOLS FOR ORGANIZING  Concept maps – graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge and relationships within a particular field or on a given topic  in comparison with activities such as reading text passages, attending lectures, and participating in class discussions, concept mapping activities are more effective for attaining knowledge retention and transfer  Venn diagrams – show how ideas or concepts overlap  Tree diagrams – show how ideas branch off each other  Time lines – organize information in sequence and are useful in classes such as history or geology READING STRATEGIES  Effective learning strategies should help students focus attention, invest effort, so they process information deeply, and monitor their understanding.

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Many strategies use mnemonics to help students remember steps involved Following the steps make students more aware if the organization of a given chapter These steps require students to study the chapter in sections instead of trying to learn all the information at once. This makes use of distributed practice Aspects necessary for students with learning challenges and students whose first language is not English - Direct teaching - Explanation - Modeling - Practice with feedback

APPLYING LEARNING STRATEGIES  Production deficiencies – students learn strategies but do not apply them when they could or should. Executive control processes are underdeveloped Appropriate tasks • The learning task must be appropriate Valuing learning • Students must care about learning and understanding. They must have goals that can be reached using effective strategies Effort and efficacy • Students must believe the effort and investment required to apply the strategies reasonable, given the likely return • Students must believe they are capable of using strategies; they must have self-efficacy for using the strategies to learn the material in question LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR STRUGGLING STUDENTS  Reading is key in all learning. Strategy instruction can help many struggling readers  LINCS vocabulary strategy – uses stories and imagery to help students learn how to identify, organize, define, and remember words, which increases their ownership of their learning L – list the parts I – identify a reminding word N – note a linking story C – create a linking picture S – self-test  It is possible that reading strategy instruction is most effective in elementary and early middle school when students are learning how to learn through reading

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PROBLEM SOLVING  Problem – has an initial state, a goal, and a path for reaching the goal Problems can range from well-structured to ill structured depending on how clearcut the goals are and how much structure is provided for solving them  Problem solving – usually defined as formulating new answers, going beyond the simple application of previously learned rules to achieve a goal. It is what happens when no solution is obvious PISA – programme for international student assessment, a comprehensive worldwide assessment of reading, mathematics, and science for 15-yearolds General problem solving usually include - Identifying the problem - Setting goals - Exploring possible solutions and consequences - Acting - Evaluating outcome  People appear to move between general and specific approaches depending on the situation and their level of expertise  As we gain more domain-specific knowledge, we consciously apply the general strategies less and less; our problem solving becomes more automatic  But if we encounter a problem outside our current knowledge, we may return to relying on general strategies to attack the problem PROBLEM FINDING  Problem identification is not always straightforward  Even though problem identification is a critical first step, research indicates that people often leap to naming the first problem that comes to mind  Finding a solvable problem and turning it into an opportunity is the process behind many successful inventions DEFINING GOALS AND REPORTING THE PROBLEM  To present the problem, you have to Focus attention on what is relevant. Representing the problem often requires finding the relevant information and ignoring irrelevant details Understanding the words. Understanding the meaning of the words, sentences, and factual information in the problem. Problem solving requires comprehension

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the language and relations in the problem Understanding the whole problem. Assemble all the relevant information and sentences into an accurate understanding or translation of the total problem, Translation – refers to the interpretation of the problem because the individual translates the problem into a schema that he/she understands Students can be too quick to decide what a problem is asking. Once a problem is categorized, a particular schema is activated. The particular schema directs attention to relevant information and sets up expectations for what the right answer should look like Focusing on the surface gets in the way of forming a conceptual understanding of the whole problem and using the right schema When students use the wrong schema, they overlook critical information, use irrelevant information, and may even misread or misremember critical information so that it fits the schema

Translation and schema training: Direct instruction in schemas • It mathematics and physics, it appears that in the early stages of learning, students benefit from seeing many different kinds of example problems worked out correctly for them • Students with advanced knowledge improve when they solve new problems, not when they focus on already worked-out examples Expert reversal effect – the tendency of an example to work for experts, but is the reverse for beginners Translation and schema training: worked examples • Worked examples reflect all the stages of problem solving • Worked examples are useful in many subject areas • Cognitive load theory – when students lack specific knowledge in domains, they try to solve problems using general strategies such as looking for keywords or applying rote procedures • Worked examples chunk some of the steps, provide cues and feedback, focus attention on relevant information, and make fewer demands on memory so the students can use

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cognitive resources to understand instead of searching randomly for solutions Students need to pay attention, process deeply, and connect with that you already know; students should explain examples to themselves Another way to use worked examples is to have students compare examples that reach a right answer but are worked out in different ways Worked examples can serve as analogies or models for solving new problems It is the meaning or structure that helps in solving new, analogous problems How to develop schemas needed to represent problems in a particular subject area: Recognizing and categorizing a variety of problem types Representing problems either concretely or in words Selecting relevant information in problems

Results of problem representation • Schema driven problem solving – recognizing the problem as a disguised version of an old problem that you already know how to solve SEARCHING FOR POSSIBLE SOLUTION STRATEGIES  Algorithm – a step by step prescription for achieving a goal, and is usually domain specific.  Heuristic – general strategy that might lead to the right answer.  Means ends analysis – the problem is divided into a number of intermediate goals or subgoals, and then a means of solving each intermediate subgoal is figured out  Working backward strategy – begin at the goal and move back to the unsolved initial problem  Analogical thinking – a heuristic which limits your search for solutions to situations that have something in common with the one you currently face  Verbalization – putting your problem-solving plan into words and giving reasons for selecting it can lead to successful problem solving ANTICIPATING, ACTING, AND LOOKING BACK  After representing the problem and exploring possible solutions, the next step is to select a solution and anticipate the consequences

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After choosing a solution strategy and implementing it, evaluate the results by checking for evidence that confirms or contradicts your solution

FACTORS THAT HINDER PROBLEM SOLVING  Functional fixedness – people may miss out on a good solution because they fixate on conventional uses for materials  Response set – getting stuck in one way of representing a problem Some problems with heuristics • We often apply heuristics automatically to make quick judgements. • Making judgements by invoking stereotypes leads even smart people to make dumb decisions • Representativeness heuristics – making judgements about possibilities based on our prototypes • Availability heuristic – when judgements are based on the availability of information in our memories • Belief perseverance – the tendency to hold on to our beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence • Confirmation bias – the tendency to search for information that confirms our ideas and beliefs • Our automatic use of heuristics to make judgements, our eagerness to confirm what we like to believe, and our tendency to explain away failure combine to generate overconfidence EXPERT KNOWLEDGE AND PROBLEM SOLVING  Most psychologists agree that effective problem solving is based on having an ample store of knowledge about the problem area  Knowing what is important. Experts know where to focus their attention. Experts know what to pay attention to when judging a performance or product  Memory for patterns and organization. The modern study of expertise began with investigations of chess masters. Results indicated that masters can quickly recognize about 50000 different arrangements of chess pieces the master’s memory is for patterns that make sense or could occur in a game  Procedural knowledge. Experts know what to do next and an do it. They have a large store of productions or if-then schemas about what action to take in various situations

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A large part of becoming an expert is simply acquiring the great store of domain knowledge. Planning and monitoring. Experts spend more time analyzing problems, drawing diagrams, breaking large problems down into subproblems, and making plans

CREATIVITY  Creativity – is the ability to produce work that is original but stull appropriate and useful  In order to be creative, the invention must be intended ASSESSSING CREATIVITY  Paul Torrance – known as the Father of creativity who got interested in educational psychology and developed two types of creativity tests Verbal Graphic  Divergent thinking – ability to propose many different ideas or answers. Below are the aspects of divergent thinking Originality Fluency Flexibility  Convergent thinking – the more common ability to identify only one answer  Possible indicators of creativity Curiosity Adaptability High energy Humor Independence Playfulness Nonconformity Risk-taking Inventiveness Intolerance of boredom WHY DOES CREATIVITT MATTER?  Today’s and tomorrow’s complex problems will require creative solutions  Creativity is important for an individual’s psychological, physical, social, and career success  Creativity and critical thinking are needed to prevent people or societies from being trapped by ideology and dogma  Creativity supports intrinsic motivation, engagement, and persistence in learning because creativity generates novelty and sparks interest SOURCES OF CREATIVITY

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Domain-relevant skills – talents and competencies that are available for working in the domain Creativity-relevant skills – work habits and personality traits Intrinsic task motivation – deep curiosity and fascination with the task

Creativity and cognition • Restructuring the problem leads to sudden insight • Incubation – a kind of unconscious working through the problem • Leaving the problem for a time probably interrupts rigid ways of thinking so you can restructure your view of the situation and think more divergently Creativity and diversity • Patterns of creativity in groups are complex— sometimes matching and sometimes diverging from patterns found in traditional research • Being on the mainstream society, being bilingual, or being exposed to other cultures might encourage creativity

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continue to perform perfectly—without ever creating something new CRITICAL THINKING AND ARGUMENTATION  Critical thinking – the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning or communication as a guide to belief and action  One way to develop students’ thinking is to create a culture of thinking in classrooms where there is a spirit of inquisitiveness and critical thinking, a respect for reasoning and creativity, and an expectation that students will learn to make and counter arguments based on evidence PAUL AND ELDER’S MODEL OF CRITICAL THINKING  The center of critical thinking is reasoning  Critical thinkers routinely apply intellectual standards to the elements of reasoning to develop intellectual traits

CREATIVITY IN THE CLASSROOM  Teachers are in an excellent position to encourage or discourage creativity through their acceptance or rejection of the unusual and imaginative  Brainstorming – separate the process of creating ideas from the process of evaluating them because evaluation often inhibits creativity No criticism until all the ideas are out Go for as many ideas as you can Feel free to modify other idea...