How People Learn - Chapters 1 & 2

Chapter 1 Summary:

 The study of psychology in learning is so important to understanding how people learn.  The field of cognitive science is imperative to our learning and understanding of human development and, further, understanding of how different types of people best learn and understand.  Without knowing how our complex brain processes knowledge, we cannot fully understand and facilitate learning. 

Many curricula currently emphasize memory over true understanding.  It often asks students to recite facts instead of understanding why the fact is important or relevant.  Research shows, however, that being knowledgeable is more than knowing facts, and that those who are knowledgeable are more likely to be good problem solvers.  Thus, it is important to recognize that learners come to their learning environment with prior knowledge.  Even infants different in the amount of prior knowledge they bring to each new experience (for example whether or not their parents read or talk to them frequently).  By the time a child goes to school, then, there are varying levels of prior knowledge students bring to the table.  Some of this prior knowledge might even be wrong (e.g. that the world is flat).  Therefore, it is important for teachers to allow students to both construct their own knowledge and take control of their own learning, but also recognize that sometimes they will need to "teach by telling," particularly when students bring incorrect prior knowledge to the classroom.  Teachers need to see and allow students to become invested in their own work, integrating real world skills with facts and deep analysis of knowledge (as did teacher C).

Research of Key Findings:

1) Students come to school with preconceptions, if their initial understanding isn't engaged, they may fail to grasp concepts and may learn for a test without really understanding the material: students have different levels of (correct and not correct) understanding.

2) To develop competence students must have a deep understanding of facts, understand the facts in a conceptual framework and organize the knowledge to facilitate retrieval and application: they need to be able to see patterns, generate arguments and explanations etc., experts have not necessarily better memory but better ways to think about info.  For example, it is easier for students to understand a map when they have traveled to the place the map describes. 

3) A metacogntive approach to instruction can help students take control of their learning by defining goals and monitoring own progress: children should learn this, incorporated with their other learning

Key Findings Implications for Teaching

1) Teachers should draw out and work with the preexisting understanding's of their students: students aren't empty when they come to school - teachers should learn their how their students think.  Roles of assessment must be expanded beyond testing into formative assessments where students, their peers and teachers can all see progress.  Schools of education must allow beginning teachers to learn this and to recognize predictable preconceptions of students, and draw out preconceptions and work with them.  

2) Teachers must teach some subject matter in depth providing examples of concepts and a firm foundation of factual knowledge:  Teachers should teach in depth knowledge of fewer subjects instead of broad coverage of many topics.  Teachers must have in depth knowledge themselves and they must know how their students are thinking and learning.  Assessment must go beyond accountability - assessments must test deep understanding rather than facts.  Here, depth can be looked at as objectivity but teachers need to find the balance.  

3)  Teaching of metacongitive skills should be integrated into the curriculum: this can enhance student achievement.  

Teaching strategies: inquiry based, text based, lecture based, tech enhanced, teaching organized around individuals rather than cooperative -- asking which is best is not good/  Teachers should focus on the task at hand PLUS the available materials. There is no universal best practice; variety based on subject is good.  

The implications this has for designing classroom environments is large. 

1) Classrooms should be learner centered: it should focus on the knowledge skills and attitudes their learners bring, cultural differences, what it means to be intelligent.  Teachers in a learner-centered classroom pay more attention to their students' individual progress and devise appropriate tasks.

2) To provide a knowledge centered classroom environment, attention must be given to what is taught, why and what the competence looks like: harder than rote learning, must look beyond engagement.  

3) Formative, ongoing assessments are essential, help teachers to understand where their students are in the learning process: students should be able to revise their work and see their own progress. 

4) Learning is influenced by the context in which it takes place - community centered approach requires development of norms for classroom as well as connections to the outside world: this approach helps students care about and solve problems with each other, create a community of learning.

Interestingly enough, these techniques are often not applied to adult learning: teacher professional development is often not learner or knowledge centered, not assessment centered, and not community centered.

My Reflections:

My experiences facilitating creative writing and theater in a Detroit High School really brought this out for me.  Some of the students came to the workshop with very intense experiences and all brought unique points of view.  My co-facilitator and I worked within what the students already knew about writing and "poetry" and let them think independently about the best way for them to learn and experience our version of creative writing.  Through building trust and building off what the students knew, the workshop was successful.

Based on what I have seen from other library workshops, a little effort is placed on prior knowledge (don't sign up for something you already know) and the instructors often ask what people do already know and want to learn.  Because these are often one-time things, the instructors mostly teach off a script, but sometimes divert when necessary.  It seems different techniques should be used for semester-long and year-long learning vs. one-time workshops.  

Chapter 2 Summary:

Experts can think effectively about different problems.  To be an expert is not just to have higher levels of memory or intelligence, but to have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what is noticed and how information is organized and interpreted.  Experts notice features and patterns not noticed by novices; have acquired organized content that reflects deep understanding; their knowledge is conditionalized; they can retrieve aspects of their knowledge with little effort; know their disciplines thoroughly; and they can approach new situations in a variety of ways.

Patterns:  experts can see meaningful information (not just all of it), can chunk together that information and organize it.  

Organization of knowledge: knowledge is organized around big ideas, and how those apply to specific situations.  Experts look at the whole picture and think about the best approach to the problem solving.  Novices focus on specific properties and formulas instead of why and how those exist in the larger picture. Curricula should be organized in ways that lead to conceptual understanding.

Context and access to knowledge: experts can retrieve relevant knowledge.  Students should learn how to do this.  

Fluent retrieval:  people should learn to recognize problem types in particular domains so that appropriate solutions can easily be retrieved.  

Experts and teaching: sometimes experts aren't good at teaching because they forget that students do not know everything they know (i.e. what is difficult and easy for students). 

Adaptive expertise: educators need to think about whether one way of organizing information is better than another way in order for people to be flexible to new situations.  Metacognition is an important part of this. 

My Reflections:

The last tech class that I attended was focused toward novices.  The class was focused on Dreamweaver, a web page-making software, and was part of the University Library tech workshops.  The students had individually signed up for the class, and were coming to the class having different levels of prior knowledge.  But, since the course was about the basics of Dreamweaver, the instructors basically taught just that.  It was a class for novices, designed for novices and worked for novices.  The library has carefully designed their workshops for this purpose.  

However, the classes and professors I've always liked best (outside of one-time workshops) truly do focus on prior knowledge and what each person in the room brings from their own experiences and levels of learning.  They focus on deep knowledge and understanding of topics, and have helped me think about how what I'm learning will affect the big picture.  This class, for example, focuses on how learning and professional practices will be important in my everyday career.  I am not planning to be a teacher, where that might all seem obvious, but I am planning to work with people, and what I know about professional practices and how people learn will affect what I do with people everyday.  I will consider prior knowledge, learner centered education, and what I know about experts and novices when I am assisting someone with software, at the reference desk or in an instructional setting.  For instance, if I am at the reference desk of a library, and a student asks a question, I will first ask about their prior knowledge (and determine if they are an expert of novice) and also consider how they can best learn how to find the answer on their own (by showing them how to use the different resources available to them).