Active Learning 1

ACTIVE LEARNING AND CHILDREN’S COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT

MUHAMMAD FARIS SYAHMI BIN HASBULLAH 084612

MUHAMAD SYAZWAN BIN ALIAS 084595
ANAS BIN AB. RAZAK 075520
MUHAMMAD HAFIZUL KHAIR BIN MOHD YUSUF 084405
MOHAMMAD HASNOL HAZIM BIN HARUN 071259

GHM 2113, BASIC RESEARCH METHODS AND REPORT WRITING

MDM. NOORDALELA BINTI BAHARUDIN
SEMESTER 1, 2009/2010

CONTENTS
 Active Learning 2

Acknowledgement 3

Background Study 4

Statement of the Problem 4

Objective of the Study 5

Research Questions 6

Significance of the Study 6

Operational Definition of Terms 7

Literature Review 9

Methodology 15

Discussions 18

Data Analysis 21

Reference 22

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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We would like to express our deepest appreciation to our respective lecturer, Mdm.

Noordalela binti Baharudin, who has the attitude and the substance of a genius; she

continually gives us guidance and a piece of his brilliant minds for making this research

proposal possible to be done and an excitement in regard to teaching. Without her guidance

and persistent help, this research proposal would not have been possible.

We would like to thank to our team mates especially Muhammad Faris Syahmi bin

Hasbullah, Muhammad Syazwan bin Alias, Anas bin Ab. Razak, Muhammad Hafizul Khair

bin Mohd Yusuf and Mohammad Hasnol Hazim bin Harun who are always give a

tremendous cooperation along the way to make this research proposal possible and always

giving their deepest concern and support with full of enthusiastic.

In addition, we would like to express our gratitude and greatest compliment to both of our

parents who are greatly assists us in making this assignment possible by their brilliant ideas,

in order to make this research proposal looks professional and in line with the academic

standards.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

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When students participate actively in the class, either to reflect, to encounter or to discuss it is

considered part of active learning. Students are prompt to involve actively in the process of

learning itself tend to reflect more of his comprehension on what the students are learnt.

Students are simply doing rather than just hear the lesson from their teacher or in other

words, the practice of passive learning that always dominating in the class.

There is less attention has been devoted to the study of relationship between the effects of

active learning and children’s competencies in learning. Active learning is one of the

methodologies of learning that involves two ways communication between the teachers and

students, students tend to actively involved in the process of learning itself. Children’s

competencies in learning can be described as the abilities of students to cope and have

profound comprehension on what they are learning.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The children’s early development plays a very significant role for the development of a

human being as a whole. There are several major developments in human being; cognitive,

biological, emotional and behaviour. According to Salkind (2004), most of our behaviour is

determined by childhood experienced. For this context, early exposure of learning leads to

enhancement of children abilities of knowledge competencies. Thus, it gives impact to

children’s cognitive development.

However, most of us do not really get used or practically applying active learning in the

process of learning. Most of us just simply learn by using traditional way of learning; where

teacher is teaching and students just hear without give any feedbacks to make the process of

learning runs smoothly and dynamically.

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There are still children ages 5 – 6 year old still cannot read and recognize words and numbers

accordingly. Kindergarten and preschool stage should provide children as to make them to

prepare before they entering secondary school. If children still cannot have the competencies

in learning, it might cause another problems when they entering secondary school. It would

necessarily effects on children’s cognitive development; how they perceive, how they could

understand the world around them and the abilities to reflect and applying what they have

learnt. They would fail to understand, lack of knowledge and less interest to study.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

1. To discover the concept of active learning and children’s cognitive development.

2. To determine how active learning could affects children’s cognitive development.

3. To analyze suitable module of active learning to be implemented on children’s

education system.

4. To measure the effectiveness of the implementation of active learning method affects

their on their cognitive development.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

There is numbers of research questions which need to be answered;

1. What is active learning?

2. How active learning could affects on children’s cognitive development?

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3. What is the suitable module of active learning to be implemented on children’s

education system?

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Children play a very big role in order to portray this world with various colors. Children

today are the leader who will decide a significant decision for tomorrow world. Therefore,

children will determine how they want to shape their own motherearth based on their

creativity in order to have a safe, condusive and peaceful world.

In order to cultivate the creativity of the children, it is depend on how the cognitive thinking

of the children being educated. In simplest words, well cognitive exposure will encourage the

children to make a precise and accurate decision. Therefore, by performing this research, it

would be beneficial to those who are involved directly or indirectly such as parents, teachers

and society members as well as educators to be awakened up and reminded the need to

change and improve the children cognitive in order to have a peaceful world in the future.

Study is the very basic thing but very crucial in human life.

Without a proper education, children who being expected to enlighten as a leader will be

spoil and become a useless and worthless that cannot contribute even a single minor

beneficial thing to community. The implication of the study will offer a great opportunity to

human being in order to understand the factors that contribute towards the development of
 Active Learning 7

children cognitive and how active learning is so important in order to grind children’s

cognitive development.

OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS

Active learning – Active learning mostly defines as the involvement and engaging students

to participate actively in the process of learning. It could be say that active learning is the

method of learning enhancing student ability and participation in the learning process itself

rather than being passive. It includes how students doing it practically instead of simply

acquire information verbally and visually (McKeachie, 1998). Active method means to

experience it by your own that is request us to make our own conceptualization on what we

are learning (Petty, 2004).

Recent studies shows that, most of the traditional style of learning in which lecturer/teacher

talks and students listen has been dominated in most educational institution since long days

ago. As the result of these consequences, we need to have empirical studies on nature of

learning more effectively that really gives tremendous impacts towards student’s achievement

in academic.

We need to analyze and discover thoroughly on what the barriers that hinder the effective of

learning, the interactional techniques and how active learning could be implemented to any

stage of learning process especially children’s early process of learning (Bonwell & Eison,
 Active Learning 8

2003). It does play a very significant role in children’s cognitive development. However,

most definition of active learning does include the participation of students that involves

effectively in the learning process yet does not mention specifically about the overcome of

active learning towards student’s cognitive development scientifically.

Children – A group of human being between the stages of birth and puberty. For the purpose

of this research, children are defines as a group of human being specifically range 5 to 6 year

old.

Cognitive development – It is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a

child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual

skill, and other topics in cognitive psychology. A large portion of research has gone into

understanding how a child conceptualizes the world. Jean Piaget, a psychologist, he is a

major force in the founding of this field, forming his ‘theory of cognitive development’.

Many of his claims have since fallen out of favor.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

Active learning contributes more than 70% of knowledge receive by learners (McKeachie,

1998). It is shows that, active learning plays significant role to students competency

especially in their studies. Active learning is simply involving and engaging students to

participate actively in the process of learning itself. The early children cognitive development

is highly influenced by direct stimulus and influence occur in their field of experience. The

children itself always defined as active learners because they are always keep on observing

and tend to imitate what others are doing (Hohmann & Weikart, 1995). In the present paper,

the effects of active learning on children’s cognitive development are investigated. It is

hypothesized that, active learning gives major impact on children’s cognitive development

than passive learning. This research would emphasize on the definition of active learning, the

concept of cognitive development, how active learning could enhance children’s cognitive

development and the relationship of practicing active learning and the outcomes of children’s

competency in their study.

Definition of Active Learning

The students are actively participating in the process of learning. It has been suggested that

students who actively engage with the material are more likely to recall information (Bruner

1961), but several well known authors have argued this claim is not well supported by the

literature (Anderson, Reder & Simon 1998) (Gagné 1966) (Mayer 2004) (Kirschner, Sweller

& Clark 2006). Rather than being behaviorally active during learning, Mayer (2004) suggests

learners should be cognitively active.

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Models of Active Learning

According to Fink (1999) who created a model of active learning, he emphasized that active

learning can be divided into four categories. Based on this model, all activities in active

learning involve with two kinds of dialogues, “dialogue with self” and “dialogue with others”

and two kinds of experiences, in which can be classified as “observing” and “doing”.

“Dialogue with self” can be easily defined as “thinking about my own thinking”. This is what

happens when a student gives some ideas to reflect to the topic. Write about what they are

learning, how they are learning and what role this knowledge or learning plays in their own

life are some activities that students did when they want to applied active learning that just

involves with “dialogue with self” perspective.

An active form of dialogue occurs when they create a small group discussion on a topic and

this activity fall under “dialogue with others” group. “Dialogue with others” can be simply

understood as some conversations that take place within two or more people that discuss and

give their own opinion about related topic. This interpersonal communication must imbue

with the spirit of inquiry and the communication itself must be very dynamic and cannot be

deviated from the topic.

Watching someone else do some activities that are related to what the student learnt earlier

can be a suit definition for “observing”. There are two types of “observing”, one is “direct”
 Active Learning 11

and the other one is “vicarious”. Direct observation means the student observe directly to the

real action and situation like to have further information about poverty, the student have to go

to low-income society and spend some time to observe what they are doing. In contrast,

vicarious observation is observing a simulating of the real action. For instant, the observer

who learn about the same topic might be go to watch a movie involving poor people or to

read stories written by or about them.

“Doing” refers to any learning activity where the student actually does something.

While McKeachie (1998) said that active learning is the best concept, which is “a student

teaching another student”. Active learning simply means that it is involving students directly

and actively in the learning process itself. Moreover, he said that we can remember 90% of

what we say and do (participating in a discussion, giving a talk) compare to 70% of what we

say only (doing a dramatic presentation, simulating the real experience, doing the real thing).

This means that instead of simply receiving information verbally and visually, students

should participate and doing something. Therefore, in simple term then, active learning is

engaging students in doing something besides listening to a lecture and taking notes to help

them learn and apply course material. Students may be involved in talking and listening to

one another, or writing, reading and reflecting individually. For example, students sitting in a

group and studying together, or group projects in which one or two students do all the work.

So, what action can be takes to incorporate more active learning into study process? Based on

Fink’s research (1999), student can implied several ways like “take advantage of the Power
 Active Learning 12

of Interaction”. With combination of all the elements in these two models of active learning,

it will increase the rate of understanding and verified the hypothesis that stated before. Just

imagine, one student who wrote back their own thoughts on a topic (dialogue with self)

before form a group discussion (dialogue with others), the outcome from the group discussion

must be effectively useful and rich with knowledge. After that, the group members will

observe the phenomena (observing) then followed by having the students engage in the action

itself (doing), this action will strengthen the outcome and make the students well-known

enough and familiar with all the area of the topic. This activity will continuously being

repeated from time to time, started from beginning to the end. The result from active learning

process in which implied the combination of all elements in active learning shows that an

active learning process will gives major impact on cognitive development rather than passive

learning.

Concept of Cognitive Development

Different researchers focus on elements, or components, as they attempt to define

development. Refers to Salkind (2004), maturation, experience, social transmission and

equilibration is a four factor of development process which organism plays an active role in a

spontaneous way of process.

Firstly, maturation is to account for the neurological changes that occur through physical

growth and sequencing of qualitative changes. Unfortunately, a wide range of potential

outcomes that depends on other factors occurs because of maturation effects.

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Experience, one of the factor cognitive processes occurs. The child must be successful to

change their environment but not only in a physical sense. Problem solving through mental

exercise can be experiences by child.

Next, information, attitudes, and customs transmitted from one group (such as parents) to

another group (such as children) which makes the social transmission occur. This is a major

factor that points several events that affect the process of development in the child’s world.

The last factor is the equilibration process that plays an important role. The combination of

biological growth, directed activities, learning of social transmitted information, and finally

the individual is inherent to seek balanced state for the development process. Surely,

development is incomplete without the combination of these four factors.

The Effects of Active Learning on Children’s Cognitive Development

In Piaget’s perspective, the crucial distinction between development and learning is

development is spontaneous and learning is invoked. Learning acquisition of certain

information and skills whereas development is a general process through which learning

takes place. In the other way, learning is a function of development (Salkind, 2004).

However, his theory of development does not really emphasize on the role of active learning

affecting on children’s cognitive development. He states his theory more on general

perspective rather than specifically refer to any group or stages of development.

 Active Learning 14

McKeachie (1998) had mentioned about the benefit of active learning, yet it does not refer to

any specific target group he does refer to. He tempted to use qualitative method for

explaining about what activities regard as active learning method. However, he does not

present enough information or any data that recognize the effectiveness of active learning

towards children cognitive development. He cited less on how active learning could be

implemented towards children’s method of learning.

Fink (1999) had presented the model of active learning clearly. Somehow, he likely lacking

on how this model is really benefitted to the children’s cognitive development. Both of

researchers do not specifically come out with statistic report on the effectiveness of their

model of active learning. They only explained more on general method of active learning.

Maybe their models could be more suitable to be implemented to other target group like

teenagers and adult learner. It would appear that there is no empirical study, pertaining on

how actually active learning gives impact to the children’s cognitive development.

The present study examines how active learning plays very significant role towards children’s

cognitive development. Specifically, the study examines how active learning affects on the

children’s cognitive development, the suitable module of active learning to be implemented

on children’s education system, and the effectiveness of the implementation of active

learning method could enhance the competency of children especially towards their cognitive

development.
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METHODOLOGY

Participants

Participants will include 60 students (both male and female) of the International Islamic

School (IIS) in Gombak. Their age is around 5 – 6 year old. I/we will obtain informed

consent from teachers and parents.

Materials

We will use camera video and tape to record every single action of the participants. We also

will use items like flash cards, balls, toys, interactive display material, in order to trigger their

attention and make them involved fully in this session.

Sampling Strategies
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Sampling is the technique we use to gather data about the children who actively participate in

the process of learning. Our target population is kindergarten student’s range 5 – 6 year old

have been selected as our sample. In this research, we are focusing the population in this

kindergarten which is International Islamic School (IIS), Gombak. We expect 120

kindergarten kids will be our target population in this study. 60 kindergarten students will be

selected randomly whereby each member of population has an equal chance of being

selected. We use this type of sampling to generalize the information where it will represent

the whole population.

Research Design

In qualitative research plan, we implement observation research technique whereby a

researcher goes into the field and observes the flow of social life as it natural takes place. As

an observer, we will attempt to discover and describe patterns of social life as they naturally

occur, understand a group member’s own point of view, try to get complete picture of a

group’s way of life, beliefs, and customs, and also to describe and account for patterns in

social interaction from the perspectives of the participants. We will use three types of

observational research which is non-participant observation, participant observation, and

semi-participant observation.

Procedure
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Firstly, we will give informed consent to parents and teachers to inform them about our

research two weeks before we will conduct research towards the children. After that, we will

go to IIS after having permission and the time is suitable for us to conduct the research.

Before we start, we will introduce ourselves and briefly explain to teachers on what we are

going to do to the children. After that, we will start to have some games to play with the

children so that they will not to feel uneasy with our coming. During the time, we start to

observed the reaction of the children either they accept our as apart from them.

Simultaneously, other group members will set up the items such as video camera, flash cards,

interactive display board and forms of evaluation. Then, the children will select randomly

about 60 students from 120 students. They will categorize according to their age and will be

separated into 2 different groups. After that, we will start our research by having some

activities by using flash cards and interactive display board. From these activities, we will

evaluate them according to their respond, their feedbacks and their ability to reflect on what

they have learnt. It will be evaluated by our group members and also teachers. The session

will be conducted in 1 hour. After finished, we will gather all the information and evaluations

forms to be investigated and analyzed.

Hypothesis

In this study we will test the following hypotheses:

H1 – There is positive relationship between active learning and children’s cognitive

development.

H0 – There is no relationship between active learning and children’s cognitive development.

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DISCUSSIONS

This study will be conducted to determine the effect of active learning on children’s cognitive

developments. There might be a few weaknesses in the study like time constraint due to our

target participant are children who go to kindergarten to study. This is because kindergarten
 Active Learning 19

usually starts operating and functioning as a centre of study for children at 8 am, the same

time for us to attend our class. We will having some difficulties to make it convenience for us

to free our time in the morning in order to meet our participant to conduct the research

because of the time clash that we must face.

This research also will face some setback to get full cooperation from parents, teachers and

maybe the children itself. The parents might be think this research negatively and assume this

research just like a sort of bias that conducted in order to humiliated their children. The

parents might be worry about what will happens to their children as the consequences of this

research. Due to this research is all about study and the outcome, the research must be done

in the classroom during the children study in there. This thing might make the hardly to give

cooperation because of this research will distract their teaching process.

Other than that, inability to control any factor that maybe have some personal interest also

will make this research is hard to be done. Human being is an ordinary creature who has

feeling and emotion. These kinds of creatures are likely to choose something that can give

benefits to themselves. Something that related to personal interest will be our major threats

and hard to eliminate it in order to finish this research.

Children are joyful and very active creatures who will act according to their moods. Because

of this factor, this research is likely to face problem to control the children. As a human who

only knew the world about approximately 6 years, it is hard to make them to pay attention to
 Active Learning 20

study. We also will have some problem to give clear direction in order to standardized the

level of understanding while give the order.

In addition, because of this study will focus on the cognitive development of the children, the

research will face some drawback to trace the development because of the lack of mechanism

that can be use in order to see the result clearly. Some mechanical item like brain scan and

MRI that will be the major item in order to proof the cognitive development will take high

cost to done it.

Children are just like a white plain shawl and adults will play a significance role to chose

what color will be appear in the shawl. Because of the purity of the children who are likely

easy to shaping their minds, it is important to make their cognitive can be function wisely.

This world will be passing on to them to take care of. Due to this, it is important to develop

their cognitive and make them well prepared to heritage this most valuable thing.

We are focusing on active learning because until today there is no exact theories do really

explain the concept of active learning and the way how we can implemented to the process of

learning according to different level of education. It might be emphasize on the effectiveness

of active learning towards adult and teen learners. However, there are no specific mechanism

on how active learning method could enhance the ability of children’s in learning and the

effects towards their cognitive development.

This research is emphasis more on cognitive development of the children because cognitive is

one thing that really abstracts that sometime the capability of the cognitive would reach
 Active Learning 21

beyond our expectation and beyond the limits. Because of there are no limitation to cognitive,

it is important to see how we can improve and develop it in order to make someone as a well

rounded person who can be a supreme leader in the world.

The target population that we are going to study is the students of International Islamic

School (IIS) in Gombak. There are several reasons why we choose to have our sampling

there. Firstly, it is situated near our university, which is International Islamic University

Malaysia (IIUM). So, it makes us convenience to come and do our research. Next, IIS does

include also students from other races, not only Malays, it is also have students from other

countries due to most parents sending their children there are working for IIUM and there are

some of them come from other countries. This will make our research more reliable due to

the wider scope that we are going to cover due to the various backgrounds of the children.

We are using observational research method as our main method for our research. The

reasons why we choose to do this type of research is because children will act naturally

without any suspicions. We just simply applying the method of active learning in their daily

process of learning and we will observe the outcomes of the children comprehension. There

are several ways to measure their outcomes. One of it is by testing their knowledge and

measures their reflection towards stimulus given. From that situation, we just simply rank it

according to our standards. It is more reliable since we would use the mechanism from Piaget

theories of cognitive development and we are going to get the approval from consultant

clinical psychologist.
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What we are expected from our research is it will prove the effectiveness of using active

learning methods especially towards children’s cognitive development. Along this research,

we will try to seek for the mechanism on how the active learning method could be

implemented especially to children. We will provide the statistical presentation on the

effectiveness of active learning on the process of active learning, so that we could propose it

for further investigation. Our research is open to any individual or any institution that have an

interest to develop more on the method of active learning since it would gives many positive

effects to learners especially children so that we can have the benefits from this research. Any

further investigation in the future pertaining to our research topic is mostly welcome.

Hopefully this research could be beneficial and contribute to the science of education for the

betterment of our future generation that will become our future leader who is having brilliant

minds and abilities to lead the world.

DATA ANALYSIS

We are going to use Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) as our tool to analyze

all the outcomes of the research with supervision from our advisor. SPSS is an accurate tool

to analyze data to statistical presentation in order to prove our reliability of our research. We

are using SPSS to present our data in quantitative manner.

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