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    Becoming an effective teacher

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    Becoming an effective teacher

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    7 views10 pages

    Additional Reading Week 3 - Fetherston p.127-136

    Uploaded by

    Kristian James
    Becoming an effective teacher

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    Cognitive approaches 127 CONTEXT Imagine this scenario. You have been teaching for a while now and have developed your classroom observation skills. You start to notice that many students in your class have a real capacity to engage in abstract and symbolic thought — they can manipulate symbols in their mind and combine them in new and interesting ways. These creative thinkers generate ideas and alternatives that dont fit the ‘norm’, You also start to notice that for some students their own ideas seem to affect, their learning. Sometimes these ideas get in the way and sometimes they seem hard t0 change. For other students, emotions seem zo have a large effect on how they lear. Yet others seem to know 2 lot about themselves as learners and can keep track of how they are going about their learning tasks. While trying to put all these disparate ideas together into some kind of cobesive theory chat can explain the ideas, you stare to realise that maybe Jearning is not just a change in behevious. CHANGING VIEWS OF LEARNING AAs the 1970s drew to an end there was increasing disquiet with behaviourist views of learning, It was increasingly recognised that it wes difficult to use a behaviourist framework to teach or explain the learning of complex tasks like language acquisition or how to fly a plane. There was increasing uneasiness with its pseudo-sciemtific approach and its lack of recognition of internal, brain-based processes. The inability of approaches based on this view of learning to influ- ence or change behaviour in real and complex situations like classrooms led to the examination of other theoretical bases for explaining learning, Noam Chomsky (see http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/chomsky. home.html) probably dealt the most significant blow to behaviourist views when he argued in 1959 that language acquisition cannot be explained just through a stimulus response process, as Skinner argued, because this does not account for elements like the creative use of language. Chomsky’ views that bbehaviourism could not explain the complexities of language and its acquisition, Gained wide acceptance and stimulated much research in a different direction that was labelled ‘cognitive’ Chomsky (1987) wrote a significant essay titled “Interpresing the World? that was a strong critique of behaviourism. This essay is widely quoted as part of the move towards the development of other explanations of learning, 128 Becoming an effective teacher COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Cognitive psychology probably first surfaced after the Second World War in response to a renewed focus on human performance and attention. It was assisted at a later stage by developments in computer science and by renewed interest in Linguistics. ‘A cognitive view of learning is mostly concerned with how people process information and so is concerned with the processes of attention, perception, leating and memory. It is also concerned with brain-based internal structures and the representations people construct of external events and processes, INFORMATION-PROCESSING VIEWS Initially in the development of cognitive psychology many parallels were drawn between the operations of the human mind and another kind of processor ~ the computer ~ that also was adept at manipulating information through the use of symbols. Cognitivists came to regard the mind as a symbol processor but a processor with limitations. Although the two different processing systems of brain and computer superficially resemble one another, they are generally regarded these days as substantially different in structure, process and capacity Perhaps the reason why the mind is compared ro @ computer is because cognition is usually described in terms of an information-processing model, a term that has grown out of eatly historical links between computer science and cognitive science, Contemplations “The human brain is a unique, electrochemical super computer. Do you like comparing your brain to a computer? In what way is a brain lke a computer and in what way is fe very different? ‘This model is concerned with the input-processing-ousput of information much the same as we regard the way computers work. The following diagram shows the main components of this information-processing model. The first thing to notice about this model is that it includes a stimulus and response telling us that these two terms are not for exclusive use by behaviourists “Apart from the use of these terms this model is very different to a behaviourist view Cognitive approaches 129 Figure 6.1. An information processing model in diagram form ee Sem Rehearsal |rogsenl seimulus Sewory |__Attention |, Wostrg Merery fasten rd (Germ ere) | Encoding] "ea (TS) Hee Teieal Fore Few] | Response as it describes the processes that occur in between the two events of stimulus and response. In summary form it works like this. INFORMATION-PROCESSING MODEL AA stimulus is perceived by one of our five senses and this perception is stored in. the short-ern sensory store. If we dont attend to it it s forgotten in a short time, pethaps as short as 25 of a second, and pethaps most of the things we perceive are like this. For example can you recall the colours and types of all the cars that passed you on your journey to this spot? As this sensory store seems to be only able to hold a limited amount of information it seems natural that most of what we perceive is not attended to. If we pay some attention to this stimulus in the short-term sensory store then it is passed to short-term memory Our prior experience, values and beliefs all Influence which stimuli we attend to and so affect what we pass on to short-term memory. George Miller at Princeton University (see http://www.cogsci.princeton. edu/ geo/) studied the capacity of Short-Term Memory (STM) and in 1956 suggested that most people can remember 7 plus or mimus 2 bits of information in their STM atany particular time. So the capacity of STM is limited, If we do not process, encode or rehearse information in STM itis forgotten. Short-term memory is now regarded 45 one part of what has come to be called working memory. Everything that we process from STMis believed to pass through working memory at least fleetingly: Working memory has limited capacity and holds information for only 10 to 20 seconds. Information is continuously transferred in both directions 130 Becoming an effective teacher 1. Repeat and rehearse the following sequence of 16 numbers until you can repeat them verbatim: 1776191519392006 2. Now repeat the process with this set: 1776-1915-1939-2006 Which sequence was easier to remember? (The second sequence is chunked into four lots of four items, Short-term memory handles this much better than 16 items.) between long-term memory and working memory. Information from long-tetm memory is recalled and assists in making meaning from information coming into working memory. Not everything gets wansferred to long-term memory If we rehearse the information then the information is likely to be encoded and stored in long-term memory Information has more chance to be stored or encoded if is meaningful CasE 6.1 ENCODING INCOMING INFORMATION Encoding is the process by which the brain takes incoming information andl places it in "usable form in working memory. good example to use in explaining this process is that of memorisinga telephone number. Ifsomeone tells you their phone number you firstly have1o attend to what they are saying for enough time to hear al te numbers. You have to perceive the numbers as they are spoken and not switch your attention away: The next task is 0 store ‘what you have heard somewhere safe (inside your head, that is) so that whatever you hear next does not bump out the number. For short sequences of sound like the phone numbers the brain stores the numbers like an audio recording; this is called a phonological loop ‘The numbers seem to be stored like this even if you perceive them as wrizen numbers on a piece of paper. Heard or written, you will memorise the number by repeating the number {0 yourself or out loud — by sounding the number, We could, if we chose to, remember the number by memorising the shapes of the symbols on the page (spatial) of by the spatial sequence, the shape they form. However it seems that for something like a phone namber™= Cognitive approaches 131 almost all chose to remember the number by remembering the sound of the numbers as we speak them. The amazing thing about this process is that it happens quickly, quite easily is capeble of being repeated over and over and is quite accurate {for most of us! Response 4. To what extent do you think most tezching in schools relies on this encoding process? 2. Can you think of some contexts, subjects or situations where it would be an advantage {0 store information in a spatial manner rather than as sounds? Can you do this? One way in which information can become meaningful is to connect it 0 other information and this elaboration process greatly assists storage in, and eventual retrieval from, longterm memory It seems that information is stored in longterm memory in systematic patterns based around propositions, ideas or concepts. The richness of relationships between these separate elements and between and among the information being stored will influence how easy itis to recall information from long-term memory. Long-term memory is thought to have an almost unlimited capacity but it does hot store everything that we experience. The brain acting as a video recorder is not a wwell-accepted memory model and is at odds wich what is known abouthow memories ate constructed. However, according to Schacter (1996, p.76) almost 84% of American psychologists stll believe every experience is permanently stored in the mind. Similarly, ‘memories dont last forever. We forget things fora variety of reasons: Ic was not linked strongly to other ideas in our memory. This is why we forget ‘most things ® We need something to stimulate the recall of the memory. This is called a retrieval cue. Time seems to decay memories and sometimes older memories get replaced by newer ones, We remember more from the recent past than we do from longer ago. We dont seem to remember mundane things we do all che time. 4 To keep us functioning ~ it is difficule to function properly if we remember everything. COGNITIVE PROCESSES AND LEARNING What does teaching look like if a cognitive view of learning is adopted and implemented? Generally, a cognitive approach would recognise that the important processes of learning are to do with the way a student transforms sensory input and 132 Becoming an effective teacher the way in which they reduce, elaborate, store, recover and use that information, Adopting this view would mean thac the teacher's main task is to assist che student with these processes and to also teach the student strategies that assist their learning and that they can apply themselves. then somehow get chis stimuli passed onto short-term memory, which requires that the teacher takes into account, and attends to, each students own ideas, Effective teachers recognise that when they present information it will only be held for 10 +0 20 seconds in a student's working memory giving them only a small window of ‘opportunity to get students to attend to the incoming information. Effective teachers know that seven items at any time is enough for any students memory, Here is an example of a teacher making sure students attend to incoming stimuli The teacher switches off the overhead projector, signaling that this part of the lesson is over. T: Ok, everybody, could you put your pens down and look this way? She waits a little white for students to get organised and makes eye contact with some students and indicates where they shuld be looking. T: We have been working on writing a story that 2 reader would find really interesting to read. Pauses. T; Is there anyone here who has never tasted ice cream? No one answers. T: Well, that means we all know what it tastes like! Everybody is imerested now. T: Now I want you to imagine that you have never tasted ice cream before. You have never seen it or tasted it. Can someone tell me what they imagine it would be like to eat ice cream for the first time? What would it fel ike? She then continues the lesson drowing poralels between the students’ descriptions, thelr interest and how to convey that in a story. The use ofice cream has gained the students’ attention and given them on interesting idea to relate to, Using 2 cognitive approach to teaching means that in a teacher's planning and presentation they need to attend to the processes that involve sensation, perception, Cognitive approaches 133 imagery retention, recall, problem-solving and thinking ~ that is they heve to have a general concern with students’ internal processing. Good teachers guide students in receiving and encoding information, and in retrieving the information. T: All the elements on the periodic table have a symbol. This symbol means we don't have to write the full name of the element all the time, we can just use the symbol. So later when we want to write down what happens when elements combine, we can just use the symbol. Can you think of other situations when symbols are useful? A general discussion of the use of symbols describing their use in mathematics, road signs, advertising, cars and so on ensues. This teacher has guided the students in receiving information about the symbols of elements by linking it to the use of symbols in gener ‘Teachers with an understanding of cognition recognise that the individual student will mediate (in the sense of transferring something from one place to another in their own way) learning in light of their prior experience and personal long-term memories. This is because incoming information into working memory is mixed with memories retrieved from long-term memory and, because everybody has different long,term memories, the learning that results is quite individual individual in terms of the memories that its linked to and in terms of its personal effect. Experienced teachers often feel that with Gen Y students they face unfair compe- tition from television, media and computer games in terms of being able to capture and hold a student’ attention. Sometimes they feel that they need some ‘whiz-bang’ clfect to stimulate students to get them to attend to what they regard as important information. This is not necessarily true as students are adept at recognising the situation they are in (school) and the kinds of activities thet are associated with that context. In other words they do not expect to be exposed to computer-game-type graphics or sound effects. By the modality of the setting they form expectations as to ‘what should occur in that setting |. Lise ewo ways you could gain students attention at the start ofa lesson. 2. List two ways you could gain students’ attention during a lesson while they are working in groups. 134 Becoming an effective teacher Nonetheless even though teachers cannot possibly compete effectively with the attention-grabbing ability of new media and actually donit compete with it, they still have to develop effective ways of bringing new information to a leamer’s atten- tion, This can happen through the use of techniques involving novelty, complexity ambiguity and incongruity. These are all good attributes that serve to distinguish new, important information from che normal classroom events, Pethaps audio, video cor emotional stimuli can also be useful in connecting the new information with pleasurable emotions or in stimulating emotions enhancing attention and recall, Humans are mammals ~ do you agree? We have body covered with hair, feed ‘our young milk and our young are born alive, But 'm thinking of two very different kinds of mammals ~ their young are born in eggs. es they are mammals but they lay eggs! Does anyone know what I'm talking about? “Teachers accepting a cognitive view realise that learners forget most things and that this is a natural and useful function. They know that nonsense is forgotten fist so they assist learners in making meanings,in elaborating their ideas (connecting the ideas to other ideas) and in rehearsing their ideas so they are retained in long-term memory Good teachers assist in the meaning-making business by assisting students in making rich connections between their existing ideas and new information Sometimes they would directly provide these links between the ideas presented and ‘would be cognisant of the idea chat memories can be stored either visually, verbally or by meaning so they would present information in a variety of ways. For example, the students firstly conducted a trafic survey on a busy road near the school. They then discussed the road rules that they thought they could see being followed by drivers and pedestrians. ‘To make rich connections the teacher then asked them as part of their art and technology class to construct their own road! signs, which would convey the meaning of the rules to motorists and to pedestrians. Doing it this way enabled students store memories in a visual, verbal and meaning way. In general effective teachers would assist learners to build understanding by helping them to use their existing knowledge to elaborate, enhance, extend and modify new information, Material would be organised into meaningful units Im the ideal lesson the leamer’s own propositions would be at che cenue of instruction and much use would be made of analogies and metaphors as ways of Cognitive approaches 135, explaining new material and making it meaningful for students. These well-designed lessons that avtend to learners’ propositions would allow students to negotiate their own way through material (as they would be relying on their own ideas in long-

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