Learning: The Cognitive Perspective

This is Unit Five, part two, on the cognitive perspective in the classroom: executive function and metacognition, cognitive load and practice, and constructivist teaching. Part one closed on diagnosing why a child's memory strategy fails. Part two turns to what teachers can do about the limits of the mind. Carry one idea through this part: each theory of learning answers a different question about the same lesson, so match the lens to the difficulty. At the final entry, the part reads one lesson through all four pillars of learning theory. By the end you will be able to explain why working memory limits learning. To classify a cognitive load as intrinsic, extraneous or germane. To explain why spaced practice beats cramming. To sequence a lesson by the 5E model. And to read one lesson through the four pillars of learning theory.

Three entries on the mind's control system: executive function, working memory in school, and metacognition.

The mind's control skills.

EDP 0422 Executive Function

Executive function includes inhibition, cognitive flexibility and working memory, the skills that let a learner control attention and switch between tasks, as stopping to check work instead of blurting an answer draws on inhibition. Warm, scaffolding parenting predicts stronger executive function, which keeps developing through adolescence.

Working memory and school.

EDP 0423 Working Memory and Learning

Differences in working memory predict achievement, and children with math and reading disabilities often have weak working memory. Shorter instructions, repetition and steps broken into chunks ease the load, and training strategies such as chunking, grouping items into meaningful units, can help children with limited working memory.

Knowing one's own thinking.

EDP 0424 Metacognition

Metacognition is knowing and regulating one's own thinking, and it underlies critical thinking: analyzing arguments, judging sources and deciding what to believe, as a student notices she does not understand a paragraph and rereads it slowly. Inductive reasoning moves from cases to a rule, and deductive reasoning from a rule to cases.

Six entries on managing the mind's limits: cognitive load, prior knowledge, depth of processing, spacing and chunking.

Working memory as the bottleneck.

EDP 0425 Cognitive Load Theory

Cognitive load theory treats working memory as the bottleneck of learning and names three loads, intrinsic, extraneous and germane, which add together; a slide crowded with decorative images adds load without adding learning. Because the loads add up, cutting extraneous load frees capacity for the material itself.

Classifying cognitive load.

EDP 0426 Classifying Cognitive Load

To classify a demand on working memory, ask where it comes from. Intrinsic load comes from the material's own complexity, the number of elements handled at once; practice reduces it, but some tasks stay complex. Extraneous load comes from demands irrelevant to learning, such as confusing layout or decoration, and is largely under the teacher's control. Germane load is effort that serves the learning goal, added once basics are automatic. Students learning fractions from dense, unfamiliar wording carry intrinsic load from the fractions and extraneous load from the wording. The same feature can change category: unfamiliar vocabulary is extraneous in math, germane in a vocabulary lesson.

Starting from what students know.

EDP 0427 Prior Knowledge and Organization

Two principles aid learning: activating prior knowledge, linking new material to what students already know, as in asking what they know about volcanoes before plate tectonics, and organizing information into meaningful groups rather than lists. Linking new material to known material is elaborative rehearsal, which lasts longer than repetition alone.

Surface and depth.

EDP 0428 Deep and Surface Processing

Surface processing repeats material as it is, while deep processing works with meaning, as in summarizing in one's own words and generating examples: flipping flashcards is surface, and explaining a concept to a friend is deep. Deep processing takes more effort and produces more durable learning than surface repetition.

Spacing, not cramming.

EDP 0429 Distributed Practice

Distributed practice, spreading study over several sessions, produces better retention than massing the same amount of study into one session: five one-hour sessions across a week outlast one five-hour cram the night before. There is no single best spacing schedule, but spacing beats cramming across a wide range of material.

Grouping to hold more.

EDP 0430 Chunking

Chunking groups separate items into larger meaningful units, so working memory can hold more within its limited capacity at any one time, as a phone number is remembered as three groups rather than ten digits. Chunking can be taught, and training in it helps children with limited working memory.

Five entries on constructivist teaching, from layered understanding and conceptual change to Bloom's levels and the 5E lesson.

Understanding built in layers.

EDP 0431 Constructivism in the Classroom

Constructivism holds that learners actively construct knowledge from experience, and that understanding deepens in layers over time rather than arriving complete: heat is first what burns a hand, later molecules in motion. Constructivist methods, such as seminars, projects and guided problem solving, vary in how much the teacher directs.

Two constructivisms, in practice.

EDP 0432 Two Constructivisms in Practice

For Piaget, development limits what can be learned, so teachers provide a rich environment and provoke disequilibrium; for Vygotsky, social interaction drives development, so teachers provide rich dialogue and scaffolded talk. The two also differ on abstraction: Piaget limits abstract demands, while Vygotsky engages children in abstract talk before they fully grasp it.

Replacing a misconception.

EDP 0433 Conceptual Change

Conceptual change teaching replaces a misconception, and learners give up an existing idea only when it becomes unsatisfying and a new one is intelligible, plausible and fruitful, as a student who thinks heavier objects fall faster watches two different weights land together. Confronting ill-fitting evidence is the starting point, not the whole method.

Six levels of thinking.

EDP 0434 Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's taxonomy orders thinking in six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The revision renames them remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create, and moves creating, the renamed synthesis, to the top, above evaluating. Asking students to compare and contrast the causes of a war calls for analysis.

A constructivist lesson in five phases.

EDP 0435 The 5E Model

The 5E model, from the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, sequences a constructivist lesson in five phases. Engage raises interest and surfaces what students already think. Explore gives hands-on experience with the phenomenon. Explain introduces terms after the experience, attaching names to what students have seen. Elaborate applies the idea to new situations. Evaluate checks understanding and runs throughout the cycle. Students play with magnets and notice some things stick, then learn the term attracting force, then test which classroom objects are magnetic. The common mistake is explaining before exploring; in the 5E order, vocabulary attaches to something students have seen.

Two entries on planning with theory, ending with the payoff: one lesson, read through four lenses.

What each constructivism is best for.

EDP 0436 Planning with Constructivism

Social constructivism describes classroom teaching more completely, while psychological constructivism remains valuable for sequencing and planning instruction, as a teacher orders a unit so concrete experience comes before abstract rules. Bloom's levels also help a teacher aim each new task inside a particular student's zone of proximal development.

The payoff: four pillars, one lesson.

EDP 0437 Four Pillars, One Lesson

Here the part's idea comes together. The same task looks different through each pillar of learning theory. Behaviorism asks what observable behavior is wanted and what follows it, so it attends to reinforcement, practice and prompts. Social cognitive theory asks what students see modeled and believe about their own ability. Constructivism asks what students already think and how experience or dialogue will reshape it. Information processing asks how material passes through attention and working memory, attending to load, encoding and spaced practice. Take a class learning why seasons change. A behavioral teacher sets short practice questions with immediate feedback. A social cognitive teacher models reasoning from a diagram of the tilted Earth. A constructivist teacher starts from the belief that seasons come from distance from the sun and lets students test it with a lamp and a globe. An information-processing teacher strips the diagram of decoration and spaces review across weeks. The pillars are lenses, not rival camps: ask which lens explains a particular difficulty.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain why working memory limits learning: it is the bottleneck, and weak working memory often accompanies learning disabilities. You can classify a cognitive load as intrinsic, extraneous or germane by asking where the demand comes from. You can explain why spaced practice beats cramming for the same total study time. You can sequence a lesson by the 5E model, with exploring before explaining. And you can read one lesson through behaviorism, social cognitive theory, constructivism and information processing. Unit Six turns to complex thinking.