Complex Cognitive Processes

1. Complex Cognitive Processes

2. How do we learn concepts? • Concepts: set of defining attributes -distinctive features shared by members of a category • Prototypes: best representative of a category • Exemplar: a speific example of a given category that is used to classify an item • Schemas: recognition of a concept • Simplicity principle: simplest category or rule

3. How can we teach concepts? • Defining attributes and prototypes • Concept attainment: construct an understanding of specific concepts and practice skills and practice thinking skills • Components needed: • Examples (prototypes), nonexamples • Relevant & irrelevant attributes • Name of concept • Definition • Use it (do exercises, solve problems, write, read, explain, etc)

4. Teaching concepts: • Through discovery • Through exposition

5. Teaching Concepts through Discovery • Estructure: fundamental ideas, relationships, patterns of the field. • Be active: identify the key principles; identify the interrelationships (discovery learning) • Inductive reasoning: use specific examples to formulate a general principle. • Intuitive thinking: make guesses based on incomplete evidence and then comfirm or disprove them.

6. Teaching Concepts through Exposition • Use deductive reasoning: draw conclusions by applying rules or principles; move form general to specific. • Expository teaching: teachers perent material in complete, organized form, from broadest to more specific • Meaningful verbal learning: focused and organized relationships among ideas and verbal information • Use advance organizers: statements of inclusive concepts to introduce and sum up material that follows • Comparative: organizers that activate working memory • Expository organizers: knowledge that students will need to understand the upcoming information • Relate contect back to organizer: think how you could expand on the original advance organizer.

7. Learning Disabilities and Concept Teaching • Use analogical instruction: identify knowledge that “weak” students already have in memory that can be used as a starting point for learning the new, complex material

8. Problem solving • Problems: well-structured, ill-structured • Initial state • Goal • Path for reaching the goal • Problem solving: • General • Identify problems and opportunities • Define goals and represent the problem • Focus attention • Understand the words • Understand the whole problem • Translate the problem • Represent the problem • Explore possible strategies • Algorithms • Heuristics: • Means-ends analysis • Working-backward strategy • Analogical thinking • Anticipate outcomes and Act • Look back and learn

9. Factors that hinder problem solving: • Fixation: • Functional fixedness • Response sets • Some problems with heuristics: • Representativeness heuristic • Availability heuristic • Belief perseverance • Confirmation bias

10. Effective problem solving • Expert knowledge • Novice knowledge

11. What's creativity? • Myths about creativity: • People are born creative • Creativity is related with negative qualities • Creativity is a fuzzy, soft construct • Creativity is enhanced within a group

12. What is creativity? • It's the ability to produce work that is original, but still appropriate and useful. • People are creative in particular areas. • Inventions must be intended • It should be applied to any subject • It often involves more than one person • It results in a new and useful product in a particular culture or situation

13. What are the sources of creativity? • Creativity is the result of cognitive processes, personality factors, motivational patterns, background experiences, and social environments.

14. What do we need to be creative? • Domain-relevant skills: talents and competencies valuable in the domain • Creativity-relevant processes: work habits, personality traits • Intrinsic task motivation: deep curiosity and fascination with the task • Sometimes we need to incubate or restructure in order to be able to come up with a solution.

15. How can we assess creativity? • There are two types of creativity tests: • Verbal: think and say • Graphic: create • These tests require two types of thinking: • Divergent: proposes many answers • Convergent: identifies only one answer • Responses to these tests score: • Originality: fewer than 5-10 people/100. • Fluency: number of different responses • Flexibility: categories of responses

16. How can I identify creativity in my students? • Curiosity • Concentration • Adaptability • High energy • Humor • Independence • Playfulness • Nonconformity • Risk-taking • Attraction to complex and mysterious • Willingness to fantasize and daydream • Intolerance for boredom • Inventiveness

17. Encouraging Creativity • Accept and encourage divergent thinking • Tolerate dissent • Encourage students to trust their own judgment • Emphasize that everyone is capable of creativity in some form • Provide time, space, and materials to support creative projects • Be a stimulus for creative thinking • Encourage brainstorming • Encourage play

18. The Big C: Revolutionary Innovation • Who? Those who were explorers, innovators, and tinkerers. • Warning: • Avoid turning intrinsic into extrinsic motivation • Avoid making him miss his childhood • Avoid making him so perfect that his rewards be lavish • Foresee possible psychological wounds

19. Learning Strategies and Tactics • Learning strategies: general plans for approaching learning tasks • Learning tactics: specific techniques for learning that make up the plan

20. How to get students to use learning strategies? • Teach them different strategies as well as specific tactics (mnemonics, skimming, writing answers to possible questions) • Teach them when, where, how, and why to use them • Develop the desire to use these skills • Teach students using such strategies

21. How can students get learning strategies into action? • Decide what’s important: focus attention, find the central idea, identify headings, bold words, outlines, an other indicators to identify key concepts and main ideas. • Use summaries: find the topic sentence, identify big ideas, find supporting information, delete redundant information. • Underline and highlight: be selective and transform the ideas into your own words. Don’t use the book’s words. Note conections and draw diagrams. • Take notes: translate, connect, elaborate, and organize the information. Don’t get distracted from the lecture with your note taking. Find key ideas, concepts, and relationships

22. How can we organize information? • Use graphic organizers such as maps or charts • Map relationships • Use Venn and Tree diagrams

23. What strategies can we use when we read? • R eview chapter • E xamine words • A sk what you expect to learn • D o it! • S ummarize When reading literature: • C haracters • A im • P roblem • S olved it? • K now • W ant to know • L ike to know

24. How can I make sure my students use learning strategies? • Make sure the learning task is approppriate. Do your students care for learning and understanding? What are their goals? (value learning) • Your students must believe that the effort they invest is reasonable and worth it. Do they think they will make it? (effort and efficacy) • What do your students believe about their own learning and strategies? (epistemological beliefs) • Structure of knowledge • Stability/certainty of knowledge • Ability to learn • Speed of learning • Nature of learning

25. Teaching for transfer • Low-road transfer • Direct-application transfer • High-road transfer • Forward-reaching • Backward-reaching

26. Teaching for Positive Transfer • Avoid situated learning • Decide what is worth learning • Be aware of what the future is likely to hold for your students • Use overlearning to make sure your students will master a skill • Create powerful teaching-learning environments

27. How can we transfer strategies? • Acquisition phase: students should receive instruction about a strategy, be told how to use it, and rehearse it • Retention phase: practice and feedback • Transfer phase: provide new problems that can be solved with same strategy • Point out how this will help students to solve many problems and accomplish many tasks