Applications of Cognitivism II: Learning through Interactions with Others

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Chapter 16

• Applications of Cognitivism II Learning through
  Interactions with Others

2
Chapter Overview

• Class Discussions
• Reciprocal Teaching
• Cooperative Learning
• Peer Tutoring

• Apprenticeships
• Authentic Activities
• Community of Learners
• Advantages of Interactive Approaches

3
Class Discussions

• Vygotsky and other social constructivists believe
  that people construct their representations
  (meaning) of the world through social negotiation
• Social interaction is viewed as a mechanism for
  helping students learn
• Classroom discussions are one form of social
  interaction

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Class Discussions

• According to the research, how do discussions
  help students learn?
• Students must organize their thoughts
• Students are questioned and challenged by a
  classmate, which can tell the student he or she
  does not fully understand the information
• Encourages perspective taking
• A group can co-construct an understanding of a
  topic
• Discussions work well for almost any academic
  discipline

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Class Discussions

• Promoting effective discussions
• Topics should lend themselves to multiple
  perspectives
• Students must have prior knowledge no cold
  discussions
• Open debate and constructive criticism is
  encouraged
• Get as many students involved as possible (small
  groups)
• Structure the discussions
• Give guidance about appropriate behavior
• Provide a closure activity examples?

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Reciprocal Teaching

• Palincsar and Brown (1984, 1989) and others have
  argued that discussion can be effective because
  it promotes effecting learning strategies during
  reading and listening
• Reciprocal teaching encourages students to use
  effective learning strategies
• Read on

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Reciprocal Teaching

• Palincsar and Brown (1984) noted that good
  readers, unlike poor readers, do the following
  during reading
• Summarize
• Question
• Clarify
• Predict
• Students may acquire these strategies if they
  practice them in cooperation with other
  classmates using reciprocal teaching

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Reciprocal Teaching

• Process
• Students and teachers read a passage
• Teacher leads discussion of text as they proceed
  asking questions about summarizing,
  questioning, clarifying, and predicting
• The role of the teacher is turned over to the
  students gradually
• Eventually students read and discuss a text
  without the teacher

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Reciprocal Teaching

• Reciprocal teaching allows the teacher and
  students to model effective reading and learning
  strategies

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Reciprocal Teaching

• Effectiveness of reciprocal teaching
• Palincsar and Brown (1984)
• 7th grade students participated in 20 reciprocal
  teaching sessions, each lasting 30 minutes
• Results
• Independent summarizing and questioning increased
• Better reading comprehension (30 before to 70
  to 80 after)
• Long-term reading comprehension gains
• Students generalized their reading strategies to
  other classes

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Cooperative Learning

• Building on the idea of reciprocal teaching, we
  now turn to group work
• Cooperative learning involves students working in
  small groups to achieve a common goal
• Groups may be formed on a short-term basis or a
  long-term basis
• This approach is supported by behaviorism, social
  learning theory, and cognitive theories of
  development

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Cooperative Learning

• Features of Cooperative Learning
• Small teacher-assigned groups
• Groups have one or more common goal
• Clear guidelines for behavior are provided
• Group interdependency
• Structure is provided Dansereaus (1988)
  scripted cooperation
• Teacher acts as resource and monitor
• Individual accountability for achievement
• Rewards for group success
• Group evaluates its effectiveness
• Examples?

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Cooperative Learning

• How should groups be formed?
• Mixed results from research regarding whether you
  should form heterogeneous groups (high and low
  achievers)
• Textbook suggests
• Assign roles to group members
• Provide scripts for interactions
• Assign projects that require a wide range of
  talents so that every member has something to
  contribute to the success of the group

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Cooperative Learning

• Effectiveness of cooperative learning
• Students of all abilities show higher
  achievement particularly true of females,
  members of minority groups, and at risk students
• Promote higher level thinking skills
• Increases student self-efficacy
• Students understand the perspectives of others
• Relationships form between students across
  racial and ethnic groups and regardless of
  disability

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Cooperative Learning

• Problems with cooperative learning
• Too much focus on group reward with the least
  possible individual effort
• Students who do most of the work will learn more
  than others
• Group may agree to use an incorrect/inappropriate
  strategy
• Group may reinforce a misconception
• Students are unable to help each other learn

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Peer Tutoring

• Peer tutoring can be effective and lead to
  greater academic gains than traditional
  instruction (Durkin, 1995 Greenwood, Carta,
  Hall, 1988)
• Benefits the tutor and the student
• Intrinsic motivation to learn when you are
  teaching someone else
• Cooperation and social skills improve
• Classroom problems decrease
• Friendships develop

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Peer Tutoring

• Facilitating effective tutoring
• Tutors should master the material and be aware of
  instructional techniques
• Tutoring session is limited to subjects students
  know well
• Structure interactions Fuchs et al. (1997) 2nd
  6th graders were paired with a classmate for
  Peer-Assisted earning Strategies engaged in
  partner reading with retellings, paragraph
  summaries, and predictions the results showed
  significant gains in reading
• Dont exploit ability differences between
  students
• Use peer tutoring for students with special
  academic needs
• Tutoring is not limited to same-age pairs

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Apprenticeships

• Think back to the historical meaning of an
  apprenticeship a novice works closely with an
  expert to learn about a domain
• Cognitive apprenticeship you learn not only how
  to complete a task, but how to think about a task
  (graduate study)

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Apprenticeships

• Apprenticeships are labor-intensive and are
  characterized by
• Modeling expert models behavior or thinking
• Coaching expert provides feedback and
  suggestions
• Scaffolding support
• Increasing complexity and diversity of tasks
  learner progresses to more complex issues
• Articulation learner explains steps and why
  they are taken
• Reflection learner compares performance with
  others
• Exploration learner generates questions and
  problems on his/her own and expands skills

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Authentic Activities

• Authentic activities are part of apprenticeships
  are gaining increasing favor as part of any
  educational approach
• These are tasks that are identical or similar to
  those that students will encounter in the outside
  world
• Authentic activities foster achievement, the
  generation of meaningful connections among ideas,
  and facilitate transfer to real-world contexts
• See page 401 for examples of authentic activities
• Other examples?

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Authentic Activities

• Notes about authentic activities
• Effective activities
• Require background knowledge
• Promote higher-level thinking
• Require students to research ideas
• Have high expectations for student work
• Final outcome is complex (no single right answer)
• Cautions
• Students must master basic skills first
• Dont fill entire learning period with authentic
  activities
• Focus on learning activities, regardless of
  whether they are authentic activities, that
  promote meaningful learning, organization, and
  elaboration

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Community of Learners

• The topics discussed so far will help create a
  community of learners
• Advantages (Brown Campione, 1994)
• Students actively and cooperatively work for
  mutual learning students contribute to learning
• Students are resources for others
• Diversity in students interests and rates of
  progress are expected and respected
• The learning process is emphasized as much as the
  learning product

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Community of Learners

• Disadvantages (Brown Campione, 1994)
• What students learn is limited by the knowledge
  they acquire and share with others
• Students may share and reinforce misconceptions

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Advantages of Interactive Approaches

• This chapter presented several interactive
  instructional approaches that foster learning
• Think back to how the various theoretical
  perspectives that have been covered relate to the
  ideas presented in this chapter

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Advantages of Interactive Approaches

• As a wrap-up, the advantages of these approaches
  are
• Students co-construct their understanding of the
  world may promote more complete understanding
  (constructivist view)
• Students elaborate, organize, analyze,
  synthesize, and evaluate information as they
  learn (cognitivist view Bloom)
• More proficient learners model effective
  strategies for less proficient learners (social
  learning theory)
• Students integrate ideas about a topic
  (cognitivist view)
• Students are motivated to learn (more about this
  in Chapter 17)