Kirsti Lonka, PhD

1
IDEAS OF LEARNING BEHIND E-LEARNING?

• Kirsti Lonka, PhD
• Faculty of Medicine
• University of Helsinki, Finland
• / Professor in Medical Education,
• Karolinska Institute, Stockholm

2
DILEMMA I

• EDUCATION ANSWERING QUESTIONS NOBODY HAS ASKED

3
ONE SOLUTION

• WHAT ABOUT BASING INSTRUCTION ON QUESTIONS, THEN?

4
MENTAL MODELS?

• guide our attention, perception memory
• not copies of reality, but emphasize things that
  are important for us
• emotions, attitudes, values
• are the truth

5
CONSTRUCTIVIST IDEAS ON LEARNING

• Learning is actively constructing an
  interpretation of the world
• This process is question-driven and
  explanation-driven
• Knowledge acquisition is a question-answer
  -process
• Learning is a process for working toward more
  thorough understanding

6
TWO MODES OF THINKING

• NARRATIVE/ MYTHOS
• -what makes up a good story?
• - myths, beliefs
• - experiential
• - holistic, emotional
• - subconscious, free

• PARADIGMATIC/ LOGOS
• - what is the truth?
• - factual knowledge
• - logical
• - analytic, rational
• - conscious, controlled

7
THE PROBLEM OF DEAD (INERT) KNOWLEDGE
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
RISKS, PROBABILITY
THE REASONING PROCESS
WHICH ONE WINS?
COMMON SENSE
MY OWN GRANNY?
8
THE REVIVAL OF DEAD KNOWLEDGE
ACTIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING IN CONTEXT
REASONING
BOOK KNOWLEDGE
TESTING
FEEDBACK
SOLUTION
Reflection
9
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?

• Traditional answer Knowledge is proven of
  confirmed - people find truths
• Contemporary answer Knowledge is not proven,
  only disconfirmed - people construct temporary
  explanations that best fit current knowledge
• Postmodern answer All knowledge or
  interpretations equally valid - people construct
  personal understanding

10
APPLICATIONS OF CONSTRUCTIVIST IDEAS I

• ACTIVATING INSTRUCTION (Lonka Ahola, 1995, Eur
  Jour Educ Psych)
• 1. Activate and diagnose Ask students to
  describe what they think about a phenomenom
  before instruction
• 2. Support the process Scaffold learning, make
  thinking processes overt
• 3. Give feedback during and after the learning
  process.

11
APPLICATIONS OF CONSTRUCTIVIST IDEAS II

• PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (Schmidt, 1983)
• - start with an ill-defined problem which calls
  for explanation
• - ask the students to brainstorm and construct a
  model
• - let the students pose the questions and set the
  learning goals
• - guide the learning process by tutoring

12
APPLICATIONS OF CONSTRUCTIVIST IDEAS III

• PROGRESSIVE INQUIRY LEARNING
• - starts from a problem calling for explanation
• - the inquiry process is socially distributed
• - inquiry gradually progresses from a working
  theory toward more specific questions
• - CSILE (Scardamalia, Bereiter et al.) an
  environment for building, articulating,
  exploring, and structuring knowledge in
  elementary schools

13
DISTRIBUTED EXPERTISE?

• SOCIALLY DISTRIBUTED COGNITION people can
  overcome their limitations in thinking and
  inference by shared problem solving - together
  they can solve problems that would be too complex
  for one person
• PHYSICALLY DISTRIBUTED COGNITION cognitive load
  may be divided between a human being and external
  thinking tools (e.g., computers, written
  documents)

14
ELEMENTS OF PROGRESSIVE INQUIRY (Hakkarainen
1998 Hakkarainen, Lonka Lipponen, 1999)
Constructing Working Theories
Setting up Research Questions
Creating the Context
Critical Evaluation
Distributed expertise
Developing New Working Theories
Searching Deepening Knowledge
Generating SubordiGnate Questions
15
THE MAIN CHALLENGES OF LEARNING

• Take into account prior beliefs
• Apply socially shared problem solving negotiate
  the meaning
• Make use of differences between people as well as
  frictions between old and new knowledge
• Make use of the narrative mode of thinking
• Neither common sense nor facts work alone