Enhancing curricula and learning environments using critical realist perspectives and approaches: a case study and critique

While critical realist (CR) ontological and epistemological perspectives and research approaches are becoming more widely adopted by higher education researchers, the scope of research is relatively limited, and novice researchers in the area still struggle to create rich, in-depth, and critical accounts of these approaches ‘in action’. This article provides an account of teacher-researchers’ exploration of these perspectives in the context of an important aspect their everyday teaching practice – the design of effective curricula and learning environments. The context is research that focused on the design, evaluation, and enhancement of learning environments intended to facilitate students’ development of design thinking expertise. The article outlines the researchers’ CR paradigm positioning and implications for methodologies used to gather, analyse, and theorise data about the response of design and business students to three iterations of a design thinking learning environment. The research involved action research that integrated survey, case study, and theorising methodologies. Examples of data, analyses, and explanatory theory are provided to give insights into specific research tasks and their outcomes. Possible explanations for the findings and their implications for attempts to enhance the learning environment are considered from a CR perspective along with challenges that deploying these approaches may entail.     

Threads of local continuity between centralized and decentralized causality: Transitional explanations for the behavior of a complex system

One line of research on student understanding of complex systems has tended to emphasize discontinuities between common misconceptions and relatively more sophisticated understandings. Other work has focused on instruction while acknowledging the existence of other ways of understanding complex systems, but less emphasis has been on examining the knowledge structures within these intermediate ways of understanding. This study takes a microgenetic approach to examining student’s explanations for the behavior of complex systems. Using the Knowledge-in-Pieces epistemological perspective, the analysis documents a continuity of reasoning patterns across less prototypically centralized and more prototypically decentralized (a more sophisticated causality) explanations while explaining the movement of sand dunes. The first analysis examines 31 interviews and shows that many reflected a general reasoning pattern that encompassing some combination of an initial centralized explanation, a final decentralized explanation, and transitional explanations. A second analysis examines a single student’s reasoning pattern and finds that the activation of relevant intuitive knowledge pieces (p-prims) and transitional explanations function as threads of continuity across the continuum of reasoning patterns. These findings suggest that students are able to exhibit a continuity of reasoning patterns across centralized to decentralized causality and are able to access productive intuitive knowledge about complex systems that are applicable to both the macro and micro levels of sand dune movement. Implications suggest that future research investigate these transitional explanations along with the mechanisms of shifting explanations that can account for this robust continuum.     

The expertise reversal effect concerning instructional explanations

The expertise reversal effect occurs when learner’s expertise moderates design principles derived from cognitive load theory. Although this effect is supported by numerous empirical studies, indicating an overall large effect size, the effect was never tested by inducing expertise experimentally and using instructional explanations in a computer-based environment. The present experiment used an illustrated introductory text and a computer program about statistical data analyses with 93 students. Retention and transfer tests were employed as dependent measures. Each learner was randomly assigned to one condition of a 2 × 2 between subjects factorial design with the two factors expertise (novices vs. ‘experts’) and explanations (with vs. without). Expertise was induced by adding expository examples and illustrations to the introductory text to enhance text coherence and facilitate text comprehension. The expertise reversal effect was replicated for the dependent measure transfer, but not for retention. Results and implications for adaptive learning environments are discussed.     

Information processing interpretation of errors in college science learning

This article begins with a brief summary of mental models from the information processing perspective. A model of prototypical college learning is then presented. Next, some of the links between mental models and cognitive errors are examined. Finally, studies of one category of cognitive errors, misconceptions and preconceptions of college science students are reviewed. Six factors contributing to error production are identified: four involve spontaneous cognitive mechanisms (strong word associations; non-verbal, intuitive knowledge; tendency to minimize mental effort; untimely triggering of natural language processing mechanisms) and two involve imperfect knowledge (alternative belief systems; fuzzy concepts).     

The expertise reversal effect in prompting focused processing of instructional explanations

Providing prompts to induce focused processing of the central contents of instructional explanations is a promising instructional means to support novice learners in learning from instructional explanations. However, within research on the expertise reversal effect it has been shown that instructional means that are beneficial for novices can be detrimental for learners with more expertise if the instructional means provide guidance that overlaps with the internal guidance provided by the prior knowledge of learners with more expertise. Under such circumstances, prompts to induce focused processing might even be detrimental for learners with expertise whose prior knowledge already provides internal guidance to learn from explanations. On this basis, we aimed at experimentally varying expertise by developing prior knowledge. Specifically, we used a preparation intervention with contrasting cases to enhance learners’ prior knowledge (expertise). Against this background, we tested 71 university students in a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design: (a) Factor of expertise. Working with contrasting cases to develop prior knowledge and expertise to provide internal guidance to learn from instructional explanations (with vs. without), (b) Factor of prompts. Prompts to induce focused processing of the explanations (with vs. without). The results showed that prompts to induce focused processing fostered conceptual knowledge for novice learners whereas prompts hindered the acquisition of conceptual knowledge for learners with expertise that was developed by working with contrasting cases beforehand. Moreover, measures of subjective cognitive load and learning processes suggest that the instructional guidance provided by prompts compensated for the low internal guidance of novice learners and overlapped with the internal guidance of learners with expertise.     

The Reflective Self

ABSTRACT

The following paper will apply a social constructionist paradigm to the concepts of the reflective self, creativity and intuition as valuable skills in social work practice education. The students' learning process and their integration of self-reflective, intuitive and creative knowledge and skills will be illustrated through excerpts from their final papers in an advanced social work practice course taught by this instructor. A qualitative analysis will focus on three main themes that emerged from these final papers: learning from the client, the use of intuition, and helplessness and omnipotence. The author's underlying thesis is that on-going self-examination, intuitive knowledge and a creative use of self are not only crucial skills in clinical practice in general but should continue to be emphasized in social work practice education.     

元认知理论与学习不良儿童研究

元认知理论为人们全面深入理解学习不良问题提供了一个新视角,它对理解学习不良儿童的内部加工问题和发展提高学业成绩的教学方法都具有重要意义。元认知是个体在学习过程中主动控制认知过程的高层次思维,它包括两类成分:一类是静态成分,分为知识和动机信念;另一类是动态成分,主要指元认知监测和控制。与一般儿童相比,学习不良儿童在元认知加工方面存在不同程度的缺陷;在具体学科领域,学习不良儿童静态和动态元认知成分也有不同的表现。对学习不良儿童的研究应以服务教育实践为目的,打破纯实验研究的范式,采用不同方法,从不同角度探讨学习不良儿童的元认知发展规律和作用机制。     

小学教师课堂信息加工的特点和规律

教师教学专长的发展与课堂信息加工能力是教师职业发展研究的重要问题,在近20—30年的时间里,国内外心理学家与教育学家在教师教学专长和课堂信息加工能力发展方面做了大量理论与实验研究,提出了教师教学专长发展与课堂信息加工特点的理论,并发现随着教师专长的发展,教师对各类课堂情境信息的组织和加工速度、准确性、选择注意加工、表征能力以及重要课堂信息的加工能力等方面逐渐提高,这些理论和实证研究对教师教育、制定教师培训方案、教师培训和提高课堂教学效率有重要的指导作用。     

Facilitating Flexible Problem Solving: A Cognitive Load Perspective

The development of flexible, transferable problem-solving skills is an important aim of contemporary educational systems. Since processing limitations of our mind represent a major factor influencing any meaningful learning, the acquisition of flexible problem-solving skills needs to be based on known characteristics of our cognitive architecture in order to be effective and efficient. This paper takes a closer look at the processes involved in the acquisition of flexible problem-solving skills within a cognitive load framework. It concludes that (1) cognitive load theory can benefit from putting more emphasis on generalized knowledge structures; (2) there are tradeoffs between generality and power with respect to specific versus generalized knowledge structures; (3) generalized knowledge structures of “medium” generality are essential for flexible expertise; and (4) cognitive load theory could provide a valuable framework for considering essential attributes of flexible expertise.     

When Traditional Won't Do: Experiences from a “Lower-Level” Mathematics Classroom

High school teachers who engage students through active learning in their classrooms can more fully understand this instructional practice by examining the theories and strategies underlying the cognitive perspective of educational psychology, which addresses the development of knowledge in the individual mind. Two theoretical explanations, psychological constructivism and information processing, promote learning as a constructive process that can be aided by strategies such as activating prior knowledge, chunking, elaborating, and invoking a schema. High school teachers can use these cognitive active learning strategies in classroom instruction or incorporate them into out-of-class assignments to increase students engagement in their learning.     

“两种信号系统”学说与对外汉语教学

运用巴甫洛夫的"两种信号系统"学说,结合现代心理学、教育学、信息论、控制论、系统论等理论,对外国人学汉语中的一些理论问题和实践问题,予以一定解说.     

Towards a Participatory Multimedia Learning Model

The purpose of this paper is to present a participatory multimedia learning model that can be used in designing multimedia learning environments that support an active learning process and creative participation. Participatory multimedia learning can be defined as learning with systems that enable learners to produce part of the learning materials themselves. The aim of the model is to represent the human information processing system and to support the transformation of free cognitive resources into a germane cognitive load needed for knowledge construction. The paper also elaborates on the results of an empirical study examining the effectiveness of student-generated illustrations. Finnish elementary school students (N = 187) learned about the human immune system by interacting with multimedia learning materials. Students performed better on a retention test when they generated their own illustrations by drawing and when explanations were presented as animations, compared to students who received only textual material or generated illustrations from images offered.     

Learning Processes in Chemistry: Drawing Upon Cognitive Resources to Learn About the Particulate Structure of Matter

This article explores 11- to 16-year-old students' explanations for phenomena commonly studied in school chemistry from an inclusive cognitive resources or knowledge-in-pieces perspective that considers that student utterances may reflect the activation of knowledge elements at a range of levels of explicitness. We report 5 themes in student explanations that we consider to derive from implicit knowledge elements activated in cognition. Student thinking in chemistry has commonly been examined from a misconceptions or alternative conceptions/frameworks perspective, in which the focus has been on the status of learners' explicit conceptions. This approach has been valuable, but it fails to explain the origins or nature of the full range of alternative ideas reported. In physics education, the cognitive resources perspective has led to work to characterize implicit knowledge elements—described as phenomenological primitives (p-prims)—that provide learners with an intuitive sense of mechanism. School chemistry offers a complementary knowledge domain because of its focus on the nature of materials and its domination by theoretical models that explain observable phenomena in terms of emergent properties of complex ensembles of “quanticles” (molecules, ions, electrons, atoms, etc.) The themes reported in this study suggest a need to recognize primitive knowledge elements beyond those reported from physics education and suggest that some previously characterized p-prims may be better considered to derive from more broadly applicable intuitive knowledge elements.     

Promoting Expertise Through Simulation (PETS): A conceptual framework

Questioning how and why simulations can be suitable for supporting intraindividual learning and expertise development motivated this study. We depart from an empirically well supported cognitive perspective of expertise that focusses on cognitive adaptations through long-term engagement with professional work activities. The strength of simulation learning is seen in its multiple explanatory base, which is used to build the framework PETS (Promoting Expertise Through Simulation). The PETS model specifically addresses how simulations can contribute to intraindividual knowledge restructuring through case processing and learner-tailored guidance of a trainer supporting the thorough engagement in deliberate practice activities to go beyond automatization. Preparation, briefing, repetitive practice opportunities, and debriefing are phases of instructional embedding in simulation learning for which the PETS model identifies important prerequisites to enhance understanding of what works for whom under which conditions and why during expertise development.     

Students’ Conceptions as Dynamically Emergent Structures

There is wide consensus that learning in science must be considered a process of conceptual change rather than simply information accrual. There are three perspectives on students’ conceptions and conceptual change in science that have significant presence in the science education literature: students’ ideas as misconceptions, as coherent systems of conceptual elements, and as fragmented knowledge elements. If misconceptions, systems of elements, or fragments are viewed implicitly as “regular things”, these perspectives are in opposition. However, from a complex dynamic systems perspective, in which students’ conceptions are viewed as dynamically emergent structures, the oppositions are lessened, and the integrated view has significant implications for theory and practice.     

社会建构主义教学观及其对我国课程改革的启示

社会建构主义教学观认为，个体获得知识不仅是个人建构的过程，也是内在的社会化过程，文化活动和语言活动等社会因素影响个体的学习。社会建构主义教学观有两种代表观点：皮亚杰的社会认知冲突理论和维果斯基的社会文化理论。社会建构主义从课堂教学、同伴间相互作用以及言语角度分析知识建构过程；在当代课程改革的实际应用方面，包括合作学习与交互式教学、情境性教学、跨学科学习、教育评估和教育改革。这种教学观在理论、实践和方法论上影响了未来的教育发展方向。     

Teleology as a tacit dimension of teaching and learning evolution: A sociological approach to classroom interaction in science education

Teleology has been described as an intuitive cognitive bias and as a major type of student conception. There is controversy regarding whether teleological explanations are a central obstacle to, are legitimate in, or are even supportive of science learning. However, interaction in science classrooms has not yet been investigated with regard to teleology. Consequently, this study addresses the question of how teleological explanations emerge in science classroom interactions about evolution and how teachers and students address emerging teleology. In this article, we introduce a theoretical and methodological framework drawing from the sociology of knowledge and systems theory, suggesting that this framework may enrich the understanding of knowledge construction and of social practices in the science classroom because it enables distinguishing between explicit and tacit knowledge. We investigated seven secondary school units about evolution and present data from four grade-12 classes in Germany, a country with very few creationists, to contrast two ways in which teleology is addressed. In the first type, the teachers combine intentional and need-based teleological explanations with aspects of scientific theories in an ambiguous way. Contrastingly, in the second type, the teachers construct a duality between correct mechanistic and incorrect teleological explanations by discrediting preceding scientific theories. In the discussion, we argue that the presented sociological approach can also be valuable in other science education contexts, such as creationism, the nature of science and socio-scientific issues, because classroom interaction involves tacit communication, such as a tacit epistemology, which are essential grounds for the students' knowledge construction.     

Misconceptions Reconceived: A Constructivist Analysis of Knowledge in Transition

This article uses a critical evaluation of research on student misconceptions in science and mathematics to articulate a constructivist view of learning in which student conceptions play productive roles in the acquisition of expertise. We acknowledge and build on the empirical results of misconceptions research but question accompanying views of the character, origins, and growth of students' conceptions. Students have often been viewed as holding flawed ideas that are strongly held, that interfere with learning, and that instruction must confront and replace. We argue that this view overemphasizes the discontinuity between students and expert scientists and mathematicians, making the acquisition of expertise difficult to conceptualize. It also conflicts with the basic premise of constructivism: that students build more advanced knowledge from prior understandings. Using case analyses, we dispute some commonly cited dimensions of discontinuity and identify important continuities that were previously ignored or underemphasized. We highlight elements of knowledge that serve both novices and experts, albeit in different contexts and under different conditions. We provide an initial sketch of a constructivist theory of learning that interprets students' prior conceptions as resources for cognitive growth within a complex systems view of knowledge. This theoretical perspective aims to characterize the interrelationships among diverse knowledge elements rather than identify particular flawed conceptions; it emphasizes knowledge refinement and reorganization, rather than replacement, as primary metaphors for learning; and it provides a framework for understanding misconceptions as both flawed and productive.