Reframing research on learning with technology: in search of the meaning of cognitive tools

Previous research and development with cognitive tools has been limited by an inadequate conceptualization of the complexity underlying their nature and affordances for supporting learning and performance. This paper provides a new perspective on cognitive tools through the lens of the theories of distributed cognition and expertise. The learner, tool, and activity form a joint learning system, and the expertise in the world should be reflected not only in the tool but also in the learning activity within which learners make use of the tool. This enhanced perspective is used to clarify the nature of cognitive tools and distinguish them from other types of computer tools used in learning contexts. We have classified cognitive tools considering how expertise is classified: domain-independent (general) cognitive tools, domain-generic cognitive tools, and domain-specific cognitive tools. The implications are presented in reference to research, development, and practice of cognitive tools. The capabilities of cognitive tools should be differentiated from those of the human, but regarded as part of the system of expertise. Cognitive tools should be accompanied by appropriate learning activities, and relevant learner performance should then be assessed in the context of tool use.     

智能时代课堂变革图景:智慧课堂及其构建策略

智能时代对课堂变革提出新要求,澄明智能技术“何以能”及“如何能”促进学生智慧发展的逻辑理路是开展智慧课堂实践的认识论前提。文章在分析智慧课堂内涵的基础上,首先,提出了课堂学习的物质实践观,即学习可以理解为是一种学习者以物质技术手段为中介的认知性实践,学习者使用物质技术手段的水平能反映其学习实践水平;其次,通过剖析智慧课堂学习方式、场域要素构成,揭示了课堂场域支持学生智慧发展的微观逻辑,构建了反映“智慧生成”及“技术优化”逻辑的智慧课堂模型;最后,提出了智慧课堂构建策略,包括聚焦学生智慧的多元高阶发展、建立问题解决的智慧生成效应、发挥智能技术的优化调节效应。以此,为智慧课堂教学实践提供理论借鉴及实践参照。     

Engagement in business simulation games: A self-system model of motivational development

This research draws on the self-system model of motivational development to explain how the use of business simulation games in class facilitates students’ engagement and enhances their learning. Based on a survey of 360 undergraduate students who played a business simulation game in a marketing course, the findings show that students’ perceptions of competence, autonomy, relatedness and self-efficacy have a positive impact on their cognitive, emotional and behavioural engagement. In addition, cognitive and emotional engagement have a positive influence on skills development and perceived learning.     

‘Let your data tell a story:’ climate change experts and students navigating disciplinary argumentation in the classroom

ABSTRACT

Science education trends promote student engagement in authentic knowledge in practice to tackle personally consequential problems. This study explored how partnering scientists and students on a social media platform supported students’ development of disciplinary practice knowledge through practice-based learning with experts during two pilot enactments of a project-based curriculum focusing on the ecological impacts of climate change. Through the online platform, scientists provided feedback on students' infographics, visual argumentation artifacts that use data to communicate about climate change science. We conceptualize the infographics and professional data sets as boundary objects that supported authentic argumentation practices across classroom and professional contexts, but found that student generated data was not robust enough to cross these boundaries. Analysis of the structure and content of the scientists’ feedback revealed that when critiquing argumentation, scientists initiated engagement in multiple scientific practices, supporting a holistic rather than discrete model of practice-based learning. While traditional classroom inquiry has emphasized student experimentation, we found that engagement with existing professional data sets provided students with a platform for developing expertise in systemic scientific practices during argument construction. We further found that many students increased the complexity and improved the visual presentation of their arguments after feedback.     

Enhancing primary school children collaborative learning experiences in maths via a 3D virtual environment

Over the last years there has been a growing use of 3D virtual environments for educational purposes. Many studies advocate the integration of these environments in the daily teaching practice of various subjects. This requires innovative design in order create the appropriate affective/ pedagogical conditions as well as the development and use of well-structured activities in order to achieve effective collaborative learning. This paper presents an exploratory study in which collaborative learning strategies and cognitive apprenticeship models act as the pedagogical framework to facilitate learning and collaboration. The context is the teaching of mathematics in primary education via a 3D virtual environment. Specifically, we focus on evaluating students’ engagement (behavioral, affective and cognitive) in the collaborative learning process as they learn fractional concepts in a meaningful way. The findings show that a 3D virtual environment can support collaborative learning in primary school through its ability to enhance students’ engagement (behavioral, affective and cognitive) in the collaborative learning process.     

Deliberate Practice in Medicine: The Motivation to Engage in Work-Related Learning and Its Contribution to Expertise

This study examined physicians’ motivation to engage in work-related learning and its contribution to expertise development beyond work experience. Based on deliberate practice theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 residents and 28 experienced physicians in internal medicine, focusing on the activities they engaged in during work that might contribute to professional development and the goals underlying this behavior. Learning motivation was also measured using a goal orientation questionnaire. Expertise was measured by a case test derived from the Medical Knowledge Self Assessment Program (MKSAP). The interviews showed that participants’ learning was largely embedded in everyday work; most of their learning activities were inherent to the job rather than motivated by competence improvement goals. The problems encountered in patient care played a key role in prompting learning. Role, work experience and work situation affected the type of activities engaged in, as well as the intensity of practice. Deliberate engagement in work-related learning activities was related neither to goal orientations nor to case test performance, except activities by the experienced physicians to keep up-to-date. Work experience, in contrast, showed a clear positive relationship with the performance of residents. Two main conclusions can be drawn from this study: (1) patient care induced relevant learning activities aimed at performance improvement for the patient’s sake; (2) deliberate investments in learning can be enhanced to promote expertise development. Self-regulated learning by physicians needs to be strengthened and the organization for which they work should facilitate and encourage learning in daily practice.     

Evaluation of a pedagogical model for student engagement in learning activities

Current research suggests that student engagement with academic schoolwork in secondary school classrooms is often insufficient. This issue is of relevance because student engagement is a prerequisite for acquiring knowledge and skills and is also a mediator of achievement and important life outcomes. In response to this, the present study evaluates a pedagogical model for stimulating student engagement in learning activities in secondary school contexts through an action research approach. This model is composed of five facilitators of engagement that, when considered in both the design and implementation of learning activities, can potentially contribute to stimulating behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement in such activities. Nineteen Year 9 students of Spanish from a state school in England, their teacher and the researcher participated in two long-term, learning activities designed using the proposed pedagogical model. Data were collected over two school terms through qualitative student self-reports, interviews with students and their teacher and the researcher’s journal. Thematic analyses were used to examine the effects of the learning activities on student behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement. The results seem to confirm that the application of the proposed pedagogical model could help promote thorough student engagement in learning activities. Findings also suggest that failing to support the model’s facilitators of engagement may have detrimental effects on overall student engagement in learning activities. The study contributes to the improvement of student engagement with academic schoolwork internationally by proposing an assessed pedagogical solution that could be implemented by secondary school teachers with relative ease.     

Design Decisions in Developing Learning Trajectories–Based Assessments in Mathematics: A Case Study

This article analyzes the design decisions of a team developing diagnostic assessments for a learning trajectory focused on rational number reasoning. The analysis focuses on the design rationale for key decisions about how to develop the cognitive assessments and related validity arguments within a fluid state and national policy context. The study draws on ethnographic methods adapted from science, technology, and society studies to document key rationales for decisions. For this team, concerns about the validity of both the assessments and the hypothetical trajectory, anticipated uses of the assessments, and the available distribution of resources and expertise to different project activities were all considerations for significant design decisions throughout the project. The study findings suggest that success in the design of trajectories-based assessments depends on teams’ attention to balancing core design activities with engagement in the external policy environment, balancing precision with utility for diagnosis in defining the levels of a trajectory, and balancing the goals of supporting and assessing student learning.     

Reggio Emilia Inspired Learning Groups: Relationships,Communication, Cognition,and Play

A key aspect of the Reggio Emilia inspired curriculum is a learning group approach that fosters social and cognitive development. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a Reggio Emilia inspired learning group approach works for children with and without disabilities. This study gives insight into how to form an appropriate learning group including the effective ratio between children with and without disabilities, the teacher expertise required and other supporting strategies for children with special needs to function more positively in a learning group approach. This study employed both qualitative and quantitative data analysis to code selected videotaped learning group sessions. Findings indicated that across the five children, four children developed in the areas of relationship, communication, and play skills. Children within the learning group exhibited increased interest, inclusion, friendship, and empathy toward both children with special needs. In addition, facilitating high quality learning groups requires intentional planning, reflection, and engagement from children and teachers.     

Exploratory talk in the early years: analysing exploratory talk in collaborative group activities involving younger learners

Collaborative group work has the potential for providing rich opportunities for children to learn through talk with peers; however, in practice, little effective engagement in learning is observed within authentic learning contexts. Exploratory talk is associated with high levels of cognitive challenge within collaborative group work. Detailed observations of collaborative interactions which took place during activities in authentic learning contexts in Reception and Year 3 classes were analysed to identify exploratory talk episodes and to gain insights into the factors contributing to their development. This study makes a theoretical contribution to understanding the nature of exploratory talk in the early years and provides insights into the form that scaffolding of exploratory talk can take in authentic learning contexts.     

Value creation in online communities for educators

The popularity and pervasiveness of online communities have led researchers and practitioners alike to closely examine the utility of online communities for supporting and facilitating professional learning. As economic constraints leave fewer resources available for professional development, educators in particular are examining the potential of online communities to enhance and extend traditional professional development opportunities. Leveraging the potential of online communities requires an in‐depth understanding of the value that members find through their participation. This study used Wenger, Trayner and de Laat's value creation framework to better understand cycles of value creation in online communities. Findings illuminate how members with varying perspectives and levels of expertise co‐construct new forms of meaning and understanding in ways that are individually and collectively valuable, and how they apply that knowledge to their professional practice. Additionally, the study offers insight into the ways in which actions of community leaders and a sponsoring organization support and facilitate value creation through different types of activities, tools and interactions.     

Instructional design for advanced learners: Establishing connections between the theoretical frameworks of cognitive load and deliberate practice

Cognitive load theory (CLT) has been successful in identifying instructional formats that are more effective and efficient than conventional problem solving in the initial, novice phase of skill acquisition. However, recent findings regarding the “expertise reversal effect” have begun to stimulate cognitive load theorists to broaden their horizon to the question of how instructional design should be altered as a learner's knowledge increases. To answer this question, it is important to understand how expertise is acquired and what fosters its development. Expert performance research, and, in particular, the theoretical framework of deliberate practice have given us a better understanding of the principles and activities that are essential in order to excel in a domain. This article explores how these activities and principles can be used to design instructional formats based on CLT for higher levels of skills mastery. The value of these formats for e-learning environments in which learning tasks can be adaptively selected on the basis of online assessments of the learner's level of expertise is discussed. In their preparation of this article, the first and last authors were supported by an Internationalization grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, The Hague, project number 411-01-010).     

Apprenticing for creativity in the improvisation lesson: a qualitative enquiry

Effective teacher-student learning relationships can propel students to advanced ways of knowing and acting. In much arts based higher education learning, dynamic and fluid interplay of cognitive, meta-cognitive and aspirational aims and goals are prevalent and passed to students in a learning relationship that can be described as a cognitive apprenticeship. Interpretative phenomenological analysis is used to explore four conservatoire teachers and their musical improvisation students. Investigating in the lesson experiences reveal pedagogical applications of modeling, scaffolding, coaching, reflection and developing mastery and expertise in students. A cognitive apprenticeship model can provide a framework for teachers to understand how to develop increased student control, ownership of learning, and contextually situated instructional strategies that brings cognitive and creative thinking, action and reflection to the forefront of learning and teaching. The study reveals how educators can develop trajectories of learning and problem-solving concepts that draw students into a culture of expert practice.     

Pedagogical Affordances of Multiple External Representations in Scientific Processes

Multiple external representations (MERs) have been widely used in science teaching and learning. Theories such as dual coding theory and cognitive flexibility theory have been developed to explain why the use of MERs is beneficial to learning, but they do not provide much information on pedagogical issues such as how and in what conditions MERs could be introduced and used to support students?? engagement in scientific processes and develop competent scientific practices (e.g., asking questions, planning investigations, and analyzing data). Additionally, little is understood about complex interactions among scientific processes and affordances of MERs. Therefore, this article focuses on pedagogical affordances of MERs in learning environments that engage students in various scientific processes. By reviewing literature in science education and cognitive psychology and integrating multiple perspectives, this article aims at exploring (1) how MERs can be integrated with science processes due to their different affordances, and (2) how student learning with MERs can be scaffolded, especially in a classroom situation. We argue that pairing representations and scientific processes in a principled way based on the affordances of the representations and the goals of the activities is a powerful way to use MERs in science education. Finally, we outline types of scaffolding that could help effective use of MERs including dynamic linking, model progression, support in instructional materials, teacher support, and active engagement.     

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.     

Educating for an Inclusive World: Lessons Learned From A Globally Networked Human Rights and Disability Course for Social Work and Law Students

This article examines an innovative model of online international education regarding disability through a human rights perspective piloted through a collaboration between Universidad LaSalle, Mexico, and University at Buffalo, United States. The course is organized around a pressing global human rights and development issue. Its objective is to promote effective practice with persons with disabilities through cross-national, cross-disciplinary, human-rights based education; strengthen students’ sense of global engagement; and foster cross-cultural expertise and competence with diversity. The implications for effective professional education in law and social work are discussed. The article also examines pedagogical strategies and presents case study materials, identifies key disability rights themes common to both nations and cultures, and explores how distance learning technology is implemented in the course. A preliminary assessment of this newly piloted approach is also presented, based on data from students, as well as the implications for teaching and practice.     

The psychological dimension of transformation in teacher learning

Against a background which recognises pedagogical content knowledge as the distinctive element of teacher competence/expertise, this theoretical essay argues for its central construct – that of transformation – to be understood by teachers and teacher educators in psychological terms (as was originally proposed by Dewey). Transformation requires teachers to fashion disciplinary knowledge such that it is accessible to the learner. It is argued that for transformation to happen, teacher thinking must include a sophisticated grasp of cognition and metacognition if teachers are to be characterised as competent, let alone expert. This article is written within a context of considerable social and academic scrutiny in the UK of the form and content of professional teacher preparation and development. In recent years, the contribution of psychological knowledge to teacher education has been filtered through procedural lenses of how best to ‘manage classrooms’, ‘assess learning’, ‘build confidence’ or whatever without a matched concern for psychological constructs through which such issues might be interpreted; thus, leaving teachers vulnerable in their professional understandings of learning and its complexities. That society now requires high-level cognitive engagement amongst its participants places cognitive and metacognitive demands on teachers which can only be met if they themselves are conceptually equipped.     

翻转课堂教学模式下的学习投入研究

翻转课堂作为信息技术与教育深度融合的一种新型教学模式,是教育教学改革研究的重点之一。翻转课堂的实质是颠倒教学流程,由被动学习转向主动学习,关注学习过程中学生的“做”或“活动”,在很大程度上弥补了传统教学单一授课的缺点。学习投入不仅关注外显的行为投入,还关注情感、认知方面的投入,能够较为全面地反映学生的学习收获。探讨翻转课堂教学模式下的大学生学习投入水平以及影响因素,设计学习投入维度量表与调查问卷。实验结果表明,翻转课堂中丰富的交互活动与多样化的学习途径,能够有效支持教师引导学生进行自主学习、协作学习与答疑讨论等,对提升大学生行为、认知、情感层面的学习投入水平可起到显著作用。     

Should physicists preach what they practice?

Does one need to think like a scientist to learn science? To what extent can examining the cognitive activities of scientists provide insights for developing effective pedagogical practices? The cognition and instruction literature has focused on providing a model of expert knowledge structures. To answer these questions, what is needed is a model of expert reasoning practices. This analysis is a step in that direction. It focuses on a tacit dimension of the thinking practices of expert physicists, “constructive modeling”. Drawing on studies of historical cases and protocol accounts of expert reasoning in scientific problem solving, it is argued that having expertise in physics requires facility with the practice of “constructive modeling” that includes the ability to reason with models viewed generically. Issues pertaining to why and how this practice of experts might be incorporated into teaching are explored.     

Learning residential electrical wiring through computer simulation: The impact of computer‐based learning environments on student achievement and cognitive load

Multimedia learning environments such as computer simulations are widely accepted as tools for supporting science learning. Although the design of multimedia learning environments can be domain specific, few studies have focused on the use of computer simulations for learning residential electrical wiring. This study aimed to determine whether students using computer simulations learned better than traditional classroom learners in the domain of residential wiring. A quasi‐experiment was implemented with 169 high school students. The simulation group participated in a series of computer simulations, whereas the control group received lectures and demonstrations from an instructor. Students' cognitive load as elevated by multimedia leaning tasks was compared with that of students learning using traditional methods. The simulation group learned significantly better and reported higher cognitive load than did the control group. Moreover, the simulation group managed cognitive resources more efficiently on transfer of learning than did the control group. Having more opportunities to interact with a simulation‐based learning environment could result in higher cognitive load. The higher cognitive load seemed to result in better performance on the achievement test and, therefore, the learners' mental effort was possibly invested mainly in meaning making in the virtual learning environments. Discussion of the results, instruments and research design, as well as suggestions for future studies are provided.