Action research through stimulated recall

The emphasis in classroom learning research has moved from process-product models to the mediating process paradigm. The stimulated-recall interview and thik aloud techniques are the two main processes that have been used in attempts to find out what goes on inside students' heads while they are learning. For example, this researcher has used the stimulated-recall interview technique to identify the workplace thinking of a marine science researcher, and the in-class thinking of a year eleven biology student. Such studies as these have produced findings with important implications for the classroom teacher in the role of action researcher. This paper describes how to conduct stimulated-recall interviews and discusses some classroom implications from the two studies. Specializations: secondary science teacher education, classroom thinking during instruction, direct teaching of thinking skills.     

Quality of instruction and achievement outcomes

This chapter reviews the fundamental assumptions, main results, and major problems of research on instructional quality and cognitive student outcomes. Although considerable progress has been made in this field of research, the present theoretical state, encompassing mostly simple process-product relations, is far from satisfactory. Findings from our own research demonstrate that it is both necessary and fruitful to expand the simple process-product paradigm by including cumulative, interactive, compensatory, and contextual effects.     

An ORACLE chronicle: A decade of classroom research

This article describes a decade of classroom research carried out in the United Kingdom at the University of Leicester. The ORACLE Project (Observational Research and Classroom Learning Evaluation) began in 1975 and consisted of two main projects. The first concerned a longitudinal process-product study of teaching and learning in the junior-age (7–11) classrooms while the second study concentrated on one particular aspect of the organization of these classrooms, collaborative group work. The major findings of both studies are described including the categorization of teaching styles and pupil types and the relationship between them. Evidence concerning the effectiveness of different teaching styles is also presented. More importantly, the article explores some of the possible reasons which might explain both teachers' and pupils' behaviour. It is suggested that process-product research still has an important part to play in the study of classrooms but that the outcome measures might, more usefully, concentrate on social factors affecting pupils' learning and the ways in which teachers can create supportive classroom climates rather than on the traditional measures of achievement.     

Instructional behaviors of more and less effective beginning regular and special educators

To enhance understanding of effective teaching, we studied 117 elementary and intermediate secondary general and special educators who were more and less effective in maintaining class participation. We performed MANOVAs on 22 variables associated with positive student outcomes in the process-product literature and found that teachers who maintained higher levels of participation provided effective transitions, made assignments, and approved of students' verbal responses more often than less effective educators. In addition, they demonstrated negative regard less often than less effective teachers. They also acknowledged learner-initiated interactions and employed strategies for managing student inattention and disruption less frequently than teachers who were less effective in maintaining active student involvement. We also found differences in the frequencies with which elementary and secondary teachers and general and special educators exhibited specific behaviors.     

Theory of Interlocutory Logic and Sequential Analysis of Interactive Problem-Solving Situations: A Powerful Method

According to Vygotsky's theory of development and its instructional applications, a good way to increase students' knowledge and cognitive abilities is to organise at school co-operative and co-elaborative learning situations. Under some conditions, when students interact, the process of sharing problem-solving procedures results in reorganising and developing their own cognition. But, given that such co-resolution interactive settings can lead to students' individual cognitive progress, we need to explain how. The main aim of this article is to present a theoretical and methodological system to analyse the socio-cognitive processes within an interaction. A pragmatic interlocutory theory, founded on the theory of speech acts, is used and tested with a small group of students involved in solving a mathematical problem at school. Hypotheses about mechanisms of progress invoke the role of semiotic mediations, via speech acts, as a vehicle as well as a tool for sharing the meaning of linguistic signs (construction of intersubjectivity). Thanks to the double function of language signs (communicative and representative) and to the individual internalisation of shared processes, students become able to (re-) organise their thoughts and to increase not only knowledge, but also cognitive and metacognitive tools. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Student teacher challenges: using the cognitive load theory as an explanatory lens

Cognitive load theory (CLT) can explain the challenges faced by student teachers. This study, guided by the CLT, included 26 pre-service teachers. Participants completed a cognitive load self-report questionnaire and were interviewed at two points during their student teaching. Results revealed that student teachers decreased mental effort related to monitoring their students’ level of attention, meeting needs of diverse learners, and managing internal and external distractions. Qualitative analysis revealed: (1) student teachers became aware of limited cognitive resources; (2) lesson planning imposes cognitive load during student teaching; and (3) cognitive overload limits the ability to make modifications during teaching.     

教师认知视角下的高效大学英语课堂教学

随着教师认知理论在第二语言教育领域中的逐渐应用,对英语教师认知的研究开始受到关注。然而,以探讨英语教师认知与课堂实践关系为目的的实证研究还较少。此项实证研究以大学英语教师为对象,通过分析英语教师认知与高效语言课堂教学之间的关系,发现以学生为中心、保持教师认知与教学实践的一致及有效的师生沟通才是实现高效大学英语课堂教学的有效途径。     

语文教学中学生角色意识的培养

在职业学校中，部分学生学习被动，缺乏主体意识，缘于学生对自己的学生角色意识的认识产生偏差。培养学生的角色意识要通过三条途径：在认知心理上唤醒学生的需要意识，激发学习的愿望；在教学内容上还给学生选择权，唤起学生参与意识；在教学方法上利用角色转换，强化学生的主体意识。     

论师生合作的艺术

教学中的师生合作包括两个方面 :一是情感的合作 ;二是认识的合作。师生实现情感合作的艺术是 :1.建立良好的师生关系 ;2 .教师要善于激发学生的情感。师生实现认识合作的艺术是 :1.转变“学生观” ,把学生当作认识与活动的主体 ;2 .了解学生思维的特点 ;3.精心设计教学思路     

常规关系模式与大学英语听力教学

常规关系是事物自身的关系经过认知的折射。成为把握语言的认知工具。常规关系运用于听力教学不仅有助于培养学生的准确理解听力的能力，也有助于培养学生的听力预测能力，进而能够提高其听力水平。     

Instructional Design as a Professional Development Tool-of-Choice for Graduate Teaching Assistants

Institutions need effective and efficient methods of professional development for preparing graduate students to teach. These skills are important both for their immediate roles as teaching assistants (TAs) and for their eventual roles in the professoriate. An iterative process model from instructional design can function as a cognitive organizational framework for the development of teaching expertise. It facilitates expertise by supporting TAs in connecting new and existing knowledge about teaching and learning in meaningful ways that reflect the cognitive processes of expert teachers. Thus, it can support both the current and future development of teaching expertise and facilitate the application of knowledge in the form of teaching strategies. Patricia L. Hardré earned her Ph.D. in Education at the University of Iowa. She specializes in Instructional Design and Technology with emphases on cognition and instruction, human motivation, and educational assessment. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Oklahoma. Her current research pursuits include K-12 teacher education, TA training and development, high school students' motivation to learn and persist in school, and the effects of computer-based administration of research instruments.     

Teaching Thinking: new signs for theories of cognition

In this overview of research and practice associated with teaching thinking, three conceptions of thinking are identified. Thinking as information‐processing, which has its roots in the dominant paradigm in cognitive psychology; thinking as making judgements, which is associated with critical thinking; and thinking as sense‐making, which is embedded in constructivist epistemology. Core assumptions and characteristics of each viewpoint, as they are realised in cognitive instruction, are examined. The main features of an emergent model of instruction, cognitive apprenticeship, are identified. Finally, using the information‐processing framework as a baseline, socially shared cognition and situated cognition are detected as new signs for cognitive theory.     

Sensitivity and Challenge in University Mathematics Tutorial Teaching

Data from observations of first year university mathematics tutorials were analyzed to elicit characteristics of teaching using a tool, the teaching triad, developed in earlier research. Analysis explored elements of `sensitivity to students' and `mathematical challenge' in the observed teaching. Initial analyses suggested teaching to consist mainly of tutor exposition and closed questions embodying little challenge for the student. More finely grained analyses provided insights into pedagogic processes relating teaching actions, processes and strategies and their learning outcomes, and providing alternative perspectives on sensitivity and challenge. The research, distinctively, shows approaches to analyzing teaching that start to address tutor-student interactions related to cognitive construction of mathematics (here abstract algebra) by undergraduates within the social dimensions of the tutorial setting. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Connecting the dots: social network structure,conflict, and group cognitive complexity

The current paper combines arguments from the social capital and group cognition literature to explain two different processes through which communication network structures and intra group conflict influence groups’ cognitive complexity (GCC). We test in a sample of 44 groups the mediating role of intra group conflict in the relationship between communication network density and fragmentation on the one hand and groups’ cognitive complexity on the other hand. The results show that network fragmentation has a positive effect on GCC by fostering task conflict, while network density has a positive impact on GCC by reducing relationship conflict in student groups. The paper makes an important contribution to both theory and practice in the field of collaborative learning, by exploring how groups’ affective and a cognitive dynamics impact on emergent collective cognitive structures.     

Active Instruction for Students at Risk: Remarks on Merging Process-Outcome and Cognitive Perspectives

Brophy argues that the active learning associated with the process-product perspective is an improvement over traditional learning and that it is appropriate for students at risk. We accept much of Brophy's argument, but think it can be strengthened by appealing to more of the research on cognitive strategies, even though there are points of tension between the two approaches. Much of the commentary focuses on trying to identify the points of tension in the areas of student variables, teacher variables, and content variables.     

Teacher Education: A Focus on Action

The educational community has, in recent times, abandoned a quantitative approach to research on teaching, characterized by process-product research, for a focus on naturalistic inquiry and the use of qualitative research methods. Major changes in research directions are accompanied in time by an integration process, that is, attempts to assimilate new knowledge with an already existing knowledge base. Attempts to integrate process-product research on teaching with more recent work have been impeded by major assumptions in research paradigms that have made the two directions seeming antagonists in the pursuit of knowledge. This paper explores the potential of integrating the results of earlier research on teaching with recent work stemming from both naturalistic inquiry and theoretical work in cognitive science. Major directions and issues are examined for their compatibility and ability to contribute to a broader perspective of the teaching/leaming process and teacher education.     

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.     

Learners’ perceptions and illusions of adaptivity in computer-based learning environments

Research on computer-based adaptive learning environments has shown exemplary growth. Although the mechanisms of effective adaptive instruction are unraveled systematically, little is known about the relative effect of learners’ perceptions of adaptivity in adaptive learning environments. As previous research has demonstrated that the learners’ view towards a learning environment strongly influences their learning outcomes and learning process, it can be discussed whether program-defined adaptivity is not only effective because of the underlying learner models, but also because the adaptivity is perceived and experienced as such by the learners. In this study, we apply the cognitive mediational paradigm and hypothesize that perceptions of adaptivity mediate the relation between adaptive instruction and learners’ motivations and learning outcomes. The results do not fully support the claim of the cognitive mediational paradigm. Both adaptivity and perceptions were related to motivation, but learners’ perceptions did not act as a mediating variable.     

国内外课堂教学行为研究之比较

课堂教学行为的研究，内容主要集中在教师行为和师生互动行为上，方法以“过程——结果法”尤为盛行，但也表现出对象理解的片面、方法使用的不恰当等问题。与此相应，课堂教学行为研究必然走向：对课堂教学行为认识的澄清，现实基础上的课堂教学行为改造、研究方法的多元化等。     

Cognitive Comparisons of Students' Systems Modeling in Ecology

This study examined the cognition of five pairs of high school students over time as they built quantitative ecological models using STELLA software. One pair of students emerged as being particularly proficient at learning to model, and was able to use models productively to explore and explain ecological system behaviors. We present detailed contrasts between this and the other pairs of students' cognitive behaviors while modeling, in three areas that were crucial to their modeling productivity: (a) focusing on model output and net interactions versus on model input and individual relationships when building and revising models, (b) exploring the nature and implications of dependencies and feedbacks versus just creating these as properties of complex systems, and (c) using variables versus constants to represent continuous and periodic functions. We then apply theories of the multifaceted nature of cognition to describe object-level, metalevel, and emotional dimensions of cognitive performance that help to explain the observed differences among students' approaches to STELLA modeling. Finally, we suggest pedagogical strategies for supporting all types of students in learning the central scientific practice of model-based quantitative thinking.