Education Question
DUE IN 18 HOURS
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg936IW9i7Q
After watching the video you can answer one of the following questions.
(should answer questions clearly and fully in 400-500 words)
(Make sure the answers are connected with some information from the book ch9 as I attached.)
1. What role does factual knowledge play in expert problem solving?
2. How can you teach problem solving and still have students develop basic skills?
3. What can teachers do to encourage creative problem solving? What types of things might impede students’ creative problem-solving?
SEVENTH
CANADIAN
EDITION
WOOLFOLK
WINNE
PERRY
EDUCATIONALPSYCHOLOG
m
what
would
you
do?
Liubomir/Shutterstoc
k
CHAPTER
9
COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
TEACHERS CASEBOOK: Uncritical Thinking
This years class is worse than any you have ever had. You assigned a research paper,
and you find more and more students are using the web for their information. In
itself, using the web is not bad, but the students appear to be completely uncritical
about what they find on the internet. If it is on the web, it must be right seems to
be the attitude of these students. Their first drafts are filled with quotes that seem
very biased to you, but there are no sources cited or listed. It is not just that students
do not know how to reference their work. You are more concerned that they cannot
critically evaluate what they are reading. And it seems all they are reading is the web!
CRITICAL THINKING
How would you help your students evaluate the information they are finding on
the web?
Beyond this immediate issue, how will you help students think more critically
about the subjects you are teaching?
How will you take into account the cultural beliefs and values of your students as
you support their critical thinking
OVERVIEW AND OBJECTIVES
In the previous chapter, we focused on how knowledge developshow people make sense
of and remember information and ideas. In this chapter, we consider complex cognitive
processes that lead to understanding. Understanding is more than memorizing. It is more
than retelling in your own words. Understanding involves appropriately transforming and
using knowledge, skills, and ideas. These understandings are considered higher-level
cognitive objectives in a commonly used system of educational objectives (L. W. Anderson
& Krathwohl,
200
1; B. S. Bloom, Engelhart, Frost, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956). We will focus on
implications of cognitive theories for the day-to-day practice of teaching
.
Because the cognitive perspective is a philosophical orientation and not a unified
theoretical model, teaching methods derived from it are varied. In this chapter, we will first
examine the complex cognitive process of metacognitionusing knowledge and skills about
learning, motivation, and yourself to plan and regulate your own learning. Next, we explore
four important areas in which cognitive theorists have made suggestions for learning and
teaching: learning strategies, problem solving, creativity, and critical thinking, including
argumentation. Finally, we will consider the question of how to encourage the transfer of
learning from one situation to another to make learning more useful.
When you have completed this chapter, you should be able to:
9.1 Discuss the roles of metacognition in learning and remembering.
9.2 Describe several learning and study strategies that help students develop their
metacognitive abilities.
9.3 Explain the processes involved in problem solving and the factors that can interfere
with successful problem solving.
9.4 Explain how creativity is defined, assessed, and encouraged in the
classroom.
9.5 Identify factors that influence students abilities to think critically and to form and
support arguments.
9.6 Discuss how, why, and when knowledge learned in one situation might be
applied to
new
situations
and problems.
The complex cognitive skills we will examine in this chapter take us beyond the more basic
processes of perceiving, representing, and remembering (though after reading Chapter 8,
you may believe that there is nothing simple about these). Much of what we consider in
this chapter has been described as higher-order thinking, that is, thinking that moves
beyond remembering or repeating facts and ideas to truly understanding, dissecting, and
evaluating those facts or even creating new concepts and ideas of your own. Jerome Bruner
(1973) once wrote a book about this kind of thinking entitled Beyond the Information
Givena good way to describe higher-level thinking. As Bruner (1996) later noted:
Being able to go beyond the information given to figure things out is one of the few
untarnishable joys of life. One of the great triumphs of learning (and of teaching) is to get
things organized in your head in a way that permits you to know more than you ought
to. And this takes reflection, brooding about what it is that you know. (Bruner, 1996, p. 129)
In Chapter 14, you will encounter a way of thinking about higher-level thinking. We use
Blooms taxonomy to categorize levels of thinking in a hierarchy from the lower levels of
remembering, understanding, and applying, to the higher levels of analyzing, evaluating,
and creating. Of course, it is difficult to know exactly what kind of thinking any particular
student is doing without also knowing what is the basis for that thinking. A child who
invents a simple principle of balance by experimenting with a seesaw is thinking more
complexly than a student who parrots a principle of balance memorized from a textbook,
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304 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
even though the latter might sound higher level. We are reminded
of the great scene in the 1997 Matt Damon and Ben Affleck film Good
Will Hunting: At a bar near Harvards campus, a pretentious graduate
student tries to embarrass Will Huntings uneducated friend with an
impressive analysis of history, only to be devastated when the self-taught
genius Will nails him for basing his supposed creative analysis
entirely on passages from booksgreat stuff!
METACOGNITION
In Chapter 8, we discussed a number of executive control processes,
including attention, rehearsal, organization, imagery, and elaboration.
These executive control processes are sometimes called metacogni-tive
skills, because they can be intentionally used to regulate
cognition.
METACOGNITION Metacognition sets the stage for
choosing the best way to approach a learning task.
Students with well-developed metacognitive skills set
goals, organize their activities, select among various
approaches to learning, and change strategies if needed.
Metacognitive Knowledge and Regulation
Donald Meichenbaum, professor emeritus at the University of Water-loo,
and his colleagues described metacognition as peoples aware-ness
of their own cognitive machinery and how the machinery
works (Meichenbaum, Burland, Gruson, & Cameron, 1985, p. 5).
Metacognition literally means cognition about cognitionor thinking
about thinkingsomething William James wrote about over 100
years ago (although he did not give it that name). In the Bruner
quote earlier, metacognition is involved in the reflection, brooding
about what it is that you knowthinking about your own thinking.
Metacognition is higher-order knowledge about your own thinking
as well as your ability to use this knowledge to manage your own cognitive processes
such as comprehending and problem solving (Bruning, Schraw, & Norby, 2011).
There are many metacognitive processes and skills, including judging if you have
the right knowledge to solve a problem, deciding where to focus attention, determining
if you understood what you just read, devising a plan, using strategies such as mnemon-ics,
revising the plan as you proceed, determining if you have studied enough to pass
a test, evaluating a problem solution, deciding to get help, and generally orchestrating
your cognitive powers to reach a goal (Castel et al., 2011; Meadows, 2006; Schneider,
2004). In second-language learning, you have to focus on the important elements of the
new language, ignore distracting information, and suppress what you know in the first
language that interferes or confuses learning the second language (Engel de Abreu &
Gathercole, 2012).
Metacognition involves all three kinds of knowledge we discussed earlier:
Executive control processes
Processes such as selective
attention, rehearsal, elaboration,
and organization that influence
encoding, storage, and retrieval
of information in memory.
Metacognition Knowledge about
our own thinking processes.
(1) declarative knowledge about yourself as a learner, the factors that influence your
learning and memory, and the skills, strategies, and resources needed to perform a
taskknowing what to do; (2) procedural knowledge or knowing how to use the strate-gies;
and (3) self-regulatory knowledge to ensure the completion of the taskknowing
the conditions, when and why, to apply the procedures and strategies (Bruning et al.,
2011). Metacognition is strategically applying this declarative, procedural, and self-regulatory
knowledge to accomplish goals and solve problems (Schunk, 2012). Meta-cognition
also includes knowledge about the value of applying cognitive strategies in
learning (Pressley & Harris, 2006).
Metacognition regulates thinking and learning (Brown, 1987; Nelson, 1996). There
are three essential skills: planning, monitoring, and evaluating. Planning involves decid-ing
how much time to give to a task, which strategies to use, how to start, which resources
to gather, what order to follow, what to skim and what to give intense attention to, and
so on. Monitoring is the real-time awareness of how Im doing. Monitoring is asking, Is
this making sense? Am I trying to work too fast? Have I studied enough? Evaluating
involves making judgments about the processes and outcomes of thinking and learning.
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CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
Should I change strategies? Get help? Give up for now? Is this paper (painting, model,
poem, plan, etc.) finished? The notion of reflection in teachingthinking back on what
happened in class and why, and thinking forward to what you might do next timeis
really metacognition about teaching (Sawyer, 2006).
Of course, we do not have to be metacognitive all the time. Some actions become
routine or automatic. Metacognition is most useful when tasks are challenging, but not
too difficult. And even when we are planning, monitoring, and evaluating, these processes
are not necessarily conscious, especially in adults. We may use them automatically without
being aware of our efforts (Perner, 2000). Experts in a particular field plan, monitor, and
evaluate as second nature; they have difficulty describing their metacognitive knowledge
and skills (Pressley & Harris, 2006; Reder, 1996).
Individual Differences in Metacognition
People differ in how well and how easily they use metacognitive strategies. Some differ-ences
in metacognitive abilities are the result of development. Younger children, for
example, may not be aware of the purpose of a lessonthey may think the point is simply
to finish. They also may not be good at gauging the difficulty of a taskthey may think
reading for fun and reading a science book are the same (Gredler, 2009b). As children
grow older, they are more able to exercise executive control over strategies. For example,
they are more able to determine if they have understood instructions or if they have stud-ied
enough to remember a set of items. Metacognitive abilities begin to develop around
ages 5 to 7 and improve throughout school (Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1995; Woolfolk &
Perry, 2015). But as we will see many times in this book, knowing and doing are not the
same. Students may know that it is better to study on a regular basis but still cram, in the
hopes of defying just once that long-established principle.
Not all differences in metacognitive abilities have to do with age or maturation (Lockl &
Schneider, 2007; Vidal-Abarca, Ma, & Gil,
2010)
. Some individual differences in meta-cognitive
abilities are probably caused by differences in biology or learning experiences.
Many students diagnosed as having learning disabilities have problems monitoring their
attention (Hallahan, Kauffman, & Pullen, 2012), particularly with long tasks. Working to
improve metacognitive skills can be especially important for students who often have
trouble in school (Schunk, 2012; Swanson, 1990).
Lessons for Teachers: Developing Metacognition
Like any knowledge or skill, metacognitive knowledge and skills can be learned and
improved.
Metacognitive Development for Younger Students. In his grade 2 classroom, Daric
Desautel (2009) worked with mostly Latin American and Asian students. As part of teaching
literacy, Desautel decided to focus on student metacognitive knowledge and skills such
as setting goals, planning, evaluating achievements, and self-reflection to help students
develop the habit of looking in at their own thinking. He also included self-reflections
to help students evaluate their writing and gain insight into themselves as readers and
writers. For example, one self-reflection included a checklist asking:
Did you pick a topic that you know all about?
Did you write a special beginning that makes the reader want more?
Did you organize your thoughts and make a Table of Contents?
Did you pick the right kind of paper and illustrate your book clearly?
Did you re-read your work to check for SOUND, SENSE, ORDER, and GOOFS?
Desautel was successful in helping all his students, not just the most verbal and advanced,
develop metacognitive knowledge. One student noted in his reflection, I worked hard
and did my best to make this book. I like nonfiction books better than stories. Next time,
I would write about a different sport (p. 2011).
In her work with grade 1 and 2 students, Nancy found that asking students two ques-tions
helped them become more metacognitive. The questions were, What did you learn
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306 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
about yourself as a reader/writer today? and What
did you learn that you can do again and again and
again? When teachers regularly asked these ques-tions
during class, even young students demon-strated
fairly sophisticated levels of metacognitive
understanding and action (Perry, VandeKamp, &
Mercer, 2000).
Many of the cooperating teachers we work with
use a strategy called KWL to guide reading and
inquiry in general. This general frame can be used
with most grade levels. The steps are:
K What do I already know about this subject?
W What do I want to know?
L At the end of the reading or inquiry, what have I
learned?
KWL One cooperative learning strategy used by many teachers to guide
reading and inquiry is called KWL: What do I already know? What do I want
to know? What have I learned?
The KWL strategy encourages students to
look within and identify what they bring to each
learning situation, where they want to go, and
what they actually achieveda very metacognitive
approach to learning. Marilyn Friend and William
Bursuck (2002, pp. 362363) describe how one
teacher used modelling and discussion to teach the KWL strategy. After reviewing the
steps, the teacher models an example and a nonexample of using KWL to learn about
crayons.
Teacher: What do we do now that we have a passage assigned to read? First, I brainstorm,
which means I try to think of anything I already know about the topic and write it down.
The teacher writes on the board or overhead known qualities of crayons, such as made
of wax, come in many colours, can be sharpened, and several different brands.
Teacher: I then take this information I already know and put it into categories, like what
crayons are made of and crayon colours. Next, I write down any questions I would
like to have answered during my reading, such as Who invented crayons? When were
they invented? How are crayons made? Where are they made? At this point, Im ready
to read, so I read the passage on crayons. Now I must write down what I learned from
this passage. I must include any information that answers the questions I wrote down
before I read and any additional information. For example, I learned that coloured cray-ons
were first made in the United States in 1903 by Edwin Binney and E. Harold Smith.
I also learned that the Crayola Company owns the company that made the original magic
markers. Last, I must organize this information into a map so I can see the different main
points and any supporting points.
At this point, the teacher draws a map on the chalkboard or overhead.
Teacher: Lets talk about the steps I used and what I did before and after I read the passage.
A class discussion follows.
Teacher: Now Im going to read the passage again, and I want you to evaluate my text-book
reading skills based on the KWL strategy weve learned.
The teacher then proceeds to demonstrate the strategy incorrectly.
KWL A strategy to guide reading
and inquiry: BeforeWhat do I
already know? What do I want to
know? AfterWhat have I
learned?
Teacher: The passage is about crayons. Well, how much can there really be to know about
crayons besides there are hundreds of colours and they always seem to break in the
middle? Crayons are for little kids, and Im in junior high so I dont need to know that
much about them. Ill just skim the passage and go ahead and answer the question. Okay,
how well did I use the strategy steps?
The class discusses the teachers inappropriate use of the strategy. Notice how the
teacher provides both an example and a nonexamplegood teaching.
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CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
Metacognitive Development for Secondary and Post-Secondary Students (Like You).
For older students, teachers can incorporate metacognitive questions into their lessons,
lectures, and assignments. For example, David Jonassen (2011, p. 165) suggests that
instructional designers incorporate these questions into hypermedia learning environ-ments
to help students be more self-reflective:
What are my intellectual strengths and
weaknesses?
How can I motivate myself to learn when
I need to?
How good am I at judging how well I
understand something?
How can I focus on the meaning and sig-nificance
of new information?
How can I set specific goals before I
begin a task?
Metacognition includes knowledge about using many strategies in learningour
next topic.
LEARNING STRATEGIES
Most teachers will tell you that they want their students to learn how to learn. Years of
research indicate that using good learning strategies helps students learn and that these
strategies can be taught (Hamman, Berthelot, Saia, & Crowley, 2000; Pressley & Harris,
2006). But were you taught how to learn? Powerful and sophisticated learning strategies
and study skills are seldom taught directly until high school or even college or university,
so most students have little practice with them (Winne, 2013). In contrast, early on, stu-dents
usually discover repetition and rote learning on their own, so they have extensive
practice with these strategies. And, unfortunately, some teachers think that memorizing
is learning (Beghetto, 2008; Woolfolk Hoy & Murphy, 2001). This may explain why many
students cling to flash cards and memorizingthey do not know what
else
to do
(Willoughby, Porter, Belsito, & Yearsley, 1999).
As you saw in Chapter 8, the way something is learned in the first place greatly influ-ences
how readily we remember the information and how appropriately we can apply
the knowledge later. First, students must be cognitively engaged in order to learn; they
have to focus attention on the relevant or important aspects of the material. Second, they
have to invest effort, make connections, elaborate, translate, invent, organize, and reorgan-ize
to think and process deeplythe greater the practice and processing, the stronger the
learning. Finally, students must regulate and monitor their own learningkeep track of
what is making sense and notice when a new approach is needed; they must be metacog-nitive.
The emphasis today is on helping students develop effective learning strategies
that focus attention and effort, process information deeply, and monitor understanding.
Being Strategic about Learning
Learning strategies are flexible kinds of procedural knowledgeknowing how to do some-thing.
There are thousands of strategies. Some are general and taught in school, such as
summarizing or outlining. Others are specific to a subject, such as using a mnemonic to
remember the order of the planets: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos for
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Other strategies may
be unique, invented by an individual to learn Chinese characters, for example. Learning
strategies can be cognitive (summarizing, identifying the main idea), metacognitive (moni-toring
comprehensionDo I understand?), or behavioural (using an internet dictionary,
setting a timer to work until times up) (Cantrell, Almasi, Carter, Rintamaa, & Madden,
2010). All are ways of accomplishing a learning task that are intentionally applied when
usual methods have not worked and strategic effort is needed (K. R. Harris, Alexander, &
Graham, 2008). Over time, as you become more expert at using the strategies, you need
What questions should I ask about the material
before I begin?
How well have I accomplished my goals
once Im finished?
Have I learned as much as I could have once
I finish a task?
Have I considered all options after I solve a
problem?
307
Learning strategies A special
kind
of procedural knowledgeknowing
how to approach
learning tasks
308 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
less intentional effort. Ultimately you may become more automatic in applying the strate-gies;
in other words, the strategies will become your usual way of accomplishing that kind
of task, until they do not work and you need new strategies.
Skilled learners have a wide range of learning strategies that they can apply fairly
automatically. Using learning strategies and study skills is related to higher grade-point
averages (GPAs) in high school and persistence in college or university (Robbins et al.,
2004; Winne, 2013). Researchers have identified several important principles:
1. Students should be exposed to a number of different strategies, not only general
learning strategies but also very specific strategies for particular subjects, such as the
graphic strategies described later in this section.
2. Students should be taught self-regulatory (conditional) knowledge about when,
where, and why to use various strategies. Although this may seem obvious, teachers
often neglect this step. A strategy is more likely to be maintained and employed if
students know when, where, and why to use it.
3. Students may know when and how to use a strategy, but unless they also develop the
desire to employ these skills, general learning ability will not improve. Remember, left
to their own, many students, adult students included, do not choose the most effec-tive
strategies, even if they know how to do the strategy (Son & Simon, 2012). Several
learning strategy programs include a motivational training component.
4. Students need to believe that they can learn new strategies, that the effort will pay
off, and that they can get smarter by applying these strategies.
5. Students need some background knowledge and useful schemas in the area being
studied to make sense of learning materials. It will be difficult to find the main idea
in a paragraph about ichthyology, for example, if you do not know much about fish.
So students may need direct instruction in schematic (content) knowledge along with
strategy training. Table 9.1 summarizes several learning strategies.
Deciding What Is Important. You can see from the first entry in Table 9.1 that learn-ing
begins with focusing attentiondeciding what is important. But distinguishing the
main idea from less important information is not always easy. Often students focus on
the seductive details or the concrete examples, perhaps because these are more inter-esting
(Gardner, Brown, Sanders, & Menke, 1992). You may have had the experience
TABLE 9.1 Examples of Learning Strategies
EXAMPLES
Planning and Focusing Attention Setting goals and timetables
Underlining and highlighting
Skimming, looking for headings and topic sentences
Organizing and Remembering
Comprehension
Making organizational charts
Creating flowcharts, Venn diagrams
Using mnemonics, imagery
Concept mapping, webs
Cognitive Monitoring
Summarizing, outlining, and note taking
Creating examples
Explaining to a peer
Making predictions
Self-questioning and self-testing
Identifying what does not make sense
Practice Using part practice
Using whole practic
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
of remembering a joke or an intriguing example from a lecture, but not being clear about
the larger point the professor was presenting. Finding the central idea is especially dif-ficult
if you lack prior knowledge in an area and if the amount of new information pro-vided
is extensive. Teachers can give students practice noticing and using signals in texts
such as headings, bold words, outlines, or other indicators to identify key concepts and
main ideas (Lorch, Lorch, Ritchey, McGovern, & Coleman, 2001).
Summaries. Creating summaries can help students learn, but students have to be taught
how to summarize (Byrnes, 1996; Palincsar & Brown, 1984). Jeanne Ormrod (2012) sum-marizes
these suggestions for helping students create summaries. Ask students to:
Find or create a topic sentence for each paragraph or section
Identify big ideas that cover several specific points
Find some supporting information for each big idea
Delete any redundant information or unnecessary details
Begin by doing summaries of short, easy, well-organized readings. Introduce longer,
less organized, and more difficult passages gradually. Initially it may be useful to provide
a scaffold such as: This paragraph is about __________ and __________. They are the same
in these ways: __________, but different in these ways: __________. Ask students to com-pare
their summaries and discuss what ideas they thought were important and whywhat
is their evidence?
Two other study strategies that are based on identifying key ideas are underlining
texts and taking notes.
STOP & THINK How do you make notes as you read? Look back over the past several pages
of this chapter. Are my words highlighted yellow or pink? Are there marks or drawings in the
margins, and if so, do the notes pertain to the chapter content or are they grocery lists and
doodles?
Underlining and Highlighting. Do you underline or highlight key phrases in textbooks?
Underlining and note taking are probably two of the most frequent but ineffectively used
strategies among post-secondary students. One common problem is that students under-line
or highlight too much. It is far better to be selective. Research in Phils lab (Winne
et al., 2017) indicates you have about twice as much chance to remember what you high-light
compared to what you do not. Of course, that is a good thing only if you highlight
information you need to know. In studies that limit how much students can underlinefor
example, only one sentence per paragraphlearning has improved (Snowman, 1984). In
addition to being selective, you also should actively transform the information into your
own words as you underline or take notes. Do not rely on the words of the book. Note
connections between what you are reading and other things you already know. Draw
diagrams to illustrate relationships. Finally, look for organizational patterns in the material,
and use them to guide your underlining or note taking.
Taking Notes. Taking good lecture notes is not an easy task. You have to hold the lec-ture
information in working memory; select, organize, and transform the important ideas
and themes before the information falls off your working memory workbench; and write
down the ideas and themesall while you are still following the lecture (Bui, Myerson,
& Hale, 2013; Kobayashi, 2005; Peverly et al., 2007). As you fill your notebook with words
and try to keep up with a lecturer, you may wonder if taking notes makes a difference. It
does, if the strategy is used well.
Taking notes focuses attention during class. Of course, if taking notes distracts you
from actually listening to and making sense of the lecture, then note taking may not
be effective (Kiewra, 1989, 2002; Van Meter, Yokoi, & Pressley, 1994). Dung Bui and
his colleagues (2013) found that taking organized notes worked well for students with
good working memory, but using a laptop to transcribe lectures worked better for
students with poor working memories, at least for short lectures.
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0 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
Taking organized notes makes you construct meaning from what you are hearing, seeing,
or reading, so you elaborate, translate into your own words, and remember (Armbruster,
2000). Even if students do not review notes before a test, taking them in the first place
appears to aid learning, especially for those who lack prior knowledge in an area.
Notes provide extended external storage that allows you to return and review. Students
who use their notes to study tend to perform better on tests, especially if they take
many high-quality notesmore is better as long as you are capturing key ideas, con-cepts,
and relationships, not just intriguing details (Kiewra, 1985, 1989; Peverly, Brobst,
Graham, & Shaw, 2003).
Expert students match notes to their anticipated use and modify strategies after tests
or assignments, use personal codes to flag material that is unfamiliar or difficult, fill in
holes by consulting relevant sources (including other students in the class), and record
information verbatim only when a verbatim response will be required. In other words,
they are strategic about taking and using notes (Van Meter et al., 1994).
Even with these advantages, remember the caveat mentioned earlier. It is possible
that taking well-organized notes that capture the important ideas in lecture is easier for
students with better working memory abilities. When students have more limited working
memories, they might need to focus on understanding the teacher and transcribing as
much as possible, as long as they are fast typists.
Even though taking notes is valuable from middle school through graduate school,
students with learning disabilities often have difficulty with the strategy (Boyle, 2010a,
2010b). Middle school and high school students with learning disabilities who used a
strategic note-taking form recalled and understood significantly more key ideas from sci-ence
lectures than students in control groups who used conventional note-taking methods
(Boyle, 2010b; Boyle & Weishaar, 2001). For an example of this kind of form, see www.
ldonline.org/article/6210/.
Figure 9.1 is a general form that can be used in many note-taking situations. Dividing
up the page is an idea from the Cornell Notes system, devised by Walter Pauk of Cornell
University, who wrote the classic guide, How to Study in College in the 1950s. It is still
available (Pauk & Owens, 2010). This form could be useful for any student who needs
extra guidance in note taking.
Visual Tools for Organizing
To use underlining and note taking effectively, you must identify main ideas. In addition, you
must understand the organization of the text or lecturethe connections and relationships
among ideas. Some visual strategies have been developed to help students with this key
organizational element (Van Meter, 2001). Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing
and representing knowledge and relationships within a particular field or on a given topic
(Hagemans, van der Meij, & de Jong, 2013; van der Meij, 2012). Figure 9.2 on page 312 is a
concept map of a website for creating concept maps by the Institute for Human and Machine
Cognition Cmap tools. You may have referred to these interconnected ideas as webs.
In a review of 55 studies with students from grade 4 to graduate school, and subjects
ranging from science to statistics to nursing, John Nesbit and Olusola Adesopes (2006)
research at Simon Fraser University concluded that, In comparison with activities such as
reading text passages, attending lectures, and participating in class discussions, concept map-ping
activities are more effective for attaining knowledge retention and transfer (p. 4
34
).
Having students map relationships by noting causal connections, comparison/contrast con-nections,
and examples improves recall. Anitas students used Cmaps, the free downloadable
tools from the website shown in Figure 9.2 for creating concept mapsone student even
planned his dissertation and organized all the reading for his doctoral examinations with
tools from the website. Computer Cmaps can be linked to the internet, and students in dif-ferent
classrooms and schools all over the world can collaborate on them. Students should
compare their filled-in maps and discuss the differences in their thinking with each other.
Instructor-provided maps can serve as guides for studying. Mieke Hagemans and her
colleagues (2013) found that colour-coded concept maps helped high school physics
students master complex concepts. The concept maps were part of a computer program
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
FIGURE 9.1
A FORM FOR TAKING NOTES MORE STRATEGICALLY
Topic: What do I already know about this topic?
311
Key Points / Key
Terms
Notes
Summaries: Write 3 to 5 sentences that capture the main ideas.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Questions: What is still confusing or unclear?
Source: Based on ideas from Pauk, Walter; Owens, Ross J. Q. (2010), How to Study in College (10th ed.). (Original work published 1962)
Florence, KY: Cengage Learning; and http://lsc.cornell.edu/LSC_ Resources/cornellsystem , Pearson Education.
The maps changed colour as the students completed study in that section of the map, so
students had a scaffold to guide them through the reading and assignments and even
remind them, for example, that they had not spent enough time on the assignments on
acceleration in their study of velocity.
There are other ways to visualize organization, such as Venn diagrams, which show
how ideas or concepts overlap, and tree diagrams, which show how ideas branch off each
other. Timelines organize information in sequence and are useful in classes such as history
or geology
312 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
FIGURE 9.2
THE WEBSITE FOR THE INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN AND MACHINE
COGNITION CMAP TOOLS
At the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition website, you can download concept mapping tools to construct, share, and criticize
knowledge on any subject: cmap.imhc.us.
Source: Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Cmap Tools. Retrieved from http://cmap.ihmc.us. Reprinted with permission from the IHMC
Reading Strategies
As we saw earlier, effective learning strategies should help students focus attention,
invest effort (connect, elaborate, translate, organize, summarize) so they process infor-mation
deeply, and monitor their understanding. A number of strategies support these
processes in reading. Many strategies use mnemonics to help students remember the
steps involved. For example, one strategy that can be used for any grade above later
elementary is READS:
R Review headings and subheadings.
E Examine boldface words.
A Ask, What do I expect to learn?
D Do itRead!
S Summarize in your own words. (Friend & Bursuck, 2012)
A strategy that can be used in reading literature is CAPS:
C Who are the characters?
A What is the aim of the story?
P What problem happens?
S How is the problem solved
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
These strategies are effective for several reasons. First, following the steps makes
students more aware of the organization of a given chapter. How often have you skipped
reading headings entirely and thus missed major clues about the way the information was
organized? Next, these steps require students to study the chapter in sections instead of
trying to learn all the information at once. This makes use of distributed practice. Answer-ing
questions about the material forces students to process the information more deeply
and with greater elaboration.
No matter what strategies you use, students have to be taught how to use them.
Direct teaching, explanation, modelling, and practice with feedback are necessary and are
especially important for students with learning challenges and students whose first lan-guage
is not English. For an example of direct teaching of strategies with explanations,
modelling, and practice with feedback, see the KWL discussion on page 306 of this
chapter.
Applying Learning Strategies
One of the most common findings in research on learning strategies is a phenomenon
known as production deficiencies. Students learn strategies, but do not apply them when
they could or should (Pressley & Harris, 2006; Son & Simon, 2012). This is especially a
problem for students with learning disabilities. For these students, executive control pro-cesses
(metacognitive strategies) such as planning, organizing, monitoring progress, and
making adaptations, often are underdeveloped (Kirk, Gallagher, Anastasiow, & Coleman,
2006). It makes sense to teach these strategies directly. To ensure that students actually
use the strategies they learn, several conditions must be met.
Appropriate Tasks. First, of course, the learning task must be appropriate. Why
would students use more complex learning strategies when the task set by the teacher
is to learn and return the exact words of the text or lecture? With these tasks, teach-ers
reward memorizing, and the best strategies involve distributed practice and perhaps
mnemonics (described in Chapter 8). But hopefully, contemporary teachers use few of
these kinds of tasks, so if the task is understanding, not memorizing, what else is
necessary?
Valuing Learning. The second condition for using sophisticated strategies is that
students must care about learning and understanding. They must have goals that can
be reached using effective strategies (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001). Anita was reminded
of this one semester in her educational psychology class when she enthusiastically
shared an article about study skills from a national newspaper. The gist of the article
was that students should continually revise and rewrite their notes from a course, so
that by the end, all their understanding could be captured in one or two pages. Of
course, the majority of the knowledge at that point would be reorganized and con-nected
well with other knowledge. See, she told the class, these ideas are realnot
just trapped in texts. They can help you study smarter. After a heated discussion, one
of the best students said in exasperation, Im carrying 18 hoursI dont have time to
learn this stuff! She did not believe that her goalto survive the 18-hour course
loadcould be reached by using time-consuming study strategies, and she might have
been right.
Effort and Efficacy. Anitas busy student also was concerned about effort. The third
condition for applying learning strategies is that students must believe the effort and
investment required to apply the strategies are reasonable, given the likely return (Winne,
2001). And of course, students must believe they are capable of using the strategies; they
must have self-efficacy for using the strategies to learn the material in question (Schunk,
2012). This is related to another condition: Students must have a base of knowledge and/
or experience in the area. No learning strategies will help students accomplish tasks that
are completely beyond their current understandings.
The Guidelines: Becoming an Expert Student provide a summary of ideas for you
and your students.
313
Production deficiencies Failing
to activate a learning strategya
productionwhen it is appropriate
and useful to use the strategy
314 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
Becoming an Expert Student
GUIDELINES
Be clear about your goals in studying.
Examples
1. Survey readings to target specific concepts on which you
will focus.
2. Write the introduction section of a paper.
Make sure you have the necessary declarative knowledge
(facts, concepts, ideas) to understand new information.
Examples
1. Keep definitions of key vocabulary available as you study.
2. Use your general knowledge. Ask yourself, What do I
already know about ________?
3. Build your vocabulary by learning two or three new words a
day using them in everyday conversation.
Find out what type of test the teacher will give (essay, short
answer), and study the material with that in mind.
Examples
1. For a test with detailed questions, practice writing answers to
possible questions.
2. For a multiple-choice test, use mnemonics to remember
definitions of key terms.
Make sure you are familiar with the organization of the
materials to be learned.
Examples
1. Preview the headings, introductions, topic sentences, and
summaries of the text.
2. Be alert for words and phrases that signal relationships,
such as on the other hand, because, first, second,
however, since.
Know your own cognitive skills, and use them deliberately.
Examples
1. Use examples and analogies to relate new material to
something you care about and understand well, such as
sports, hobbies, or films.
2. If one study technique is not working, try anotherthe goal
is to stay involved, not to use any particular strategy.
3. If you start to daydream, stand up from your desk and face
away from your books, but do not leave. Then sit back down
and study.
Study the right information in a productive
way.
Examples
1. Be sure you know exactly what topics and readings the test
will cover.
2. Spend your time on the important, difficult, and unfamiliar
material that will be required for the test or assignment.
Resist the temptation to go over what you already know well,
even if that feels good.
3. Keep a list of the parts of the text that give you trouble, and
spend more time on those pages.
4. Process the important information thoroughly by using
mnemonics, forming images, creating examples, answering
questions, making notes in your own words, and elaborating
on the text. Do not try to memorize the authors wordsuse
your own.
Monitor your own comprehension.
Examples
1. Use questioning to check your understanding.
2. When reading speed slows down, decide if the
information
in the passage is important. If it is, note the problem so you
can re-read or get help to understand. If it is not important,
ignore it.
3. Check your understanding by working with a friend and
quizzing one
another.
Manage your time.
Examples
1. When is your best time for studying? Morning, late at night?
Study your most difficult subjects then.
2. Study in shorter rather than longer blocks, unless you are
really engaged and making great progress.
3. Eliminate time wasters and distractions. Study in a room
without a television or your roommate, then turn off your
phone and maybe even your connection to the internet.
4. Use bonus timetake your educational psychology notes to
the doctors office waiting room or laundromat. You will use
time well and avoid reading old magazines.
Based on ideas from: https://ucc.vt.edu/academic_support/study_skills_
information.html; Wong, L. (2015). Essential study skills (8th ed.) Stamford,
CT: Cengage., Pearson Education.
Reaching Every Student: Learning Strategies for Struggling Students
Reading is key in all learning. Strategy instruction can help many struggling readers. As
you have seen, some approaches make use of mnemonics to help students remember the
steps. For example, Susan Cantrell and her colleagues identified 862 students in grades 6
and 9 who were at least two years behind in reading (Cantrell, Almasi, Carter, Rintamaa,
& Madden, 2010). The students were from 23 different schools. Students were randoml
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
TABLE 9.2 Teaching Strategies for Improving Students Metacognitive Knowledge
and Skills
These eight guidelines taken from Pressley and Woloshyn (1995) should help you in teaching any
metacognitive strategy.
Teach a few strategies at a time, intensively and extensively, as part of the ongoing curriculum.
Model and explain new strategies.
If parts of the strategy were not understood, model again and re-explain strategies in ways
that are sensitive to those confusing or misunderstood aspects of strategy use.
Explain to students where and when to use the strategy.
Provide plenty of practice, using strategies for as many appropriate tasks as possible.
Encourage students to monitor how they are doing when they are using strategies.
Increase students motivation to use strategies by heightening their awareness that they are
acquiring valuable skillsskills that are at the heart of competent functioning.
Emphasize reflective processing rather than speedy processing; do everything possible to
eliminate high anxiety in students; encourage students to shield themselves from distractions
so they can attend to academic tasks.
For a list of strategies and how to teach them see unl.edu/csi/bank.html.
Source: Based on Pressley, M., & Woloshyn, V. (1995). Cognitive Strategy Instruction That Really Improves Childrens
Academic Performance. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books., Pearson Education.
315
assigned to either a Learning Strategies Curriculum (Deshler & Schumaker, 2005) or the
traditional curriculum. The Learning Strategies Curriculum focused on six strategies: word
identification, visual imagery, self-questioning, LINCS vocabulary strategy, sentence writ-ing,
and paraphrasing. The LINCS vocabulary strategy uses stories and imagery to help
students learn how to identify, organize, define, and remember words, which increases
their ownership of their learning. The LINCS steps are:
L List the partsidentify the vocabulary word and key information.
I Identify a reminding wordpick a known word that reminds them of the vocabulary
word.
N Note a LINCing storycreate a story that bridges the vocabulary word with the known
word.
C Create a LINCing picturedraw a picture that represents the story.
S Self-testcheck their learning of the vocabulary word by reciting all the parts of their
LINCS.
After a year, the grade 6 students who had participated in the Learning Strategies
Curriculum performed significantly better on reading comprehension and strategy use,
but there were no differences for grade 9 students. It is possible that reading strategy
instruction is most effective in elementary and early middle school, when students are
learning how to learn through reading (Cantrell et al., 2010).
Of course, you have to do more than just tell students about the strategyyou have
to teach it. Michael Pressley, formerly of the University of Western Ontario, and his col-league
Vera Woloshyn at Brock University (1995) developed the Cognitive Strategies Model
as a guide for teaching students to improve their metacognitive strategies. Table 9.2
describes the steps in teaching these strategies.
PROBLEM SOLVING
STOP & THINK You are interviewing with the district superintendent for a position as a school
psychologist. The superintendent is known for his unorthodox interview questions. He hands
you a pad of paper and a ruler and says, Tell me, what is the exact thickness of a single sheet
of paper?
316 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
The Stop & Think is a true story. Anita was asked the paper thickness question in an
interview years ago. The answer was to measure the thickness of the entire pad and divide
by the number of pages in the pad. She got the answer and the job, but what a tense
moment that was. The superintendent was probably interested in her ability to solve
problemsunder pressure!
A problem has an initial state (the current situation), a goal (the desired outcome),
and a path for reaching the goal (the operations or activities that move you toward the
goal). Problem solvers often have to set and reach subgoals as they move toward the final
solution. For example, if your goal is to drive to the beach, but at the first stop sign you
skid through the intersection, you may have to reach a subgoal of fixing your brakes before
you can continue toward the original goal (Schunk, 2012). Also, problems can range from
well-structured to ill-structured, depending on how clear-cut the goals are and how much
structure is provided for solving them. Most arithmetic problems are well structured, but
finding the right university major or career is ill-structuredmany different solutions and
paths to solutions are possible. Life presents many ill-structured problems (Belland, 2011).
Problem solving is usually defined as formulating new answers, going beyond the
simple application of previously learned rules to achieve a goal. Problem solving is what
happens when no solution is obviouswhen, for example, you cannot afford new brakes
for the car that skidded on the way to the beach (Mayer & Wittrock, 2006). Some psycholo-gists
suggest that most human learning involves problem solving and that helping students
become better problem solvers is one of educations greatest challenges (Anderson, 2010;
Greiff et al., 2013). Solving complex, ill-structured problems is one key ability measured
by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a comprehensive world-wide
assessment of reading, mathematics, and science for 15-year-olds. In the results for
the 2015 exams, Canada ranked 10 out of 74 countries in math, 3 in problem-solving
performance, and 7 in science.
There is a debate about problem solving. Some psychologists believe that effective
problem-solving strategies are specific to the problem area or domain. For example, the
problem-solving strategies in mathematics are unique to math, the strategies in art are
unique to art, and so on. The other side of the debate claims that there are some general
problem-solving strategies that can be useful in many areas. General problem-solving
strategies usually include the steps of identifying the problem, setting goals, exploring
possible solutions and consequences, acting, and finally evaluating the outcome.
There is evidence for the value of both general and specific strategies. In their
research with grades 4 and 5 students, Steven Hecht and Kevin Vagi (2010) found that
both domain-specific and general factors affected performance on problems involving
fractions. The influences were specific conceptual knowledge about fractions and the
general information-processing skill of attentive classroom behaviour. Other studies with
elementary school students found that both specific arithmetic knowledge and general
attention-focusing, working memory, and oral language skills were related to arithmetic
problem solving (Fuchs et al., 2006, 2012, 2013).
People appear to move between general and specific approaches, depending on the
situation and their level of expertise. Early on, when we know little about a problem area
or domain, we can rely on general learning and problem-solving strategies to make sense
of the situation. As we gain more domain-specific knowledge (particularly procedural
knowledge about how to do things in the domain), we consciously apply the general
strategies less and less; our problem solving becomes more automatic. But if we encounter
a problem outside our current knowledge, we may return to relying on general strategies
to attack the problem (Alexander, 1992, 1996).
A key first step in any problem solvinggeneral or specificis identifying that a
problem exists (and perhaps treating the problem as an opportunity).
Problem solving Creating new
solutions for problems.
Identifying: Problem Finding
Problem identification is not always straightforward. We are reminded of a story about
tenants who were angry because the elevators in their building were slow. Consultants
hired to fix the problem reported that the elevators were no worse than average an
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
improvements would be very expensive. One day, as the building supervisor watched
people waiting impatiently for an elevator, he realized that the problem was not slow
elevators, but the fact that people were bored; they had nothing to do while they waited.
When the boredom problem was identified and seen as an opportunity to improve the
waiting experience, the simple solution of installing a mirror by the elevator on each
floor eliminated complaints.
Even though problem identification is a critical first step, research indicates that people
often leap to naming the first problem that comes to mind (the elevators are too slow!).
Experts in a field are more likely to spend time carefully considering the nature of the
problem (Bruning et al., 2011). Finding a solvable problem and turning it into an opportu-nity
is the process behind many successful inventions, such as the ballpoint pen, garbage
disposal, appliance timer, alarm clock, self-cleaning oven, and thousands of others.
Once a solvable problem is identified, what next?
Defining Goals and Representing
the Problem
Lets take a real problem: The machines designed to pick tomatoes are damaging the
tomatoes. What should we do? If we represent the problem as a faulty machine design,
then the goal is to improve the machine. But if we represent the problem as a faulty design
of the tomatoes, then the goal is to develop a tougher tomato. The problem-solving pro-cess
follows two entirely different paths, depending on which representation and goal are
chosen (Nokes-Malach & Mestre, 2013). To represent the problem and set a goal, you have
to focus attention on relevant information, understand the words of the problem, and
activate the right schema to understand the whole problem.
STOP & THINK If you have black socks and white socks in your drawer, mixed in the ratio of
four-to-five, how many socks will you have to take out to make sure you have a pair the same
colour? (Adapted from Sternberg & Davidson, 1982)
Focusing Attention on What Is Relevant. Representing the problem often requires find-ing
the relevant information and ignoring the irrelevant details. For example, what infor-mation
was relevant in solving the sock problem in Stop & Think? Did you realize that the
information about the four-to-five ratio of black socks to white socks is irrelevant? As long
as you have only two different colours of socks in the drawer, you will have to remove
only three socks before two of them match.
Understanding the Words. The second task in representing a problem is understand-ing
the meaning of the words, sentences, and factual information in the problem. So
problem solving requires comprehension of the language and relations in the problem.
In math word problems, it also involves assigning mathematical operators (addition,
division, etc.) to relations among numbers (Jitendra et al., 2009; Lee, Ng, & Ng, 2009).
All this makes a demand on working memory. For example, the main stumbling block
in representing many word problems and problems with fractions is the students under-standing
of partwhole relations (Fuchs et al., 2013). Students have trouble figuring out
what is part of what, as is evident in this dialogue between a teacher and a student in
grade 1:
Teacher: Pete has three apples. Ann also has some apples. Pete and Ann have nine apples
altogether. How many apples does Ann have?
Student: Nine.
Teacher: Why?
Student: Because you just said so.
Teacher: Can you retell the story?
Student: Pete had three apples. Ann also had some apples. Ann had nine apples. Pete also
has nine apples. (Adapted from De Corte & Verschaffel, 1985, p. 19, Pearson Education)
The student interprets altogether (the whole) as each (the parts).
31
318 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
A common difficulty for older students is understanding that ratio and proportion
problems are based on multiplicative relations, not additive relations (Jitendra et al., 2009).
So to solve
2 : 14 = ? : 35
many students subtract to find the difference between 2 and 14 (14 2 = 12) and then
subtract 12 from 35 to get 23, giving them the (wrong) answer
2 : 14 = 23 : 35
The real question is about the proportional relationship between 2 and 14. How many
times larger than 2 is 14? The answer: 7 times larger. Then the real question is 35 is
7 times larger than what number? The answer is 5 (7 5 = 35). So
2 : 14 = 5 : 35
Understanding the Whole Problem. The third task in representing a problem is to
assemble all the relevant information and sentences into an accurate understanding or
translation of the total problem. This means that students need to form a conceptual model
of the problemthey have to understand what the problem is really asking (Jonassen,
2003). Consider the example of the trains in the Stop & Think.
STOP & THINK Two train stations are 50 km apart. At 2 p.m. one Saturday afternoon, two
trains start toward each other, one from each station. Just as the trains pull out of the stations,
a bird springs into the air in front of the first train and flies ahead to the front of the second train.
When the bird reaches the second train, it turns back and flies toward the first train. The bird
continues to do this until the trains meet. If both trains travel at the rate of 25 kph and the bird
flies at 100 kph, how many kilometres will the bird have flown before the trains meet? (Posner,
1973)
Your interpretation of the problem is called a translation because you translate the
problem into a schema that you understand. If you translate this as a distance problem
(activate a distance schema) and set a goal (I have to figure out how far the bird travels
before it meets the oncoming train and turns around, then how far it travels before it has
to turn again, and finally add up all the trips back and forth), then you have a very dif-ficult
task on your hands. But there is a better way to structure the problem. You can
represent it as a question of time and focus on the time the bird is in the air. The solution
could be stated like this:
The trains are going the same speed so they will meet in the middle, 25 km from each
station. This will take one hour because they are travelling 25 kph. In an hour, the bird
will cover 100 km because it is flying at 100 km per hour. Easy!
Research shows that students can be too quick to decide what a problem is asking.
Once a problem is categorizedAha, its a distance problem!a particular schema is
activated. The schema directs attention to relevant information and sets up expectations
for what the right answer should look like. For example, if you use a distance schema in
the above problem, the right answer looks like adding up many small distance calculations
(Kalyuga, Chandler, Tuovinen, & Sweller, 2001; Reimann & Chi, 1989).
When students lack the necessary schemas to represent problems, they often rely
on surface features of the situation and represent the problem incorrectly, like the student
who wrote 15 + 24 = 39 as the answer to, Joan has 15 bonus points and Louise has
24. How many more does Louise have? This student saw two numbers and the word
more, so he applied the add to get more procedure. Focus on surface features often hap-pens
when students are taught to search for keywords (more, less, greater, etc.), pick a
strategy or formula based on the keywords (more means add), and apply the formula.
Actually, focusing on surface features gets in the way of forming a conceptual under-standing
of the whole problem and using the right schema (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams,
2010)
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
FIGURE 9.3
FOUR DIFFERENT WAYS TO REPRESENT A PROBLEM
A teacher asks, How many wildlife stamps will Jane need to fill her book if there are three pages and
each page holds 30 stamps? The teacher gives the students supplies such as a squared paper, number
lines, and place-value frames and encourages them to think of as many ways as possible to solve the
problem. Here are four different solutions, based on four different but correct representations.
JIM:
30
30
+30
90
MARIAH:
tens
JOE:
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
90 stamps
ones
90 stamps
PHYLLIS:
30
319
30
90 stamps
Source: Riedesel, C. A, & Schwartz, J. E. (1999). Essentials of Elementary Mathematics, (2nd ed). Upper Reprinted by permission of
Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ., Pearson Education.
30
When students use the wrong schema, they overlook critical information, use irrel-evant
information, and may even misread or misremember critical information so that it
fits the schema. But when students use the proper schema to represent a problem, they
are less likely to be confused by irrelevant information or tricky wording, such as the
presence of the word more in a problem that really requires subtraction (Fenton, 2007;
Resnick, 1981). Figure 9.3 gives examples of different ways students might represent a
simple mathematics problem. Exposure to different ways of representing and solving
problems helps develop mathematical understanding (Star & Rittle-Johnson, 2009).
How can students who lack a good base of knowledge improve their translation and
schema selection? To answer this question, we usually have to move to area-specific
problem-solving strategies because schemas are specific to content areas.
Translation and Schema Training: Direct Instruction in Schemas. For students with
little knowledge in an area, teachers can begin by directly teaching the necessary schema
using demonstration, modelling, and think-alouds. As we just saw, ratio/proportion
problems like the following are a big challenge for many students.
Ernesto and Dawn worked separately on their social studies projects this weekend. The
ratio of the number of hours Ernesto spent on the project to the number of hours Dawn
spent on the project was 2:3. If Ernesto spent 16 hours on the project, how many hours
did Dawn spend on the project? (Jitendra et al., 2009, p. 257)
The teacher used a think-aloud to focus students on the key schema for solving
this problem, so she said, First, I figure this is a ratio problem, because it compared the
number of hours that Ernesto worked to the number of hours Dawn worked. This is a
part-part ratio that tells about a multiplicative relationship (2:3) between the hours
Ernesto and Dawn worked. The teacher went on to think aloud, Next, I represented the
information. . . . Finally, I used the equivalent fractions strategy and. . . . The think-aloud
demonstration can be followed by providing students with many worked examples. In
mathematics and physics it appears that in the early stages of learning, students benefit
from seeing many different kinds of example problems worked out correctly for them
(Moreno, Ozogul, & Reisslein, 2011). But before we explore worked examples in the next
section, a caution is in order. Students with advanced knowledge improve when they solve
new problems, not when they focus on already-worked examples. Worked examples ca
32
0 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
actually interfere with the learning of more expert
students. This has been called the expert reversal
effect because what works for experts is the reverse
of what works for beginners (Kalyuga & Renkl, 2010;
Kalyuga, Rikers, & Paas, 2012).
WORKED EXAMPLES Students benefit from seeing many different kinds of
example problems worked out correctly for them, especially when they show
an expert problem solvers thinking at critical steps.
Translation and Schema Training: Worked Examples.
Worked examples reflect all the stages of problem
solvingidentifying the problem, setting goals,
exploring solutions, solving the problem, and finally
evaluating the outcome (Schworm & Renkl, 2007;
van Gog, Paas, & Sweller, 2010). Worked examples
are useful in many subject areas. Adrienne Lee and
Laura Hutchinson (1998) found that undergraduate
students learned more when they were provided
with examples of chemistry problem solutions that
were annotated to show an expert problem solvers
thinking at critical steps. In Australia, Slava Kalyuga
and colleagues (2001) found that worked examples
helped apprentices to learn about electrical circuits
when the apprentices had less experience in the
area. Silke Schworm and Alexander Renkl (2007)
used video examples to help student teachers learn how to make convincing arguments
for or against a position.
Why are examples effective? Part of the answer is in cognitive load theory, discussed
in the previous chapter. When students lack specific knowledge in domainsfor example,
fractions or proportionsthey try to solve the problems using general strategies such as
looking for key words or applying rote procedures. But these approaches put great strain
on working memorytoo much to keep in mind at once overloads memory. In contrast,
worked examples chunk some of the steps, provide cues and feedback, focus attention
on relevant information, and make fewer demands on memory, so the students can use
cognitive resources to understand instead of searching randomly for solutions (Wittwer &
Renkl, 2010). It is especially useful if the examples focus on critical features of the prob-lems
that students have not yet mastered (Guo, Pang, Yang, & Ding, 2012).
To get the most benefit from worked examples, however, students have to actively
engagejust looking over the examples is not enough. This is not too surprising when
you think about what supports learning and memory. You need to pay attention, process
deeply, and connect with what you already know. Students should explain the examples
to themselves. This self-explanation component is a critical part of making learning from
worked examples active, not passive. Examples of self-explanation strategies include try-ing
to predict the next step in a solution, then checking to see if you are right or trying
to identify an underlying principle that explains how to solve the problem. In their study
with student teachers, Schworm and Renkl (2007) embedded prompts that required the
student teachers to think about and explain elements of the arguments they saw on the
tape, such as, Which argumentative elements does this sequence contain? How is it
related to Kirstens statement? (p. 289). Students have to be mentally engaged in making
sense of the examples, and self-explanation is one key to engagement (Atkinson & Renkl,
2007; Wittwer & Renkl, 2010).
Another way to use worked examples is to have students compare examples that
reach a right answer but are worked out in different ways. What is the same about each
solution? What is different? Why? (Rittle-Johnson & Star, 2007). Also, worked examples
should deal with one source of information at a time rather than having students move
between text passages, graphs, tables, and so on. The cognitive load will be too heavy for
beginners if they have to integrate many sources of information to make sense of the
worked examples (Marcus, Cooper, & Sweller, 1996).
Worked examples can serve as analogies or models for solving new problems. But
beware. Without explanations and coaching, novices may remember the surface features
Spencer
Grant/PhotoEdit,Inc
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
FIGURE 9.4
THE PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCESS
There are two paths to a solution. In the first, the correct schema is activated and the solution is
apparentthe new problem is an old one in disguise. But if no schema works, searching and testing
may provide a path to a solution.
Schema activated–I
solved this
before.
321
Succeed
Define Goals
and Represent
the Problem
What am I
being asked?
Explore Possible
Solutions
Any algorithms?
Would heuristics
help?
Anticipate
Consequences
and Act:
Try the Solution
Did it work?
Evaluate:
Reflect, look
back, or try again
No Schema
Fail
activatednever solved
before.
of a worked example or case instead of the deeper meaning or the structure. It is the
meaning or structure, not the surface similarities, that helps in solving new, analogous
problems (Gentner, Loewenstein, & Thompson, 2003; Goldstone & Day, 2012). Phil has
heard students complain that the test preparation problems in their math classes were
about boats and river currents, but the test asked about airplanes and wind speed. They
protested, There were no problems about boats on the test, and we never studied air-planes
in class! In fact, the problems on the test about airplanes were solved in exactly
the same way as the boat problems, but the students were focusing only on the surface
features. One way to overcome this tendency is to have students compare examples or
cases so they can develop a problem-solving schema that captures the common structure,
not the surface features, of the cases (Gentner et al., 2003).
How else might students develop the schemas they will need to represent problems
in a particular subject area? Mayer (1983) has recommended giving students practice in
the following: (1) recognizing and categorizing a variety of problem types; (2) represent-ing
problems, either concretely in pictures, symbols, or graphs, or in words; and (3) selecting
relevant and irrelevant information in problems.
The Results of Problem Representation. The problem representation stage of problem
solving has two main outcomes, as shown in Figure 9.4. If your representation of the
problem suggests an immediate solution, your task is done. In one sense, you have not
really solved a new problem; you have simply recognized the new problem as a dis-guised
version of an old problem that you already knew how to solve. This has been
called schema-driven problem solving. In terms of Figure 9.4, you can use the schema-activated
route and proceed directly to a solution.
But what if you have no existing way of solving the problem or your activated
schema fails? Time to search for a solution!
Searching for Possible Solution Strategies
In conducting your search for a solution, you have available two general kinds of proce-dures:
algorithmic and heuristic. Both of these are forms of procedural knowledge
(Schraw, 2006).
Schema-driven problem solving
Recognizing a problem as a
disguised version of an old
problem for which one already
has a solution
322 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
Algorithms. An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure for achieving a goal. It usually is
domain specific; that is, it is tied to a particular subject area. In solving a problem, if you
choose an appropriate algorithm (e.g., to find the arithmetic mean, you add all the scores,
then divide by the number of scores) and implement it properly, a right answer is guaran-teed.
Unfortunately, students often apply algorithms unsystematically, trying out one first,
and then another. They may even happen on the right answer, but not understand how
they got there, or they may forget the steps they used to find the answer. For some students,
applying algorithms haphazardly could be an indication that formal operational thinking
and the ability to work through a set of possibilities systematically (as described by Piaget)
is not yet developed. But many problems cannot be solved by algorithms. What then?
Heuristics. A heuristic is a general strategy that might lead to the right answer (Schoenfeld,
2011). Because many of lifes problems (careers, relationships, etc.) are not straightforward
and have ill-defined problem statements and no apparent algorithms, the discovery or
development of effective heuristics is important (Korf, 1999). Lets examine a few.
In means-ends analysis, the problem is divided into a number of intermediate goals
or subgoals, and then a means of solving each intermediate subgoal is figured out. For
example, writing a 20-page term paper can loom as an insurmountable problem for some
students. They would be better off breaking this task into several intermediate goals, such
as selecting a topic, locating sources of information, reading and organizing the informa-tion,
making an outline, and so on. As they attack a particular intermediate goal, they may
find that other goals arise. For example, locating information may require that they find
someone to refresh their memory about using the librarys databases. Keep in mind that
psychologists have yet to discover an effective heuristic for students who are just starting
their term paper the night before it is due.
Some problems lend themselves to a working-backward strategy. Using this heuristic,
you begin at the goal and move back to the unsolved initial problem. Working backward
is sometimes an effective heuristic for solving geometry proofs. It can also be a good way
to set intermediate deadlines (Lets see, if I have to submit this chapter in 4 weeks, I
should have a first draft finished by the 11th, and that means I better stop searching for
new references and start writing by. . . .).
Another useful heuristic is analogical thinking (Copi, 1961; Gentner et al., 2003), which
Algorithm Step-by-step
procedure for solving a problem;
prescription for solutions.
Heuristic General strategy used
in attempting to
solve problems.
Means-ends analysis Heuristic in
which a goal is divided into
subgoals.
Working-backward strategy
Heuristic in which one starts with
the goal and moves backward to
solve the problem.
Analogical thinking Heuristic in
which one limits the search for
solutions to situations that are
similar to the one at hand.
Verbalization Putting your
problem-solving plan and its
logic
into words.
limits your search for solutions to situations that have something in common with the one
you currently face. When submarines were first designed, for example, engineers had to
figure out how battleships could determine the presence and location of vessels hidden
in the depths of the sea. Studying how bats solve an analogous problem of navigating in
the dark led to the invention of sonar. Take note, however, that to use analogies effectively,
you must focus on meaning and not surface similarities, so focusing on bats appearance
would not have helped to solve the communication problem.
The possible analogies students bring to the classroom are bound to vary, based on
their experience and culture. For example, Zhe Chen and his colleagues wondered if post-secondary
students might use familiar folk talesone kind of cultural knowledgeas
analogies to solve problems (Chen, Mo, & Honomichl, 2004). That is just what happened.
Chinese students were better at solving a problem of weighing a statue because the prob-lem
was similar to their folk tale about how to weigh an elephant (by water displacement).
North American students were better at solving a problem of finding the way out of a cave
(leaving a trail) by using an analogy to Hansel and Gretel, a European folk tale commonly
told in North America.
Putting your problem-solving plan into words and giving reasons for selecting it can
lead to successful problem solving (Lee & Hutchinson, 1998). You may have discovered
the effectiveness of this verbalization process accidentally, when a solution popped into
your head as you were explaining a problem to someone else.
Anticipating, Acting, and Looking Back
After representing the problem and exploring possible solutions, the next step is to select
a solution and anticipate the consequences. For example, if you decide to solve the dam-aged
tomato problem by developing a tougher tomato, how will consumers react? If yo
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
take time to learn a new graphics program to enhance your term paper (and your grade),
will you still have enough time to finish the paper?
After you choose a solution strategy and implement it, evaluate the results by
checking for evidence that confirms or contradicts your solution. Many people tend to
stop working before they reach the best solution and simply accept an answer that
works in some cases. In mathematical problems, evaluating the answer might mean
applying a checking routine, such as adding to check the result of a subtraction prob-lem
or, in a long addition problem, adding the column from bottom to top instead of
top to bottom. Another possibility is estimating the answer. For example, if the com-putation
was 11 21, the answer should be around 200, because 10 20 is 200. A
student who reaches an answer of 2,311 or 32 or 562 should quickly realize these
answers cannot be correct. Estimating an answer is particularly important when stu-dents
rely on calculators or computers, because they cannot go back and spot an error
in the figures.
Factors That Hinder Problem Solving
Sometimes problem solving requires looking at things in new ways. People may miss
out on a good solution because they fixate on conventional uses for materials. This
difficulty is called functional fixedness (Duncker, 1945). In your everyday life, you may
often exhibit functional fixedness. Suppose a screw on a dresser-drawer handle is loose.
Will you spend 10 minutes searching for a screwdriver, or will you fix it with a ruler
edge or a dime?
Another kind of fixation that blocks effective problem solving is response set, getting
stuck on one way of representing a problem. Try this:
In each of the four matchstick arrangements below, move only one stick to change
the equation so that it represents a true equality such as V 5 V.
V 5 VII VI 5 XI XII 5 VII VI 5 II
You probably figured out how to solve the first example quite quickly. You simply move
one matchstick from the right side over to the left to make VI = VI. Examples two and
three can also be solved without too much difficulty by moving one stick to change the
V to an X or vice versa. But the fourth example (taken from Raudsepp & Haugh, 1977)
probably has you stumped. To solve this problem, you must change your response set or
switch schemas, because what has worked for the first three problems will not work this
time. The answer here lies in changing from Roman numerals to Arabic numbers and
using the concept of square root. By overcoming response set, you can move one match-stick
from the right to the left, across the top, to form the symbol for square root; the
solution reads v1 = I, which is simply the symbolic way of saying that the square root of
1 equals 1. Recently, a creative reader of this text emailed some other solutions. Jamaal
Allan, then a masters student at Pacific University, pointed out that you could use any of
the matchsticks to change the = sign to ?. Then, the last example would be V II or 5
does not equal 2, an accurate statement. He suggested that you also might move one
matchstick to change = to < or > and the statements would still be true (but not equali-ties
as specified in the problem above). Bill Wetta, a student at Ashland University, offered
another solution that used both Arabic and Roman numerals. You can move one match-stick
to make the first V an X. Then VI = II becomes XI 5 11, or 11 (in Roman numerals)
equals 11 (in Arabic numerals). Anita received another creative approach from Ray Part-low,
an educational psychology student. He noted, Simply remove a matchstick from the
V from the left-hand side, and place it directly on top of the I, getting II 5 II. Covering
one matchstick with another opens up a whole new set of possibilities! Can you come up
with any other solutions? Be creative!
Some Problems with Heuristics. We often apply heuristics automatically to make quick
judgments; that saves us time in everyday problem solving. The mind can react auto-matically
and instantaneously, but the price we often pay for this efficiency may be bad
problem solving, which can be costly. Making judgments by invoking stereotypes leads
even smart people to make dumb decisions. For example, we might use representativeness
Functional fixedness Inability to
use objects or tools in a new way.
Response set Rigidity; the
tendency to respond in the most
familiar way.
32
324 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
heuristics to make judgments about possibilities based on our prototypeswhat we think
is representative of a category. Consider this:
If I ask you whether a slim, short stranger who enjoys poetry is more likely to be a truck
driver or university classics professor, what would you say?
You might be tempted to answer based on your prototypes of truck drivers or professors.
But consider the odds. There are about 100 universities in Canada with perhaps an aver-age
of 2 or so classics professors per school. So, we have 200 professors. Say about 10%
are both short and slimthat is 20; and say half of those like poetrywe are left with 10.
Now suppose there are around 300 000 truck drivers in Canada. If only 1 in every 1000
of those truck drivers were short, slim, poetry lovers, we have 300 truck drivers who fit
the description. With 10 professors versus 300 truck drivers, it is 30 times more likely that
our stranger is a truck driver (Myers, 2005).
Teachers and students are busy people, and they often base their decisions on what
they have in their minds at the time. When judgments are based on the availability of
information in our memories, we are using the availability heuristic. If instances of events
come to mind easily, we think they are common occurrences, but that is not necessarily
the case; in fact, it is often wrong. People remember vivid stories and quickly come to
believe that such events are the norm, but again, they often are wrong. For example, you
may have been surprised to read in Chapter 4 that accelerating gifted students pace
through the grades does not undermine their social development. Data may not support
a judgment, but belief perseverance, or the tendency to hold on to our beliefs, even in the
face of contradictory evidence, may make us resist change.
The confirmation bias is the tendency to search for information that confirms our ideas
and beliefs: This arises from our eagerness to get a good solution. You have often heard
the saying Dont confuse me with the facts. This aphorism captures the essence of the
confirmation bias. Most people seek evidence that supports their ideas more readily than
they search for facts that might refute them. For example, once you decide to buy a certain
car, you are likely to notice reports about the good features of the car you chose, not the
good news about the cars you rejected. Our automatic use of heuristics to make judg-ments,
our eagerness to confirm what we like to believe, and our tendency to explain
away failure combine to generate overconfidence. Students usually are overconfident
about how fast they can get their papers written; it typically takes twice as long as they
estimate (Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1994). In spite of their underestimation of completion
time, they remain overly confident the next time around.
The Guidelines: Applying Problem Solving give some ideas for helping students
become good problem solvers.
Representativeness heuristic
Judging the likelihood of an
event based on how well the
events match your prototypeswhat
you think is representative
of the category.
Availability heuristic Judging the
likelihood of an event based on
what is available in your memory,
assuming those easily
remembered events are common.
Belief perseverance The
tendency to hold on to beliefs,
even in the face of contradictory
evidence.
Confirmation bias Seeking
information that confirms our
choices and beliefs, while
disconfirming evidence.
Expert Knowledge and Problem Solving
Most psychologists agree that effective problem solving is based on having an ample store
of knowledge about the problem area (Belland, 2011; Schoenfeld, 2011). To solve the
matchstick problem, for example, you had to understand Roman and Arabic numerals as
well as the concept of square root. You also had to know that the square root of 1 is 1.
Lets take a moment to examine this expert knowledge.
Knowing What Is Important. Experts know where to focus their attention. For example,
knowledgeable baseball fans pay attention to the position of the shortstop to learn if the
pitcher will throw a fastball, curveball, or slider. But those with little knowledge about
baseball may never notice the movements of the shortstop, unless a hit is headed toward
that part of the field (Bruning et al., 2011). In general, experts know what to pay attention
to when judging a performance or product such as Olympic diving or a prize-winning
chocolate cake. To nonexperts, most good dives or cakes look about the same, unless of
course they flop!
Memory for Patterns and Organization. The modern study of expertise began with
investigations of chess masters (Simon & Chase, 1973). Results indicated that masters can
quickly recognize about 50 000 different arrangements of chess pieces. They can look a
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES 325
Applying Problem Solving
GUIDELINES
Ask students if they are sure they understand the problem.
Examples
1. Can they separate relevant from irrelevant information?
2. Are they aware of the assumptions they are making?
3. Encourage them to visualize the problem by diagramming or
drawing it.
4. Ask them to explain the problem to someone else. What
would a good solution look like?
Encourage attempts to see the problem from different angles.
Examples
1. Suggest several different possibilities yourself, and then ask
students to offer some.
2. Give students practice in taking and defending different
points of view on an issue.
Let students do the thinking; do not just hand them solutions.
Examples
1. Offer individual problems as well as group problems, so that
each student has the chance to practice.
2. Give partial credit if students have good reasons for wrong
solutions to problems.
3. If students are stuck, resist the temptation to give too many
clues. Let them think about the problem overnight.
Help students develop systematic ways of considering
alternatives.
Examples
1. Think out loud as you solve problems.
2. Ask, What would happen if?
3. Keep a list of suggestions.
Teach heuristics.
Examples
1. Use analogies to solve the problem of limited parking in the
downtown area. How are other storage problems solved?
2. Use the working-backward strategy to plan a party.
For more resources on problem solving, see hawaii.edu/suremath/
home.html
one of these patterns for a few seconds and remember where every piece on the board
was placed. It is as though they have a vocabulary of 50 000 patterns. Michelene Chi
(1978) demonstrated that expert chess players in grades 3 through 8 had a similar ability
to remember chess piece arrangements. For all the masters, patterns of pieces are like
words. If you were shown any word from your vocabulary store for just a few seconds,
you would be able to remember every letter in the word in the right order (assuming you
could spell the word). But a series of letters arranged randomly is hard to remember, as
you saw in Chapter 8. An analogous situation holds for chess masters. When chess pieces
are placed on a board randomly, masters are no better than average players at remember-ing
the positions of the pieces. The masters memory is for patterns that make sense or
could occur in a game.
A similar phenomenon occurs in other fields. There may be an intuition about how
to solve a problem based on recognizing patterns and knowing the right moves for those
patterns. Experts in physics, for example, organize their knowledge around central prin-ciples
(e.g., Boyles or Newtons laws), whereas beginners organize their smaller amounts
of physics knowledge around the specific details stated in the problems (e.g., levers or
pulleys) (Ericsson, 1999; Fenton, 2007).
Procedural Knowledge. In addition to representing a problem very quickly, experts know
what to do next and can do it. They have a large store of productions or ifthen schemas
about what action to take in various situations. So, the steps of understanding the problem
and choosing a solution happen simultaneously and fairly automatically (Ericsson & Char-ness,
1999). Of course, this means that experts must have many, many schemas available.
A large part of becoming an expert is simply acquiring a great store of domain knowledge
or knowledge that is particular to a field (Alexander, 1992). To do this, you must encounter
many different kinds of problems in that field, observe others solving problems, and prac-tice
solving many yourself. Some estimates are that it takes 10 years or 10 000 hours of
deliberate, focused, sustained practice to become an expert in most fields (Ericsson, 2011
326 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
K. A. Ericsson & Charness, 1994; H. A. Simon, 1995).
Experts rich store of knowledge is elaborated and
well-practised, so that it is easy to retrieve from long-term
memory when needed (Anderson, 1993).
Planning and Monitoring. Experts spend more
time analyzing problems, drawing diagrams, break-ing
large problems down into subproblems, and
making plans. A novice might begin immediatelywriting
equations for a physics problem or drafting
the first paragraph of a paperbut experts plan out
the whole solution and often make the task simpler
in the process. As they work, experts monitor pro-gress,
so time is not lost pursuing dead ends or weak
ideas (Schunk, 2012).
So what can we conclude? Experts (1) know
EXPERT KNOWLEDGE A large part of becoming an expert is simply acquiring
a great store of domain knowledge, or knowledge that is particular to a field.
This surgeon has likely invested years of deliberate, focused, sustained practice
to become an expert.
where to focus their attention; (2) perceive large,
meaningful patterns in given information and are not
confused by surface features and details; (3) hold
more information in working and long-term memories,
in part because they have organized the information
into meaningful chunks and procedures; (4) take a
great deal of time to analyze a given problem; (5) have
automatic procedures for accomplishing pieces of the problem; and (6) are better at monitor-ing
their performance. When the area of problem solving is well defined, such as chess or
physics or computer programming, then these skills of expert problem solvers hold fairly
consistently. In these kinds of domains, even if students do not have the extensive back-ground
knowledge of experts, they can learn to approach the problem like an expert by
taking time to analyze the problem, focusing on key features, using the right schema, and
not trying to force old but inappropriate solutions on new problems (Belland, 2011). But
when the problem-solving area is less well defined and has fewer clear underlying principles,
such as problem solving in economics or psychology, then the differences between experts
and novices are not as clear-cut (Alexander, 1992).
CREATIVITY: WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MATTERS
STOP & THINK Consider this student. He had severe dyslexiaa learning disability that made
reading and writing exceedingly difficult. He described himself as an underdog. In school, he
knew that if the reading assignment would take others an hour, he had to allow 2 or 3 hours.
He knew that he had to keep a list of all of his most frequently misspelled words to be able to
write at all. He spent hours alone in his room. Would you expect his writing to be creative? Why
or why not?
The person described in this Stop & Think is John Irving, celebrated author of what one
critic called wildly inventive novels such as The World According to Garp, The Cider
House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany (Amabile, 2001). How do we explain his
amazing creativity? What is creativity?
Creativity is the ability to produce work that is original but still appropriate and use-Creativity
Imaginative, original
thinking or problem solving.
ful (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004). Most psychologists agree that there is no such thing
as all-purpose creativity; people are creative in a particular area, as John Irving was in
writing fiction. But to be creative, the invention must be intended. An accidental spilling
of paint that produces a novel design is not creative unless the artist recognizes the poten-tial
of the accident or uses the spilling technique intentionally to create new works
(Weisberg, 1993). Although we frequently associate the arts with creativity, any subject
can be approached in a creative manner.
Levent
Konuk/Shutterstoc
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
Assessing Creativity
STOP & THINK How many uses can you list for a brick? Take a moment and brainstormwrite
down as many as you can.
Like the author John Irving, Paul Torrance had a learning disability. He became interested
in educational psychology when he was a high school English teacher (Neumeister &
Cramond, 2004). Torrance was known as the Father of Creativity. He developed two
types of creativity tests: verbal and graphic (Torrance, 1972; Torrance & Hall, 1980). In
the verbal test, you might be instructed to think up as many uses as possible for a brick
(as you did above) or asked how a particular toy might be changed to make it more fun.
On the graphic test, you might be given 30 circles and asked to create 30 different draw-ings,
with each drawing including at least one circle.
These creativity tests require divergent thinking, an important component of many
conceptions of creativity. Divergent thinking is the ability to propose many different ideas
or answers. Convergent thinking is the more common ability to identify only one answer.
Responses to all these creativity tasks are scored for originality, fluency, and flexibilitythree
aspects of divergent thinking. Originality is usually determined statistically. To be
original, a response must be given by fewer than 5 or 10 people out of every 100 who
take the test. Fluency is the number of different responses. Flexibility is generally meas-ured
by the number of different categories of responses. For instance, if you listed 20 uses
of a brick, but each was to build something, your fluency score might be high, but your
flexibility score would be low. Of the three measures, fluencythe number of responsesis
the best predictor of divergent thinking, but there is more to real-life creativity than
divergent thinking (Plucker et al., 2004).
A few possible indicators of creativity in your students are curiosity, concentration,
adaptability, high energy, humour (sometimes bizarre), independence, playfulness, non-conformity,
risk taking, attraction to the complex and mysterious, willingness to fantasize
and daydream, intolerance for boredom, and inventiveness (Sattler & Hoge, 2006).
OK, but So What: Why Does Creativity Matter?
We cannot read any news these days without feeling a bit depressed about the problems
facing the world. Economic problems, health problems, energy problems, political prob-lems,
violence, povertythe list goes on. Certainly todays and tomorrows complex
problems will require creative solutions. And creativity is important for an individuals
psychological, physical, social, and career success. In addition, evidence shows that
creativity and critical thinking are needed to prevent people or societies from being
trapped by ideology and dogma (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2012; Plucker et al., 2004). Alene
Starko (2014) described her recent visit to China, where educators all over that country
kept asking her how to help their students become more creative, flexible thinkers.
These Chinese students knock the top off the international tests, but a focus on master-ing
academics comes at a cost to creativity and critical thinking. In fact, many teachers
will tell you that the pressures of accountability and preparing their students for high-stakes
tests have forced teaching for student creativity and creative teaching out of the
classroom.
But we do not have to choose between understanding and creativity. Strategies that
support creativity also support deep understanding in school subjects, because deep
understanding comes from using the content in multiple ways and seeing different
implications of the knowledge. Creativity also supports intrinsic motivation, engagement,
and persistence in learning because creativity generates novelty and sparks interest
(Starko, 2014).
What Are the Sources of Creativity?
Researchers have studied cognitive processes, personality factors, motivational patterns,
and background experiences to explain creativity (Simonton, 2000). Teresa Amabile
Divergent thinking Coming up
with many possible solutions.
Convergent thinking Narrowing
possibilities to a single answer.
32
328 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
(1996, 2001) proposed a three-component model of creativity. Indi-viduals
or groups must have:
1. Domain-relevant skills, including talents and competencies that
are valuable for working in the domain, such as Michelangelos
skills in shaping stone, developed when he lived with a stonecut-ters
family as a child.
2. Creativity-relevant processes, including work habits and person-ality
traits such as John Irvings habit of working 10-hour days
to write and rewrite and rewrite until he perfected his stories.
3. Intrinsic task motivation, or a deep curiosity and fascination
with the task, can be greatly influenced by teachers and parents
who support autonomy, stimulate curiosity, encourage fantasy,
and provide challenge.
SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE OF CREATIVITY History is filled
with examples of creative breakthroughs rejected in their
time (for example, Galileos theory of the sun as the centre
of the solar system). Is todays society ready to welcome
creative contributions in the field of alternative energies?
Creativity and Cognition. Having a rich store of knowledge in an
area is the basis for creativity, but something more is needed. For
many problems, that something more is the ability to see things in
a new wayrestructuring the problem, which leads to a sudden
insight. Often this happens when a person has struggled with a
problem or project and then sets it aside for a while. Some psy-chologists
believe that time away allows for incubation, a kind of
unconscious working through the problem. Actually, it is more com-plex
than that. Incubation seems to help more on divergent thinking
tasks than on verbal or visual tasks. Also incubation is more helpful
when a longer preparation period precedes the individuals setting
the problem aside (Sio & Ormerod, 2009). Leaving the problem for
a time probably interrupts rigid ways of thinking so you can restruc-ture
your view of the situation and think more divergently (Gleit-man,
Fridlund, & Reisberg, 1999). Creativity requires extensive
knowledge, flexibility, and the continual reorganizing of ideas. And
we saw that motivation, persistence, and social support play impor-tant
roles as well.
Restructuring Conceiving of a
problem in a new or different
way.
Insight Sudden realization of a
solution; the ability to deal
effectively with novel situations.
Creativity and Diversity. As Dean Simonton said, even with years of research on creativ-ity,
Psychologists still have a long way to go before they come anywhere close to under-standing
creativity in women and minorities (2000, p. 156). Thus far, white males have
been the focus of creativity research and writing over the years. However, patterns of
creativity in other groups are complexsometimes matching and sometimes diverging
from patterns found in traditional research.
In another connection between creativity and culture, research suggests that being
on the outside of mainstream society, being bilingual, or being exposed to other cultures
might encourage creativity (Simonton, 2000). In fact, true innovators often break rules.
Creators have a desire to shake things up (Winner, 2000, p. 167). And even for those
who are not outside the mainstream, participation in multicultural experiences apparently
fosters creativity. Angela Ka-Yee Leung and her colleagues (2008; Maddux, Leung, Chui, &
Galinsky, 2009) reviewed theory and research, including experimental studies that exposed
participants to information and images about other cultures. The researchers concluded
that multicultural experiences support both creative processes, such as retrieving novel
or unconventional ideas from memory, and creative performance, such as generating
insightful solutions to problems. These effects are especially strong when people open
themselves up to divergent ideas and when the situation does not emphasize finding
quick, firm answers. Multicultural individuals are particularly willing to consider and build
on unfamiliar ideas, entertain conflicting alternatives, and make unlikely connections
between ideas (Leung & Chiu, 2010; Maddux & Galinsky, 2009). So even though your
students may not be able to travel to Tibet or Turkey, they still could become more crea-tive
problem solvers if they learned about different cultures.
Paul
Whitfield/DK
Image
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
Creativity in the Classroom
STOP & THINK Consider these three students described by Alene Starko (2014, p. 3):
In first grade, Michelle was given an outline of a giant sharks mouth on a worksheet
that asked, What will our fishy friend eat next? She dutifully coloured several fish and
boats, and then wrote the following explanation: Once there was a shark named
Peppy. One day he ate three fish, one jellyfish, and two boats. Before he ate the jel-lyfish,
he made a peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich.
At 19, Juan was homeless and a senior in high school. One cold evening, he thought
that a warm space inside the school would be a more appealing sleeping place than
any he could see. Getting into the building was no problem, but once he was inside a
motion detector would make him immediately detectable to the guard on the floor
below. Juan entered a storage room and carefully dislodged a pile of baseball bats. In
the ensuing commotion, he located a comfortable sleeping place. The guard attributed
the motion detectors outburst to the falling bats, and Juan slept until morning.
In 2003 Mark Zuckerberg hacked into Harvards Web site and downloaded student
ID photos into a Web site designed to compare student photos as hot or not. The
Web site lasted just a few days. Four months later he launched a new social networking
Web site called Thefacebook. The rest is history.
Are these students creative? What might teachers do to foster or to inhibit this creative think-ing?
All too often, in the crush of day-to-day classroom life, teachers stifle creative ideas
without realizing what they are doing. Teachers are in an excellent position to encourage or
discourage creativity through their acceptance or rejection of the unusual and imaginative.
In addition to encouraging creativity through everyday interactions with students,
teachers can try brainstorming. The basic tenet of brainstorming is to separate the process
of creating ideas from the process of evaluating them because evaluation often inhibits
creativity (Osborn, 1963). Evaluation, discussion, and criticism are postponed until all
possible suggestions have been made. In this way, one idea inspires others; people do not
withhold potentially creative solutions out of fear of criticism. Alene Starko (2014) gives
these rules for brainstorming:
1. No criticism of any ideas until all the ideas are on the table. This includes both verbal
and nonverbal criticism, so no eye-rolling or laughing.
2. Go for as many ideas as you can. Quantity may lead to quality as one idea inspires
another.
3. Feel free to hitchhike on other ideas. This means that it is okay to borrow elements
from ideas already on the table, or to make slight modifications of ideas already
suggested.
4. Encourage wild ideas. Impossible, totally unworkable ideas may lead someone to
think of other, more possible, more workable ideas. It is easier to take a wildly
imaginative bad idea and tone it down to fit the constraints of reality than it is to take
a boring bad idea and make it interesting enough to be worth thinking about.
Individuals as well as groups may benefit from brainstorming. In writing this book, for
example, Phil sometimes found it helpful to list all the different topics that could be cov-ered
in a chapter, then leave the list and return to it later to evaluate the ideas.
The Big C: Revolutionary Innovation
Ellen Winner (2000) describes the big-C creativity or innovation that establishes a new
field or revolutionizes an old one. Even child prodigies do not necessarily become adult
innovators. Prodigies have mastered well-established domains very early, but innovators
change the entire domain. Individuals who ultimately make creative breakthroughs tend
from their earliest days to be explorers, innovators, and tinkerers. Often, this adventurous-ness
is interpreted as insubordination, though more fortunate tinkerers receive from
teachers or peers some form of encouragement for their experimentation (Gardner, 1993,
329
Brainstorming Generating
ideas without stopping to
evaluate them
330 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
pp. 3233). What can parents and teachers do to encourage these tinkers and potential
creators? Winner (2000) lists four dangers to avoid:
1. Avoid pushing so hard that the childs intrinsic passion to master a field becomes a
craving for extrinsic rewards.
2. Avoid pushing so hard that the child later looks back on a missed childhood.
3. Avoid freezing the child into a safe, technically perfect way of performing that has
led to lavish rewards.
4. Be aware of the psychological wounds that can follow when the child who can per-form
perfectly becomes the forgotten adult who can do nothing more than continue
to perform perfectlywithout ever creating something new.
Finally, teachers and parents can encourage students with outstanding abilities and crea-tive
talents to give back to the society; service learning, discussed in Chapter 10, is one
opportunity.
The Guidelines: Applying and Encouraging Creativity, adapted from Fleith (2000)
and Sattler and Hoge (2006), describe other possibilities for encouraging creativity.
Applying and Encouraging Creativity
GUIDELINES
Accept and encourage divergent thinking.
Examples
1. During class discussion, ask Can anyone suggest a different
way of looking at this question?
2. Reinforce attempts at unusual solutions to problems, even if
the final product is not perfect.
3. Offer choices in topics for projects or modes of presentation
(written, oral, visual or graphic, using technology).
Tolerate dissent.
Examples
1. Ask students to support dissenting opinions.
2. Make sure nonconforming students receive an equal share of
classroom privileges and rewards.
Encourage students to trust their own judgment.
Examples
1. When students ask questions you think they can answer,
rephrase or clarify the questions and direct them back to
the students.
2. Give ungraded assignments from time to time.
Emphasize that everyone is capable of creativity in some form.
Examples
1. Avoid describing the feats of great artists or inventors as if
they were superhuman accomplishments.
2. Recognize creative efforts in each students work. Have a
separate grade for originality on some assignments.
Provide time, space, and materials to support creative projects.
Examples
1. Collect found materials for collages and creationsbuttons,
stones, shells, paper, fabric, beads, seeds, drawing
tools, claytry flea markets and friends for donations. Have
mirrors and pictures for drawing faces.
2. Make a well-lighted space available where children can work
on projects, leave them, and come back to finish them.
3. Follow up on memorable occasions (field trips, news
events, holidays) with opportunities to draw, write, or
make music.
Be a stimulus for creative thinking.
Examples
1. Use class brainstorming sessions whenever possible.
2. Model creative problem solving by suggesting unusual
solutions for class problems.
3. Encourage students to delay judging a particular suggestion
for solving a problem until all the possibilities have been
considered.
Capitalize on technology (Starko, 2014).
Examples
1. Have students use free apps such as Spider Scribe
(spiderscribe.net) to create visual maps of ideas and share
their ideas with others.
2. Spend the 5 minutes before lunch or at the end of class
creatively by having students practice divergent thinking
using Creative Genius on the Go on their iPhone, iPod, or
iPad.
3. Encourage students to create a mock Facebook page for a
literary or historical figure using Fakebook from Classtools.
net. Go to classtools.net/FB/home-page.
4. Use Wordle (wordle.net) or Tagxedo (tagxedo.com) to create
word clouds showing the frequency of words used in a
particular text or the students writing. See Figure 9.5 for a
word cloud of this chapter made with Wordle.
For more ideas, see ecap.crc.illinois.edu and search for creativity.
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
FIGURE 9.5
A WORD CLOUD OF THIS CHAPTER
In this word cloud, the frequency of the words in this chapter is indicated by the size of the word,
so you can see that students, problem, and strategies appear most often.
331
Source: Anita Woolfolk
We may not all be revolutionary in our creativity, but we all can be experts in one
areacritical thinking.
CRITICAL THINKING AND ARGUMENTATION
Critical thinking skills are useful in almost every life situationeven in evaluating the
media ads that constantly bombard us. When you see a group of gorgeous people extol-ling
the virtues of a particular brand of orange juice as they frolic in skimpy bathing suits,
you must decide if sex appeal is a relevant factor in choosing a fruit drink (remember
Pavlovian advertising from Chapter 7). A formal definition of critical thinking is the intel-lectually
disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing,
synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation,
experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action
(Scriven & Paul, 2013). Table 9.3 describes the characteristics of a critical thinker.
Many educational psychologists believe that good thinking can and should be devel-oped
in school. One way to develop students thinking is to create a culture of thinking
in your classrooms (Perkins, Jay, & Tishman, 1993). This means that there is a spirit of
inquisitiveness and critical thinking, a respect for reasoning and creativity, and an expecta-tion
that students will learn to make and counter arguments based on evidence.
TABLE 9.3 What Is a Critical Thinker?
Assuming that critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or
do, a critical thinker:
1. Is open minded and mindful of alternatives.
2. Tries to be well informed.
3. Judges well the credibility of
sources.
4. Identifies conclusions, reasons, and assumptions.
5. Judges well the quality of an argument, including the acceptability of its reasons, assumptions,
and evidence.
6. Can well develop and defend a reasonable position.
7. Asks appropriate clarifying questions.
8. Formulates plausible hypotheses; plans experiments well.
9. Defines terms in a way appropriate for the context.
10. Draws conclusions when warranted, but with caution.
11. Integrates all items in this list when deciding what to believe or do.
Source: Based on Robert H. Ennis: http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/rhennis/index.html, Pearson Educatio
332 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
FIGURE 9.6
PAUL AND ELDERS MODEL OF CRITICAL THINKING
Critical thinkers routinely apply the intellectual standards to the elements of reasoning to
develop
intellectual traits.
THE STANDARDS
clarity
accuracy
relevance
logic
breadth
precision
significance
completeness
fairness
depth
THE ELEMENTS
purposes
questions
as we
learn to
develop
points of view
information
inferences
concepts
implications
assumptions
must be
applied to
INTELLECTUAL TRAITS
intellectual humility
intellectual autonomy
intellectual integrity
intellectual courage
intellectual perseverance
intellectual empathy
fairmindedness
confidence in reason
Source: Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2012). Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life (3rd ed., p. 58). Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson. Reprinted by permission of Pearson, Inc, Pearson Education.
One Model of Critical Thinking: Paul and Elder
What is involved in critical thinking? Richard Paul and Linda Elder (2014; Elder & Paul,
2012) suggest the model in Figure 9.6 as a way of describing what critical thinkers do. As
you can see, the centre of critical thinking is reasoning, which is drawing conclusions
based on reasons. When we reason, we have a purpose and a point of view. We reason
based on certain assumptions that lead to implications for our conclusions. We use infor-mation
(data, facts, experiences, etc.) to make inferences and judgments based on key
concepts or ideas, all leading to answers to the main problem or question indicated in
our original purpose. But to reason wellto think criticallywe should apply standards
such as clarity, accuracy, logic, and fairness, as indicated in Figure 9.6. With practice in
clear, accurate, logical (etc.) reasoning, we develop intellectual traits such as humility,
integrity, perseverance, and confidence.
So how would you develop critical thinking in your classes? No matter what approach
you use to develop critical thinking, it is important to follow up with additional practice.
One lesson is not enough. For example, if your class examined a particular historical
document to determine if it reflected bias or propaganda, you should follow up by analyz-ing
other written historical documents, contemporary advertisements, or news stories.
Unless thinking skills become overlearned and relatively automatic, they are not likely to
be transferred to new situations (Mayer & Wittrock, 2006). Instead, students will use these
skills only to complete the lesson in social studies, not to evaluate the claims made by
friends, politicians, car manufacturers, or diet plans
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
Applying Critical Thinking in Specific Subjects
The characteristics of critical thinkers in Table 9.3 would be useful in any subject. But some
critical thinking skills are specific to a particular subject. For example, to teach history,
Jeffrey Nokes and his colleagues investigated (1) using traditional texts versus multiple
readings and (2) direct teaching of critical thinking skills versus no direct teaching of criti-cal
thinking skills (Nokes, Dole, & Hacker, 2007). The multiple texts included historical
fiction, excerpts from speeches, government documents, photographs, charts and historical
data, and short sections from texts. The history critical thinking skills taught were:
Sourcing: Looking at the source of the document before reading and using that infor-mation
to help interpret and make inferences about the reading. Is the source biased?
Can I trust it?
Corroboration: Making connections between the information in different texts and
noting similarities and contradictions.
Contextualization: Understanding the time, place, people, and culture that is the
context for the event, with all the political and social forces that might be operating.
Students who learned with multiple texts instead of traditional textbooks actually
learned more history content. Also, students were able to learn and apply two of the
three critical thinking skills, sourcing and corroboration, when they were directly taught
how to use the skills. Contextualization proved more difficult, perhaps because the
students lacked the background knowledge to fill in contextual information. So critical
thinking for specific subjects can be taught along with the subject. But as you can see
in the Point/Counterpoint, educators do not agree about the best way to foster critical
thinking in schools.
Argumentation
The ability to construct and support a position is essential in science, politics, persuasive
writing, and critical thinking, to name just a few areas. The heart of argumentation (the
process of constructing and critiquing arguments, and debating claims) is supporting your
position with evidence and understanding and then refuting your opponents claims and
evidence. Children are not skilled at argumentation, adolescents are a bit better, and adults
are better still, but not perfect. Children do not pay very much attention to the claims and
evidence of the other person in the debate. Adolescents understand that their opponent
in a debate has a different position, but they tend to spend much more time presenting
their own position than they do trying to understand and critique their opponents claims.
It is as if the adolescents believe winning an argument means making a better presenta-tion,
but they do not appreciate the need to understand and weaken the opponents claims
(Kuhn & Dean, 2004; Nussbaum, 2011).
Children and adolescents focus more on their own positions because it is too demand-ing
to remember and process both their own and their opponents claims and evidence
at the same timethe cognitive load is just too much. In addition, argumentation skills
are not natural. They take both time and instruction to learn (Kuhn, Goh, Iordanou, &
Shaenfield, 2008; Udell, 2007).
But what has to be learned? To make a case while understanding and refuting the
opponents case, you must be aware of what you are saying, what your opponent is say-ing,
and how to refute your opponents claims. This takes planning, evaluating how the
plan is going, reflecting on what the opponent has said, and changing strategies as
neededin other words, metacognitive knowledge and skills for argumentation. Deanna
Kuhn and her colleagues (2008) designed a process for developing metacognitive argu-mentation
skills. They presented a grade 6 class with the following dilemma.
The Costa family has moved to the edge of town from far away Greece with their
11-year-old son Nick. Nick was a good student and soccer player back home in Greece.
Nicks parents have decided that in this new place, they want to keep Nick at home with
them, and not have him be at the school with the other children. The family speaks only
Greek, and they think Nick will do better if he sticks to his familys language and doesnt
try to learn English. They say they can teach him everything he needs at home. What
333
Argumentation The process of
debating a claim with someone
else
334 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
POINT/
COUNTERPOINT
Should Schools Teach Critical Thinking and
Problem Solving?
The question of whether schools should focus on process or content, problem-solving skills or core knowledge,
higher-order thinking skills or academic information has been debated for years. Some educators suggest that
students must be taught how to think and solve problems, while other educators assert that students cannot
learn to think in the abstract. They must be thinking about somethingsome content. Should teachers focus
on knowledge or thinking?
Problem solving and higher-order thinking can and
should be taught. An article in the April, 28, 1995, issue of
the Chronicle of Higher Education makes this claim:
Critical thinking is at the heart of effective reading,
writing, speaking, and listening. It enables us to link
together mastery of content with such diverse goals
as self-esteem, self-discipline, multicultural educa-tion,
effective cooperative learning, and problem
solving. It enables all instructors and administrators
to raise the level of their own teaching and thinking.
(Based on Chronicle of Higher Education, April, 28,
1995, p. A-71., Pearson Education.)
Closer to home for you, Peter Facione (2011) claims that critical
thinking is related to GPA in college or university and to reading
comprehension. How can students learn to think critically? Some
educators recommend teaching thinking skills directly with widely
used techniques such as the Productive Thinking Program or
CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust). Other researchers argue that
learning computer programming languages will improve stu-dents
minds and teach them how to think logically. Finally,
because expert readers automatically apply certain metacogni-tive
strategies, many educators and psychologists recommend
directly teaching novice or poor readers how to apply these strat-egies.
Michael Pressleys Good Strategy User model (Pressley &
Harris, 2006) and Palincsar and Browns (1984) reciprocal teaching
approach are successful examples of direct teaching of metacog-nitive
skills. Research on these approaches generally shows
improvements in achievement and comprehension for students
of all ages who participate (Pressley & Harris, 2006; Rosenshine &
Meister, 1994).
Thinking and problem-solving skills do not transfer. E. D.
Hirsch, a vocal critic of critical thinking programs, writes:
But whether such direct instruction of critical thinking
or self-monitoring does in fact improve performance
is a subject of debate in the research community. For
instance, the research regarding critical thinking is
not reassuring. Instruction in critical thinking has
been going on in several countries for over a hun-dred
years. Yet researchers found that students from
nations as varied as Israel, Germany, Australia, the
Philippines, and the United States, including those
who have been taught critical thinking continue to
fall into logical fallacies. (Hirsch, 1996, p. 136)
The CoRT program has been used in over 5000 classrooms
in 10 nations. But Polson and Jeffries (1985) report that
after 10 years of widespread use we have no adequate
evidence concerning the effectiveness of the program (p. 445).
In addition, Mayer and Wittrock (1996) note that field studies of
problem solving in real situations show that people often fail to
apply the mathematical problem-solving approaches they learn
in school to actual problems encountered in the grocery store
or home.
Even though educators have been more successful in
teaching metacognitive skills, critics still caution that there are
times when such teaching hinders rather than helps learning.
Robert Siegler (1993) suggests that teaching self-monitoring
strategies to low-achieving students can interfere with the stu-dents
development of adaptive strategies. Forcing students to
use the strategies of experts may put too much burden on work-ing
memory as the students struggle to use an unfamiliar strat-egy
and miss the meaning or content of the lesson. For example,
rather than teach students strategies for figuring out words from
context, it may be helpful for students to focus on learning more
vocabulary words.
BEWARE OF EITHER/OR
One clear message from current research on learning is that both
subject-specific knowledge and learning strategies are important.
Students today need to be critical consumers of all kinds of
knowledge, but critical thinking alone is not enough. Students
need the knowledge, vocabulary, and concepts to understand
what they are reading, seeing, and hearing. The best teachers can
teach math content and how to learn math at the same time or
can teach history and how to critically assess history sources.
POINT
.
Kawing921/Shutterstock
COUNTERPOINT
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
should happen? Is it okay for the Costa family to live in the town but keep Nick at home,
or should they be required to send their son to the town school like all the other
families do? (p. 1313)
Based on their initial position on the dilemma, the 28 students in the class were divided
into two groupsNick should go to school or Nick should be taught at home. These
two groups were divided again into same-gender pairs and all the Nick should go to
school pairs moved to a room next door to their class. For about 25 minutes, each pair
from one side debated a pair in the other room using instant messaging (IM). Later in
the week the process was repeated, but with different pairs debating. In all, there were
seven IM debates, so every go to school pair debated every stay home pair over sev-eral
weeks. After four of the seven sessions, the pairs were given a transcript of the
dialogue from their last debate, along with worksheets that scaffolded their reflection on
their own arguments or the arguments of their opponents. The students evaluated their
arguments and tried to improve them, with some adults coaching. These reflective ses-sions
were repeated three times.
Next, there was a showdown debatethe entire go to school team debated the
entire stay home team via one computer per team and a smart board. For this debate,
half of each team prepared as experts on their position and half as experts on the oppo-nents
arguments. After winter break and again after spring break, the whole process was
repeated with new dilemmas.
You can see that the study employed three techniques, supported by technology,
to help students become more metacognitive about argumentation. First, they had to
work in pairs to collaborate and agree on each communication with the opposing
pair. Second, the researchers provided the pairs with transcripts of parts of their
dialogue with the opponents so the partners could reflect on the discussions. Third,
the dialogues were conducted via IM, so the pairs had a permanent record of the
discussion.
So what happened? The pairs, IM, and reflection strategies were successful for most
students in helping them take into account the opponents position and create strategies
for rebutting the opponents arguments. Working in pairs seemed to be especially helpful.
When adolescents and even adults work alone, they often do not create effective coun-terarguments
and rebuttals (Kuhn & Franklin, 2006).
TEACHING FOR TRANSFER
STOP & THINK Think back for a moment to a class in one of your high school subjects that
you have not studied since. Imagine the teacher, the room, the textbook. Now remember what
you actually learned in class. If it was a science class, what were some of the formulas you
learned? Oxidation reduction? Boyles law?
If you are like most of us, you may remember that you learned these things, but you
will not be quite sure exactly what you learned. Were those hours wasted? This ques-tion
relates to the important topic of learning transfer. Lets begin with a definition
of transfer.
Whenever something previously learned influences current learning or when solving
an earlier problem affects how you solve a new problem, transfer has occurred. Erik De
Corte (2003) calls transfer the productive use of cognitive tools and
motivations
(p. 142),
and Chi and VanLehn (2012) describe transfer as the ability of students to treat a new
situation, problem, concept, or challenge as similar to one they have experienced before.
So transfer is doing something new (productive), not just reproducing a previous appli-cation
of the tools. If students learn a mathematical principle in one class and use it to
solve a physics problem days or weeks later in another class, then transfer has taken
place. However, the effect of past learning on present learning is not always positive.
335
Transfer Influence of previously
learned material on new material;
the productive (not reproductive)
uses of cognitive tools and
motivations
336 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
Functional fixedness and response set (described earlier in this chapter) are examples
of negative transfer because they are attempts to apply familiar but inappropriate strate-gies
to a new situation.
Transfer has several dimensions (Barnett & Ceci, 2002). You can transfer learning
across subjects (math skills used in science problems), across physical contexts (learned
in school, used on the job), across social contexts (learned alone, used with your family
or team), across time periods (learned in university, used months or years later), across
functions (learned for academics, used for hobbies and recreation), and across modalities
(learned from watching home improvement videos, used to discuss ideas for a patio with
a landscape architect). So transfer can refer to many different examples of applying knowl-edge
and skills beyond where, when, and how you learned them.
The Many Views of Transfer
Transfer has been a focus of research in educational psychology for over 100 years. After
all, the productive use of knowledge, skills, and motivations across a lifetime is a funda-mental
goal of education (Goldstone & Day, 2012; Shaffer, 2010). Early work focused on
specific transfer of skills and the general transfer of mental discipline gained from study-ing
rigorous subjects such as Greek or mathematics. But in 1924, E. L. Thorndike demon-strated
that no mental discipline benefit is derived from learning Greek. Learning Greek
just helps you learn more Greek. So, thanks to Thorndike, you were not required to take
Greek in high school.
More recently, researchers have distinguished between the automatic, direct use
of skills such as reading or writing in everyday applications and the thoughtful transfer
of knowledge and strategies to arrive at creative solutions to problems (Bereiter, 1995;
Bransford & Schwartz, 1999). Automatic transfer probably benefits from practice in
different situations, but thoughtful transfer requires more than practice. Michelene Chi
and Kurt VanLehn (2012) describe thoughtful transfer as involving two processesinitial
learning and reusing or applying what was learned. For thoughtful transfer to
succeed, students must first actually learn the underlying
principle or concept, not just the surface procedure or algo-rithm.
So, essential to thoughtful transfer in the initial learn-ing
stage is mindful abstraction, which is the deliberate
identification of a principle, main idea, strategy, or procedure
that is not tied to one specific problem or situation but could
apply to many. Such an abstraction becomes part of your
metacognitive knowledge, available to guide future learning
and problem solving. This may remind you of our discussion
in Chapter 8 about how the way you learn something in the
first place (through deeper processing) affects how well you
remember it later. Bransford and Schwartz (1999) added
another keya resource-rich environment that supports pro-ductive,
appropriate transfer. Table 9.4 summarizes the types
of transfer.
Teaching for Positive Transfer
Here is a great perspective on transfer from David Perkins and
Gavriel Salomon (2012):
HIGHER-LEVEL TRANSFER Students will be more likely to
transfer knowledge to new situations if they have been actively
involved in the learning process. They should be encouraged to
form abstractions that they will apply later, so the students know
transfer is an important goal.
Schools are supposed to be stopovers in life, not ends in
themselves. The information, skills, and understandings
they offer are knowledge-to-go, not just to use on site. To
be sure, often Mondays topics most conspicuously serve
the Tuesday problem set, the Friday quiz, or the exam at
the end of the year. However, in principle those topics are
an investment toward thriving in family, civic, cultural, and
professional lives. (p. 248)
Cindy
Charles/PhotoEdit,Inc
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
TABLE 9.4 Kinds of Transfer
DIRECT APPLICATION
Definition Automatic transfer of highly
practised skill
Key Conditions Extensive practice
Variety of settings and
conditions
Examples
Overlearning to automaticity
Driving many different cars
337
PREPARATION FOR FUTURE LEARNING
Conscious application of abstract
knowledge to a new situation
Productive use of cognitive tools and
motivations
Mindful focus on abstracting a principle,
main idea, or procedure that can be
used in many situations
Learning in powerful teachinglearning
environments
Applying KWL or READS strategies
Finding your gate in an airport Applying procedures from math in
designing a page layout for the school
newspaper
Years of research and experience show that students will not always take advantage
of knowledge-to-go. They may (seem to) learn new concepts, problem-solving procedures,
and learning strategies Monday, but they may not use them for the year-end exam or even
Friday unless prompted or guided. For example, studies of real-world mathematics show
that people do not always apply math procedures learned in school to solve practical
problems in their homes or at grocery stores (Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991). This hap-pens
because learning is situatedtied to specific situations. Because knowledge is
learned as a tool to solve particular problems, we may not realize that the knowledge is
relevant when we encounter a problem that seems different, at least on the surface
(Driscoll, 2005; Singley & Anderson, 1989). How can you make sure your students will
use what they learn, even when situations change?
What Is Worth Learning? First, you must answer the question What is worth learning?
The learning of basic skills such as reading, writing, computing, cooperating, and speak-ing
will definitely transfer to other situations, because these skills are necessary for later
work both in and out of schoolwriting job applications, reading novels, paying bills,
working on a team, locating and evaluating health care services, among others. All later
learning depends on positive transfer of these basic skills to new situations.
Teachers must also be aware of what the future is likely to hold for their students,
both as a group and as individuals. What will society require of them as adults? As chil-dren,
we studied nothing about computers; now we spend hours at our Macs each day
and Phil even designs software for researching how students learn. Phil also learned to
use a slide rule. Now, calculators and computers have made this skill obsolete. We were
all encouraged to take advanced math and science instead of typing in high school. Those
were great classes, but we still struggle with keyboardingwho knew? Undoubtedly,
changes as extreme and unpredictable as these await the students you will teach. For this
reason, the general transfer of principles, attitudes, learning strategies, self-motivation,
time management skills, and problem solving will be just as important for your students
as the specific transfer of basic skills.
How Can Teachers Help? For basic skills, greater transfer can also be ensured by
overlearning, practising a skill
past the point of mastery
. Many of the basic facts stu-dents
learn in elementary school, such as the multiplication tables, are traditionally
overlearned. Overlearning helps students develop automated basic skills, as we saw in
Chapter 8.
Overlearning Practising a skill
past the point of mastery
338 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
For higher-level transfer, students must first learn and understand. Students will be
more likely to transfer knowledge to new situations if they have been actively involved
in the learning process. Strategies include having students compare and contrast two
examples, then identify the underlying principles; asking student to explain to themselves
or each other the worked examples provided by the teacher; or identify for each step in
a problem solution the underlying principle at work (Chi & VanLehn, 2012). Students
should be encouraged to form abstractions that they will apply later, so they know trans-fer
is an important goal. It also helps if students form deep connections between the new
knowledge and their existing structures of knowledge as well as connections to their
everyday experiences (Perkins & Salomon, 2012; Pugh & Phillips, 2011). Erik De Corte
(2003) believes that teachers support transfer, the productive use of cognitive tools and
motivations, when they create powerful teachinglearning environments using these
design principles:
The environments should support constructive learning processes in all students.
The environments should encourage the development of student self-regulation, so
that teachers gradually give over more and more responsibilities to the students.
Learning should involve interaction and collaboration.
Learners should deal with problems that have personal meaning for them, that are
similar to those they will face in the future.
The classroom culture should encourage students to become aware of and develop
their cognitive and motivational processes. To be productive users of these tools, stu-dents
must know about and value them.
Chapters 10 to 13 delve in depth about how to support constructive learning, motiva-tion,
self-regulation, collaboration, and self-awareness in all students.
One last kind of transfer is especially important for studentsthe transfer of the
learning strategies we encountered earlier. Learning strategies are meant to be applied
across a wide range of situations.
Stages of Transfer for Strategies. Gary Phye (1992, 2001; Phye & Sanders, 1994)
describes three stages in developing strategic transfer. In the acquisition phase, stu-dents
should not only receive instruction about a strategy and how to use it, but also
rehearse the strategy and practice being aware of when and how they are using it. In
the retention phase, more practice with feedback helps students hone their strategy
use. In the transfer phase, students should be given new problems that they can solve
with the same strategy, even though the problems appear different on the surface. To
enhance motivation, teachers should point out to students how using the strategy will
help them solve many problems and accomplish different tasks. These steps help build
both procedural and self-regulatory knowledgehow to use the strategy as well as
when and why.
For all students, there is a positive relationship between using learning strategies and
academic gains such as high school GPA and retention in university (Robbins, Le, & Lau-ver,
2005; Winne 2013). Some students will learn productive strategies on their own, but
all students can benefit from direct teaching, modelling, and practice of learning strategies
and study skills. This is one important way to prepare all of your students for the future.
Newly mastered concepts, principles, and strategies must be applied in a wide variety of
situations and with many types of problems (Z. Chen & Mo, 2004). Positive transfer is
encouraged when skills are practised under authentic conditions, similar to those that will
exist when the skills are needed later. Students can learn to write by corresponding with
email pen pals in other countries. They can learn historical research methods by studying
their own family history. Some of these applications should involve complex, ill-defined,
unstructured problems, because many of the problems to be faced in later life, both in
school and out, will not come to students complete with instructions. The Guidelines:
Family and Community Partnerships give ideas for enlisting the support of families in
encouraging transfer
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES 339
Promoting Transfer
GUIDELINES FAMILY AND COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS
Keep families informed about their childs curriculum so they
can support learning.
Examples
1. At the beginning of units or major projects, send aletter
summarizing the key goals, a few of the major assignments,
and some common problems students have in learning the
material for that unit.
2. Ask parents for suggestions about how their childs interests
could be connected to the curriculum topics.
3. Invite parents to school for an evening of strategy learning.
Have the students teach their family members one of the
strategies they have learned in school.
Give families ideas for how they might encourage their
children to practice, extend, or apply learning from school.
Examples
1. To extend writing, ask parents to encourage their children to
write letters or emails to companies or civic organizations
asking for information or free products. Provide a shell letter
form for structure and ideas, and include addresses of
companies that provide free samples or information.
2. Ask family members to include their children in some
projects that require measurement, halving or doubling
recipes, or estimating costs.
3. Suggest that students work with grandparents to do
a family memory book. Combine historical research and
writing.
Show connections between learning in school and life
outside school.
Examples
1. Ask families to talk about and show how they use the skills
their children are learning in their jobs, hobbies, or
community involvement projects.
2. Ask family members to come to class to demonstrate how
they use reading, writing, science, math, or other knowledge
in their work.
Make families partners in practising learning strategies.
Examples
1. Focus on one learning strategy at a time. Ask families to
simply remind their children to use a particular strategy with
homework that week.
2. Develop alending library of books and videotapes to teach
families about learning strategies.
3. Give parents a copy of the Guidelines: Becoming an Expert
Student, rewritten for your grade level.
. SUMMARY
METACOGNITION (PP. 304307)
What are the three metacognitive skills? The three metacogni-tive
skills used to regulate thinking and learning are planning,
monitoring, and evaluating. Planning involves deciding how
much time to give to a task, which strategies to use, how to
start, and so on. Monitoring is the real-time awareness of how
Im doing. Evaluating involves making judgments about the
processes and outcomes of thinking and learning and acting on
those judgments.
What are some sources of individual differences in meta-cognition?
Individual differences in metacognition may result
from different paces of development (maturation) or biologi-cal
differences among learners. For example, young students
may not be able to understand a lessons purpose as well as
older students.
How can teachers help students develop metacognitive
knowledge and skills? With younger students, teachers can
help students look inside to identify what they do to read,
write, or learn better. Systems such as KWL can help, if teach-ers
demonstrate, explain, and model the strategy. For older
students, teachers can build self-reflective questions into assign-ments
and learning materials.
LEARNING STRATEGIES
(PP. 307315)
What are learning strategies?
Learning strategies are a special kind
of procedural knowledgeknowing
how to do something. A strategy for
learning might include mnemonics to
remember key terms, skimming to identify the organization, and
then writing answers to possible essay questions. Use of strate-gies
and tactics reflects metacognitive knowledge.
What key functions do learning strategies play? Learning
strategies help students become cognitively engagedfocus
attention on the relevant, important aspects of the material.
Second, they encourage students to invest effort, make con-nections,
elaborate, translate, organize, and reorganize to
think and process deeply; the greater the practice and process-ing,
the stronger the learning. Finally, strategies help students
regulate and monitor their own learningkeep track of what
is making sense and notice when a new approach is needed.
Describe some procedures for developing learning strategies.
Expose students to a number of different strategies, not only
Liubomir/Shutterstoc
340 PART 2 LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
general learning strategies but also very specific tactics, such as
the graphic strategies. Teach conditional knowledge about when,
where, and why to use various strategies. Develop motivation to
use the strategies and tactics by showing students how their learn-ing
and performance can be improved. Provide direct instruction
in content knowledge needed to use the strategies.
When will students apply learning strategies? If they have appro-priate
strategies, students will apply them if they are faced with a
task that requires good strategies, value doing well on that task,
think the effort to apply the strategies will be worthwhile, and
believe that they can succeed using the strategies. Also, to apply
deep processing strategies, students must assume that knowledge
is complex and takes time to learn and that learning requires their
own active efforts.
PROBLEM SOLVING (PP. 315326)
What is problem solving? Problem solving is both general and
domain specific. Also, problems can range from well structured
to ill structured, depending on how clear-cut the goal is and how
much structure is provided for solving the problem. General prob-lem-solving
strategies usually include the steps of identifying the
problem, setting goals, exploring possible solutions and conse-quences,
acting, and finally evaluating the outcome. Both general
and specific problem solving are valuable and necessary.
Why is the representation stage of problem solving so important?
To represent the problem accurately, you must understand both
the whole problem and its discrete elements. Schema training may
improve this ability. The problem-solving process follows entirely
different paths, depending on what representation and goal are
chosen. If your representation of the problem suggests an immediate
solution, the task is done; the new problem is recognized as a dis-guised
version of an old problem with a clear solution. But if there
is no existing way of solving the problem or if the activated schema
fails, then students must search for a solution. The application of
algorithms and heuristicssuch as means-ends analysis, working
backward, analogical thinking, and verbalizationmay help students
solve problems.
Describe factors that can interfere with problem solving. Factors
that hinder problem solving include functional fixedness or rigidity
(response set). These disallow the flexibility needed to represent
problems accurately and to have insight into solutions. Also, as we
make decisions and judgments, we may overlook important infor-mation
because we base judgments on what seems representative
of a category (representativeness heuristic) or what is available in
memory (availability heuristic), then pay attention only to informa-tion
that confirms our choices (confirmation bias) so that we hold
on to beliefs, even in the face of contradictory evidence (belief
perseverance).
What are the differences between expert and novice knowl-edge
in a given area? Expert problem solvers have a rich store
of declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge. They
organize this knowledge around general principles or patterns
that apply to large classes of problems. They work faster, remem-ber
relevant information, and monitor their progress better than
novices.
CREATIVITY: WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MATTERS (PP. 326331)
What is creativity, and how is it assessed? Creativity is a process
that involves independently restructuring problems to see things
in new, imaginative ways. Creativity is difficult to measure, but
tests of divergent thinking can assess originality, fluency, and flex-ibility.
Originality is usually determined statistically. To be original,
a response must be given by fewer than 5 or 10 people out of
every 100 who take the test. Fluency is the number of different
responses. The number of different categories of responses meas-ures
flexibility.
What can teachers do to support creativity in the classroom?
Multicultural experiences appear to help students think flexibly and
creatively. Teachers can encourage creativity in their interactions
with students by accepting unusual, imaginative answers; model-ling
divergent thinking; using brainstorming; and tolerating dissent.
CRITICAL THINKING AND ARGUMENTATION (PP. 331335)
What is critical thinking? Critical thinking skills include defining
and clarifying the problem, making judgments about the consist-ency
and adequacy of the information related to a problem, and
drawing conclusions. No matter what approach you use to develop
critical thinking, it is important to follow up activities with additional
practice. One lesson is not enoughoverlearning will help stu-dents
use critical thinking in their own lives.
What is argumentation? The heart of argumentation (the process
of debating a claim with someone else) is supporting your position
with evidence and understanding, and then refuting your oppo-nents
claims and evidence. Argumentation skills are not natural.
They take both time and instruction to learn. It is especially difficult
for children and adolescents to pay attention to, understand, and
refute the opponents position with evidence.
TEACHING FOR TRANSFER (PP. 335339)
What is transfer? Transfer occurs when a rule, fact, or skill learned
in one situation is applied in another situation; for example, apply-ing
rules of punctuation to write a job application letter. Transfer
also involves applying to new problems the principles learned in
other, often dissimilar, situations.
What are some dimensions of transfer? Information can be trans-ferred
across a variety of contexts. Some examples include transfer
from one subject to another, one physical location to another, or
one function to another. These types of transfer make it possible to
use skills developed in one area for many other tasks.
Distinguish between automatic and mindful, intentional trans-fer.
Spontaneous application of well-learned knowledge and skills
is automatic transfer. Mindful, intentional transfer involves reflec-tion
and deliberate application of abstract knowledge to new situ-ations.
Learning environments should support active constructive
learning, self-regulation, collaboration, and awareness of cognitive
tools and motivational processes. In addition, students should
deal with problems that have meaning in their lives. In addition,
teachers can help students transfer learning strategies by teach-ing
strategies directly, providing practice with feedback, and then
expanding the application of the strategies to new and unfamiliar
situations
CHAPTER 9 COMPLEX COGNITIVE PROCESSES
. what would they do?
TEACHERS CASEBOOK: Uncritical Thinking
Here is how some practising teachers would help students learn to
critically evaluate the information they find on the internet.
JOHN BALDASSARRE
Formerly from Archbishop Oscar Romero High School, Edmonton, AB
When assigning a research paper, I find it extremely valuable to
start the process early in the year by presenting students with a
website that features afake news story that appears to be real. I ask
students to begin to discuss and evaluate the story that is presented
and to discuss any similar events that are taking place in the world
at the time. After a lengthy discussion, I reveal to the students the
fact that the website and the news story are fake and begin to show
them how to establish the validity of a website or author. I ask stu-dents
to consider the following basic questions:
Who is the author of the news story or website, and what is
his or her background? Is there anything on the site that could
bias the information?
What is the purpose of the website? Is it affiliated with any
other sites (political parties, social action groups, etc.)? Is it as-sociated
with a specific domain, or is it a personal site?
How active and recent is the website?
Is the content based on opinions or on studies and/or articles?
Can those studies or articles be accessed?
Can you find the same information stated on other websites or
within more traditional, print-based research materials?
I then ask students to apply the above criteria to each research
paper that I assign. Students come to realize that they need to
research more than one source of information and that they must
develop the ability to discern information and to filter bias and opin-ions
from the objective facts. In teaching and advocating this type
of methodology and critical thinking process, I also try to function
as a role model and demonstrate to students how to filter through
a plethora of information to find the sources that are best suited to
the task.
ALANNA KING
Orangeville District Secondary School, Orangeville, ON
One technique I use to help students critically evaluate research
obtained through internet sources is to show four examples of
websites and then walk the students through how to rank the sites
from worst to best. For this activity, I break the class into small groups
and ask students to develop their own criteria and to sort the exam-ples.
As a class, we then list all of the criteria together. Rather than
give the students the criteria in advance, they are expected to
actively engage with these exemplars for comparison and to express
their own ideas about the websites. Together, we develop a common
class lexicon for discussing the authority and reliability of websites
for research. Students now have a clear understanding of the expec-tations
associated with choosing internet research sources. Another
advantage of this activity is that the students become dissatisfied
with websites that are inadequate after interacting with good ones.
This activity also involves asking the students to engage with a
citation tool from the beginning of their research, which rein-forces
the value of finding quality internet sources. Most digital cita-tion
tools now produce excellent quality reference pages based on
user input. Poor websites have very little information to plug into
the citation tool, and sometimes students find that they cant even
locate an author or copyright date. Using the citation tool during
the research process, rather than at the end of an assignment, helps
students to manage their own research process.
Many students dont know how to use research material as evi-dence
for an argument, so finding deeper web-based sources is
critical to success. I think students undervalue their own voices and
dont know how to recognize and appreciate their own ideas during
research. I model how to analyze a paragraph on my digital projec-tor,
and think aloud in front of the students, so they can see how Im
developing ideas and connecting them to my research question.
Next, I give students a reading from a website and invite them to
listen to their own thoughts as they read silently. I suggest that these
thoughts might help to:
predict what is next
connect to their own experiences
connect to other texts they have experienced
connect to current events
During this close reading, students recognize once again the impor-tance
of choosing quality internet research. Engaging with the text
on multiple levels helps students learn how to critically evaluate web
sources.
34