“The connecting is the thinking.” This concept from James’ Talks to Teachers is easily related to information processing in terms of how individuals are able to store and retrieve information over the long term. This is accomplished through encoding, mnemonics, and the deep processing of information. This deep processing, or mindfulness, forces the individual to take more time with the information. Information is only as good as the way in which it is encoded. This is a point further emphasized in Marsh and Butler (in press), where they review some of the theories and techniques emphasized in memory. One important concept highlighted in this chapter is that of desirable difficulty; “introducing difficulties during learning will result in superior long-term retention because the greatest gains in storage strength occur when retrieval strength is low” (Marsh & Butler, in press, p. 5). This reminded me of Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development, whereby development occurs by having individuals participate in activities that are just beyond that which they can do by themselves. By stretching learning and recall over longer periods of time, connecting it to more and more ideas and experiences, individuals are able to learn information in a deeper way than if they were simply cramming for a test.
Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) note that constructivism should not happen at the expense of content knowledge, and that teacher’s should be wary of introducing minimally guided instruction into their classrooms. “Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective, there is also evidence that it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete or disorganized knowledge” (Kirschner, et al., 2006, p. 84). While I can see their point, I think that regular assessment and feedback such as that suggested by Marsh and Butler (in press) can assess when students go off track with their connections and help them to make more meaningful and accurate connections with the information. If you remove too much of the constructivist approach, I think that you lose some of that flexibility needed to help the student connect to the material.
I do not have a very good memory. This week’s readings make me think about the ways in which I process information and how I could process it in a more meaningful way. The one reading that stood out the most for me this week was the New York Times article written by Joshua Foer. Foer (2011) notes the importance of practice and persistence when it comes to developing and maintaining a good memory. Last week’s readings and activities focused a lot upon attention and our abilities to focus on the important things in the task at hand. Foer’s reference to the mental athlete’s “gear” reminded me of a white noise website (www.simplynoise.com) that I use when I find myself getting distracted from whatever it is I am doing by outside noise (hopefully, I will not have to resort to blinders). Foer’s discussion of hitting a plateau in his memory capacity made me think that, like many abilities, when things get difficult it is easier to say “oh well, I suppose this is as good as it gets,” instead of persisting in our efforts to increase our memory. I thought it was interesting that Ericsson had him use a metronome to help him push his processing speed even further. This seems to also tie in Marsh and Butler’s reference to desirable difficulty, and also the often-invoked phrase “use it or lose it.” If we are not constantly using and challenging our memory, it seems quite possible that it will be more difficult to encode information in a meaningful way than if we were engaging our memories more frequently.
References:
Foer, J. (2011, February). Secrets of a mind-gamer: How I trained my brain and became a world-class memory athlete. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-secrets.html?hp.
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41, 75-86.
Marsh, E. J., & Butler, A. C. (in press). Memory in educational settings. In D. Reisberg (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteI, too, kept hearing the ghost of James as I read the memory readings. I wonder if the techniques that helped Foer win the memory competition actually bolster memory or if they bolster recall. Someone made a comment in "The Mind's Storehouse" that, although we feel there are things we can never forget, like riding a bike, it may simply be that we re-learn it so quickly that we thought we never forgot it. Could there be a mass of faintly-remembered memories that just need a slight bit of refreshing to become vivid again? In the case of Foer, of course, he attached the memories to vehicles that were easily retrieved when categorized spatially. Was he facilitating recall by organizing the memories, or was he giving the memories permanence by connecting them to meaningful or emotionally significant way-markers?
Interesting questions, Ben, especially with regard to memory versus recall. Your comments reminded me of this quote from James and his talk on Memory; "paths frequently and recently ploughed are those that lie most open, those which may be expected most easily to lead to results." Perhaps instead of paths frequently and recently ploughed, it is simply the act of ploughing those paths a few times that allows for easier re-learning in the future. In your example of the bike, the learned behaviors are there, and it is the act of getting back on the bike that reminds us of the way in which we should balance our body, steer, and pedal. But with those more mechanical recalls also come our emotional memories of riding the bike, perhaps even remembering the first time we rode a bike. I wonder which memory facilitates the recall of which; the "muscle memory" or the more autobiographical memories?
ReplyDeleteGreat blog, Amanda! I identify with many of the concepts you have identified. I’m glad you mentioned the challenges raised by Kirschner et al. (2006) that unguided instruction can have negative results. I don’t think constructivist theory advocates unguided instruction; rather, as we both indicated, Vygotsky (1978) was careful to indicate that instruction needs to match each student’s level of need-those with less content familiarity need more assistance to reach their maximum learning level. Piaget’s teaching/guidance method was difficult to define, in part because he was responsive to each student and adapted his mode of questioning to each student. Thus, constructivism does not recommend a lack of guidance; rather, it recommends guidance as needed by each student-allowing the joy of discovery through assistance by helping a student reach the point where he/she can explore an area competently and independently. Guided learning is not the same as being left alone to discover; as Vygotsky expanded constructivist theory to explain (Usher, 2010), it involves matching the student’s learning level with the instructional level. Thanks for bringing this distinction to my consciousness.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you that constructivism encourages flexibility in instruction which more didactic approaches do not incorporate, and appreciate this distinction for the development of my own views on learning. I believe, as James would indicate, that student preferences are key to engagement in learning. Constructivist thought allows for individual initiative and exploration, which more traditional lecture and behaviorist approaches do not recognize. Lastly, I agree that Foer’s article was fascinating; I found his memory palaces and mental practices to be fun and relevant for my own memory improvement. Do you think that graduate school courses improve our memory skills through proactive or reactive short-term memory experiences? Are we losing former connections as a result of new information, or are we gaining new memories at the expense of losing old ones-or hopefully, expanding our understanding by connecting new information to prior knowledge?:)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWe arrived at a similar conclusion.
ReplyDeleteIn many of my prior classes the distinction is made with regard to where you stand from an epistemological standpoint and the practices you implement which may draw from either constructivism, behaviorism or other epistemologies.
My question to you is, how important is it that we as future scholars adopt a belief about where knowledge comes from? Do I have to stand up and say I am a constructivist? I am an objectivist? This is something I have been struggling with since these concepts were introduced to me last year.
My feeling is that it is purely a scholarly exercise and good instruction is not predicated upon me taking a stand. However, there are those in the college I know who will say this is wrong.