Cognitive Science Foundations Of Instruction

This volume presents and discusses current research that makes the connection between cognitive theory and instructional application. Addressing two general issues, the first set of chapters specifies the relation between cognitive theory and the development and evaluation of instruction, while the second set deals with the questions involved in understanding and assessing cognitive skills. The outstanding feature of these chapters is that they all present in-depth discussions of the theoretical issues underlying instructional decisions. Many present specific implementations that provide examples of concrete applications of theory. In addition, the settings for implementing these examples span a broad range of instructional areas and environments, illustrating the generality and transferability of the application of theory to practice.

Cognitive science arose in the 1950s when it became apparent that a number of disciplines, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, were fragmenting. Perhaps owing to the field's immediate origins in cybernetics, as well as to the foundational assumption that cognition is information processing, cognitive science initially seemed more unified than psychology. However, as a result of differing interpretations of the foundational assumption and dramatically divergent views of the meaning of the term information processing, three separate schools emerged: classical cognitive science, connectionist cognitive science, and embodied cognitive science. Examples, cases, and research findings taken from the wide range of phenomena studied by cognitive scientists effectively explain and explore the relationship among the three perspectives. Intended to introduce both graduate and senior undergraduate students to the foundations of cognitive science, Mind, Body, World addresses a number of questions currently being asked by those practicing in the field: What are the core assumptions of the three different schools? What are the relationships between these different sets of core assumptions? Is there only one cognitive science, or are there many different cognitive sciences? Giving the schools equal treatment and displaying a broad and deep understanding of the field, Dawson highlights the fundamental tensions and lines of fragmentation that exist among the schools and provides a refreshing and unifying framework for students of cognitive science.

This book sets forth ideas from cognitive science that can be applied in the design of instruction. It is not itself a guide for the design of instruction. The application of cognitive science to the design of instruction is still in its infancy, and the development of a fully prescriptive guide is still in the future. This book is oriented toward the prospective instructional designer or those presently practicing in the field who want to enrich their work with insights from cognitive science.

From grade school to graduate school, from the poorest public institutions to the most affluent private ones, our educational system is failing students. In his provocative new book, cognitive scientist and bestselling author Roger Schank argues that class size, lack of parental involvement, and other commonly-cited factors have nothing to do with why students are not learning. The culprit is a system of subject-based instruction and the solution is cognitive-based learning. This groundbreaking book defines what it would mean to teach thinking. The time is now for schools to start teaching minds!

This volume is a result of mathematicians, cognitive scientists, mathematics educators, and classroom teachers combining their efforts to help address issues of importance to classroom instruction in mathematics. In so doing, the contributors provide a general introduction to fundamental ideas in cognitive science, plus an overview of cognitive theory and its direct implications for mathematics education. A practical, no-nonsense attempt to bring recent research within reach for practicing teachers, this book also raises many issues for cognitive researchers to consider.

A timely complement to John Bruer's Schools for Thought, Classroom Lessons documents eight projects that apply cognitive research to improve classroom practice. The chapter authors are all principal investigators in an influential research initiative on cognitive science and education. Classroom Lessons describes their collaborations with classroom teachers aimed at improving teaching and learning for students in grades K-12. The eight projects cover writing, mathematics, history, social science, and physics. Together they illustrate that principles emerging from cognitive science form the basis of a science of instruction that can be applied across the curriculum. The book is divided into three sections: applications of cognitive research to teaching specific content areas; applications for learning across the curriculum; and applications that challenge traditional concepts of classroom-based learning environments. Chapters consider explicit models of knowledge with corresponding instruction designed to enable learners to build on that knowledge, acquisition of specified knowledge, and what knowledge is useful in contemporary curricula. Contributors Kate McGilly. Sharon A. Griffin, Robbie Case, and Robert S. Siegler. Earl Hunt and Jim Minstrell. Kathryn T. Spoehr. Howard Gardner, Mara Krechevsky, Robert J. Sternberg, and Lynn Okagaki. Irene W. Gaskins. The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt. Marlene Scardamalia, Carl Bereiter, and Mary Lamon. Ann L. Brown and Joseph C. Campione. John T. Bruer. A Bradford Book

Investigators have moved back and forth between design efforts and basic studies in cognition to improve both application and fundamental knowledge. This volume's theme is this interaction between practice and science with the opportunity for reflecting on findings in order to understand them and suggesting improved forms of application and their underlying explanation. This is seen in various arenas including theory-based computer-assisted instruction for teaching mathematics, the design of communities of learning in elementary schools, teaching in the context of problem-solving situations and reasoning with models, self-explanation as a highly effective learning activity, conceptual change in medical training and health education, and workplace training in electronic troubleshooting. The results of extensive long-term experience and analysis in each of these areas are insightfully reported by the well-known contributors to this volume. Special features of this fifth edition include: * The work of eminent cognitive scientists in the design and evaluation of educational and training environments to increase current understanding of learning and development, as this understanding is applied to innovative instructional programs and teaching methods. * A description of learning theory and principles as well as implications and examples on research and development on educational application. * A presentation on the 10-year change in perspective on research and development in problem solving environments that invite inquiry about academic information and skills in the context of instruction of elementary school children. * An innovative approach to math and science instruction in which teaching is oriented around constructing, evaluating, and revising models. * An examination of the process of self-explaining, which involves explaining to one's self in an attempt to make sense of a new situation. * A description of a long-term program of cognitive task analysis and instructional design on problem solving in the operation of complex equipment. * An investigation on the acquisition of clinical reasoning skills and the understanding of biomedical concepts in both professional medicine and the health practices of the lay population.

Foundations of Embodied Learning advances learning, instruction, and the design of educational technologies by rethinking the learner as an integrated system of mind, body, and environment. Body-based processes—direct physical, social, and environmental interactions—are constantly mediating intellectual performance, sensory stimulation, communication abilities, and other conditions of learning. This book’s coherent, evidence-based framework articulates principles of grounded and embodied learning for design and its implications for curriculum, classroom instruction, and student formative and summative assessment for scholars and graduate students of educational psychology, instructional design and technology, cognitive science, the learning sciences, and beyond.