Introducing cognitivism as a learning theory

Introducing “Cognitivism”
as a Learning Theory
Rita Ndagire Kizito
27 February 2014
kizitorita@gmail.com
Ndagire Kizito 27 February 2014

About cognitivism
The cognitivist revolution replaced behaviorism in
1960s as the dominant paradigm for understanding
the learning process.
The main argument was that instead of just studying
responses to external stimuli, it was important to
open the ‘black box’ of the human mind in order to
understand how people came to learn. The
exploration of what brought about inner mental
activities and processes such as thinking, memory,
knowing, and problem-solving was important and
became the focus of educational psychological
exploration.

About cognitivism


Cognition – from Latin base cognitio – “know
together”.



A collection of mental processes and activities
used in
perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, and
understanding as well as the act of using those
processes.



How do these processes impact learning?


What does cognitivism embrace?
Learning theories which tend to occupy a
psychological rather than a philosophical space
 Concerned with explanations of how mental
processes function. Asks questions such as:
How do people perceive, remember, think and
solve problems?
 (.. to do with the brain
or mental functioning).



Learning model
Could be termed a “cognitive psychological
learning “model:
 It is positivist in its assumptions and
methodology, separating knowledge from the
knower and valuing the use of the scientific
method to conduct and validate investigations and
findings.
 It is structural in its view of knowledge and learning
using terms such as schema and schemata for
representing and describing knowledge and the
learning process.



What does this mean?
From a cognivistic perspective ( in simplistic terms):


Knowledge is a schema consisting of symbolic
mental constructs.



The learner is viewed as an information processor
(likened to a computer)



Learning is the means by which a learner is
assisted in moving these constructs from the short
term to the long term memory. This results in a
change in the learner’s schemata.


Some contributors to the cognitive
psychological learning model
Willhelm Wundt who started
the first psychology
laboratory in 1879 in
Leipzig, Germany. He
believed in developing of
introspection as a means for
studying the mind." Though
he was not specifically
involved in the field of
Educational Psychology, he
began the study of the mind.



Ulric Gustav Neisser (1928 2012), a
German-born American psychologist
and member of the US National
Academy of Sciences. He played an
important role in the development of
cognitive science and the shift from
behaviorist to cognitive models in
psychology.


Some contributors…
Jean Piaget theorized about the four stages of
Cognitive Development.
Sensorimotor

Pre
operational

2–7
years

concrete


0-2
years

7 - 12
years

formal
operational
stage

12 adult

Exploration through senses:
taste, touch, sight, sound, and
smell
Development of language and
thinking skills, ability to focus on
self
Seeing the world in relation to
others, not just self, beginning to
develop logical thinking
Developing both logical and
abstract thinking. Thought
process changing.

Some contributors…Piaget
Three major concepts when dealing with
changing ingrained schemes.


Assimilation occurs when a person
perceives a new object in terms of
existing knowledge.



Accommodation occurs when you
modify existing cognitive structures
based on new information.



Equilibration includes both assimilation
and accommodation and is considered
the master developmental process.


Piaget also believed that a
child who hadn't completed
certain developmental stages
could not learn things from
higher developmental stages.
For example, a child who had
not learned language could not
think logically.

Gagne, psychologist
linked to army training in
the army, studied
learning and transfer.
Introduced the field of
instructional design with
a
process, preparation, ac
quisition , transfer. In a
book - Conditions of

learning.



Gagne, Briggs,
Wager (moving
toward cognitive
constructivism).


Ausubel - advance
organizers materials
presented before
information is
introduced.
 connect new
knowledge to old
knowledge.
 add meaning to new
content.



Kolb - Experiential Learning
Theory




…“ learning is the process
whereby knowledge is created
through the transformation of
experience” ( 1984, p. 38).
A holistic perspective that
combines
experience, perception, cogniti
on and behavior.


Component Display
Theory


Merrill (1983) claims that
associative and algorithmic
memory structures are directly
related to the performance
components of Remember and
Use/Find respectively.
Associative memory is a
hierarchical network structure;
algorithmic memory consists of
schema or rules.

Charles Reigeluth posited an
instructional design model to help
select and sequence content in a
way that would optimize
attainment of learning goals. It is
holistic and fosters meaningmaking and motivation. It allows
learners to make many scope and
sequence decisions on their own
during the learning process.

Reigeluth, C.M. (1999). The elaboration
theory: Guidance for scope and sequence
decisions. In C.M. Reigeluth
(Ed.), Instructional-Design Theories and
Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional
Theory. (Volume II). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

It is not only in education Learning is now supported by
current research in areas such
as cognitive
neuroscience, which addresses
the questions of how
psychological/cognitive
functions are produced by the
brain and could affirm evidence
of psychological brain states
having some relation to mental
states.


Other areas:


Computer Science- Artificial
Intelligence



Neuroscience



Psychology – Cognitive Psychology



Philosophy



Linguistics



Anthropology, and



Education

So what is the role of the educator?
 Attention

getter, sets
expectations, organiz
er, connector and
repeater

 Creates

opportunities

for
rehearsing, encoding


?

And what do the students do?




Question, think, generate
new knowledge, learn to
work with others.



Become self-motivated




Mentally
process, store, locate and
produce responses.

As a result create new
evolving schemata.

Where is cognitivism useful in
the teaching/ learning contexts?


Learning complex
systems/issues



Learning processes
….



In labs, etc.



Generating ideas


What does teaching from this
approach entail?
a)

b)

c)

Presenting the learner
with challenging
environments.
Linking new
knowledge to prior
knowledge and
organizing information
and processes.
Assisting learners to
develop learning
strategies.


d)

e)

f)

Helping learners to
control their own
learning processes
(metacognition).
Assisting learners to
perform self
assessment.
Assessing learners'
performance and
providing informative
feedback.

Criticisms
 Stripped

of context
 Mind reduced to
robotic, simplistic
representations
 Depicts one form of
cognition while there
are others –
(situated, distributed,
embodied etc.)

digitalsandbox.edublogs.org

Linguist Noam Chomsky , who
published Syntactic Structures in
1957, theorizing that language
learning was based on a system of
rules that underlined actual
performance. However, in his
later work, rules were replaced
with principles-and-parameters - a
kind of departure from cognitivism.

John Searle - brain processes are
necessary for intentionality . He
questions the onset of seeing mental
functions as information processing
models. He views the world as one
which has both mental and physicals
states where consciousness is just a
higher level property of these
physical systems where mental
events can cause physical events and
the reverse is true.

The rest is up to you !


Introducing cognitivism as a learning theory

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