1. EP3.
Good learning
Elena Pasquinelli
Educa4on, cogni4on, cerveau
Cogmaster 2010‐2011

2. The tossed coin

3. Why the seasons?

4. • “In the broad educa4onal experience, some
topics seem systema4cally to be extremely
difficult for students. Learning and teaching in
these areas are problema4c and present
persistent failures of conven4onal methods of
instruc4on. Many areas in the sciences, from
elementary school through university level, have
this characteris4c, including, in physics: concepts
of maMer and density, Newtonian mechanics,
electricity, and rela4vity; in biology: evolu4on
and gene4cs.” (DiSessa, 2006), p. 1

5. Is that because physics is especially
difficult?
yes no

6. Learning sciences & conceptual
change
• Uncontroversial:
– Students arrive to instruc4on with prior ideas
– Prior ideas constrain successive learning
• Controversial:
– In what consists the change?
– What changes?
– How does change occurs?
• Further issues:
– What is “understanding”?
– How do experts differ from novices?

7. THE NATURE OF CHANGE

8. S. Carey: Deep reorganiza4on of
knowledge vs enrichment
• Conceptual change = deep
reorganiza4on
– incommensurability between
conceptual systems
dis4nguishes conceptual
change from
“enrichment” (adding new
ideas or beliefs) or even mere
change of beliefs.”
• 2 main influences :
– Thomas Kuhn
– Jean Piaget

9. Scien4fic revolu4ons
• Kuhn:
– Scien4fic revolu4ons: all changes
in the shia from a paradigm to
another, including what counts
as good science
– The shia is not just a maMer of
ra4onality and logic, but involves
sociological reasons, pragma4c
opportuni4es, etc.
– Paradigms are reciprocally
incommensurable
– Science is not a linear,
incremental path from
ignorance to truth

10. Qualita4ve changes in thought
• Piaget:
– Stages of development
– The way children think is
qualita4ve different from adults
• From concrete to abstract
thinking
– Disequilibra4on/re‐
equilibra4on
– Accomoda4on/Assimila4on
– Construc4vism: new ideas are
built upon old ones

11. Construc4on of new knowledge
• Jerome Bruner has developed
Piaget’s construc4vism into an
educa4onal theory
– Students should construct principles
by themselves from ac4ve explora4on
and construc4on:
• Instructors must present experiences
they are ready for, and mo4vated to
learn
• Structure the body of knowledge in a
way that can be grasped
• Favor the extrac4on of principles
– Knowledge is comprised in
simultaneous types of representa4ons
(no stages of development, as in
Piaget):
• Enac4ve
• Iconic
• Symbolic

12. WHAT CHANGES?
HOW STRUCTURED IS THE KNOWLEDGE
TO BE CHANGED?
DO CHILDREN REALLY HAVE THEORIES?

13. A. Gopnik: Theory theory
• Premise 1/ Scien4fic realism:
– Scien4fic inves4ga4on is the right course to
find the truth
• Premiser 2/ Cogni4ve naturalism:
– Knowledge can be understood from scien4fic
inves4ga4on of the mind
• Then: There are learning mechanisms that
allow humans to derive theories from
evidence
• It is at least logically possible that these
mechanisms are involved in our
development in other kinds of knowledge,
such as everyday knowledge
– Children build their theory of the world using
the same cogni4ve devices that adults use to
build scien4fic theories (knowledge)
• Observa4on and predic4on
• Tes4ng of predic4ons
• Revision of theories

14. S. Vosniadou: Frameworks
• Concepts are comprised in bigger
structures that constrain them
• Theories: structured
• Frameworks : less structured, internal quasi‐
coherent explanatory systems
• Children do not possess theories of
the physical world, but rather
frameworks of presupposi4ons
• Change happens through enrichment
of concepts or through revision of
beliefs and presupposi4ons or
theories and frameworks
• Revision of frameworks is the most
difficult process of change

15. M. Chi: Ontologies
• Misconcep4ons are robust: they
make surface in several situa4ons
and can be abandoned only with
great effort
• Conceptual change concerns those
contents of knowledge for which
change is really difficult:
– No incremental informa4on,
correc4ons, tradi4onal instruc4on
can produce change
– Where the difficulty arises from?
• Misconcep4ons derive from
miscategoriza4ons
• =
• difficult changes concern beliefs that
have assigned to the erroneous
category

16. J. Minstrell: Facets of par4al
knowledge
• Children’s (non‐experts, non‐
scien4sts) knowledge is not
structured, but fragmentary and
local =
• Pieces of = facets
– Facets are schemas and parts of
schemas that are used to reason
about the physical world.
– Students typically choose and apply
facets in the basis of the most striking
surface features of a problem.
– They derive their naïve facets from
everyday experience.
– Facets are useful in par4cular
situa4ons
– Facets are most likely false in general,
and for the most part they are only
loosely interrelated. Thus students
can quickly fall into contradic4ons

17. diSessa: knowledge in pieces
• Children’s knowledge is not organized in a small number of
rela4vely well‐defined and internally consistent interpreta4ons of
force
• Knowledge is in pieces:
• intui4ve physics consists largely of hundreds or thousands of
elements = p‐primes
• They have roughly the size‐scale of Minstrell’s facets.
– All pieces are not incorrect
– Pieces are not coherently structured, but only loosely
– Pieces can be highly contextual, ad‐hoc and instable: be
created on the spot
– P‐primes can be useful to build new concepts in learning
physics
• The difficulty is not inherent to previous structures: collec4ng and
coordina4ng pieces is difficult even in the absence of a
compe4tor
– The same difficul4es can be present when a system is
created from scratch from observa4on and when a system
requires a change

18. HOW TO PRODUCE CHANGE?

19. G. Posner: Conflicts and ra4onal
choices
• Children change their views only when a
conflict arises, that is, when they have
good (ra4onal) reasons to change their
mind
• And children change their mind in
accord with the most ra4onal
hypothesis
– (1) they became dissa4sfied with their
prior concep4ons (experience a “sea of
anomalies” in Kuhn’s terms);
– (2) the new concep4on is intelligible ;
– (3) the new concep4on should be more
than intelligible, it should be plausible ;
– (4) the new concep4on should appear
fruioul for future pursuits.

20. J. Minstrell: Conflict and analogy
• Some facts are anchors for
instruc4on; others are target for
change
• the trick is to iden4fy the students’
correct intui4ons – their facets that
are consistent with formal science –
and then build on these
– Iden4fy each facet
– Conduct crucial experiments
– Iden4fy the limits of each facet
• Erroneous facets are put in conflict with
experiences, and their limits revealed
– Correct facets are iden4fied and used
to create good explana4ons

21. J. Clement: Use correct intui4ons and
analogies
• Analogical teaching
strategy
– Expose misconcep4ons
through appropriate
ques4ons: e.g. no
upward force on a book
res4ng on a table
– Find an analogy (e.g.
hand holding up the
book)

22. • «1. Instruc4on is a complex mixture of design and theory, and good intui4ve design can
override the power of theory to prescribe or explain successful methods. Almost all
reported innova4ve interven4ons work; almost none of them lead to improvements
that dis4nguish them categorically from other good instruc4on.
• 2. The very general construc4vist heuris4c of paying aMen4on to naïve ideas seems
powerful, independent of the details of conceptual change theory. Interven4ons that
merely teach teachers about naïve ideas have been surprisingly successful.
• 3. Researchers of different theore4cal persuasions oaen advocate similar instruc4onal
strategies, if for different reasons. Both adherents of knowledge in pieces and of theory
theories advocate student discussion, whether to draw out and reweave elements of
naïve knowledge, or to make students aware of their prior theories in prepara4on for
judgment in comparison to instructed ideas. The use of instruc4onal analogies,
metaphors, and visual models is widespread and not theory‐dis4nc4ve.
• 4. Many or most interven4ons rely primarily on pre/post evalua4ons, which do liMle to
evaluate specific processes of conceptual change. » (diSessa, 2006, p. 14)

23. • “One of the great posi4ve influences of
misconcep4ons studies was bringing the importance
of educa4onal research into prac4cal instruc4onal
circles. Educators saw vivid examples of students
responding to apparently simple, core conceptual
ques4ons in non‐norma4ve ways. Poor performance
in response to such basic ques4ons, oaen years into
theinstruc4onal process, could not be dismissed. One
did not need refined theories to understand
theapparent cause: entrenched, “deeply held,” but
false prior ideas. The obvious solu4on was veryoaen
phrased, as in the quota4on heading this sec4on, in
terms of “overcoming,” or in terms of convincing
students to abandon prior concep4ons.” (DiSessa,
2006, p. 7)

24. GOOD LEARNING
‐ LEARNING FOR RE‐USE
‐ TRANSFER
‐ EXPERTISE
‐ INTELLIGENT NOVICES

25. Understanding Transfer
Intelligent
Exper4se
novices

26. Learning deep
• Good learning implies the
understanding of how it can be
used in real life and in different
circumstances
– re‐usable
– generalizable
• Understanding requires deep
learning: few ideas thrown in
every possible combina4on
– Avoid the superficial
instruc4on of disconnected
ideas
• (Whitehead, 1929)

27. The problem of transfer
• “Imagine that a small, peaceful country is being
threatened by a large, belligerent neighbor. The small
country is unprepared historically, temperamentally, and
militarily to defend itself; however, it has among its
ci4zens the world’s reigning chess champion. The prime
minister decides that his country only chance is to outwit
its aggressive neighbor. Reasoning that the chess
champion is a formidable strategic thinker and a dea
tac4cian … the prime minister asks him to assume
responsibility for defending the country. Can the chess
champion save his country from invasion? ” (Bruer, 1993,
p. 53)

28. Related ques4ons
• Is the brain a muscle?
• Can we train the brain’s general
capaci4es ?
• Which are the appropriate
exercises?
• Can we learn to learn?

29. The chess player is good at playing
chess
• Chess players are beMer than
non‐chess players at
reconstruc4ng chess board
posi4ons, but only for meaningful
configura4ons (Simon, 1969)
• Transfer from one domain of
exper4se to another (far transfer)
is far from automa4c
• A lot of domain knowledge is
required to become an expert
– = a lot of 4me (50000 hours
for becoming expert at chess,
Simon and Chase, 1973)
– Possible role for mo4va4on

30. Training memory enhances memory
only in trained domains
• Increasing the capacity
to memorize digit
strings of numbers
(from 7 to 70) requires
– Prac4ce
– Organiza4on of
knowledge into
structures
– Metacogni4ve skills
• But they work for the
specific domain of
exper4se, not for others
– When tested with
leMer strings
performances get back
to 7
– Ericsson et al. (1980) cited by
Bransford, et al., 2000

31. Knowing how to be a good general
does not help at being a good doctor
• Students memorized the • 1. A general wishes to capture a fortress located in the
center of a country. There are many roads radia4ng
informa4on in the passage 1 outward from the fortress. All have been mined so that
and were then asked to try task while small groups of men can pass over the roads safely, a
large force will detonate the mines. A full‐scale direct
2 aMack is therefore impossible. The general's solu4on is to
• Few college students were able divide his army into small groups, send each group to the
to solve problem 2 when lea to head of a different road, and have the groups converge
simultaneously on the fortress.
their own devices
• 90 percent were able to solve
the tumor problem when they • You are a doctor faced with a pa4ent who has a malignant
were explicitly told to use tumor in his stomach. It is impossible to operate on the
pa4ent, but unless the tumor is destroyed the pa4ent will
informa4on about the general die. There is a kind of ray that may be used to destroy the
and the fortress to help them. tumor. If the rays reach the tumor all at once and with
(Gick and Holyoak, 1980:309, sufficiently high intensity, the tumor will be destroyed, but
surrounding 4ssue may be damaged as well. At lower
cited by Bransford, et al. 2000, intensi4es the rays are harmless to healthy 4ssue, but they
p. 52) will not affect the tumor either. What type of procedure
might be used to destroy the tumor with the rays, and at
the same 4me avoid destroying the healthy 4ssue?

32. Exper4se
• exper4se is based on:
– A large and complex set of
representaSonal structures
– A large set of procedures and
plans
– The ability to
improvisaSonally apply and
adapt those plans to each
situaSon’s unique demands
– The ability to reflect on one’s
own cogniSve processes while
they are occurring (Sawyer,
2009, p. 7)
• exper4se is domain‐specific

33. Meta‐cogni4on
• The concept of metacogni4on • Intelligent novices are novices
was originally introduced in capable of becoming experts
the context of studying young in a new domain quickly and
children (e.g., Brown, 1980; effec4vely (in comparison with
Flavell, 1985, 1991). For other novices)
example, young children oaen • Meta‐cogni4ve skills and self‐
erroneously believe that they regula4on seem to play a role
can remember informa4on in becoming “ready to become
and hence fail to use effec4ve experts”
strategies, such as rehearsal. • But no shortcuts: domain
The ability to recognize the
limits of one's current knowledge remains essen4al
knowledge, then take steps to
remedy the situa4on, is
extremely important for
learners at all ages.

34. Selec4ve aMen4on training
• « Everywhere in
cogni4ve neuroscience,
specific brain networks
seem to underly
performance. However,
some of those networks
have the important
property of being able
to modify the ac4vity in
other networks. For
exemple, … (Posner &
Rothbart, 2007, p. 16)

35. Execu4ve func4ons training
• Training of execu4ve
func4ons
– Working memory
– Execu4ve control,
Inhibi4on
– AMen4on
• Before school, enhances
school performances
– (A. Diamond)