Applying Cognitive Psychology in the Classroom - Term Paper Example

?Running Head: APPLYING COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Applying Cognitive Psychology for Best Practices in the room School Applying Cognitive Psychology for Best Practices in the Classroom The present educational system that constitutes a more complex classroom scenario more than a decade ago challenges every teacher to search for best practices that would suit the needs of the learner, whether slow, average, or advanced. Given the difficulties that teachers have to face including multicultural diversity, learning difficulties and variation in learning styles, there is nothing more significant than finding a common means to approach the modern learner. Such approach or means would make teaching easier. Although many would claim that there is no complete and perfect theory of learning and there are no hard and fast rules in teaching, many would likewise agree that there are some approaches that have been proven to be effective for teaching young minds across the curricula. These approaches may be considered as best practices, which every teacher should apply in classroom teaching. This paper presents four recommendations for every teacher regardless of the level and readiness of the students. With the help of some theories and studies on human learning, the paper comes up with the four recommendations in the hope of promoting helping learners achieve better mastery and retention of the school lessons. Many theorists have investigated the way humans think, behave, acquire and retain learning, solve problems and apply concepts learned in school. However, only some have been successful in proving their worth in the area of learning and motivation. Among the theories and paradigms, the cognitive theory has been widely acclaimed and well expounded on because of its ability to provide valid and measurable data. Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that relies on both contemplative and empiricist ideas (Sternberg, Mio & Mio, 2009). Contemplative ideas require the theorist to reflect on data using one’s own background knowledge and reflection on a given thought or meaning, whereas empiricist ideas require the observation of the theorist to arrive at a conclusion. The combination of both contemplative and empiricist ideas make cognitive psychology a more rationalized theory of human learning. In this regard, best practices for classroom teaching should consider cognitivist theories and findings. Among these theories include Badeley’s idea on working memory, and Kintsch’s suggestions on learning propositions. Considering these theories, we propose the following recommendations for best teaching practices that apply to all teachers and students across the present curricula: R1. Instructional materials should always combine visual and verbal content. R2: Teaching strategies should be based on the background or experience of the students. R3: Teachers should consider both the lesson content and the procedure to be used to introduce a lesson. R4: Teachers should state their ideas/thoughts clearly to avoid confusion. These recommendations are made in consideration of some studies conducted in the field of cognitive psychology. The first recommendation, which suggests that teachers should always combine visual and verbal content in presenting their lessons considers Badeley’s (1986) theory on working memory. Working memory is the component of our mind that probably does most of the processing, or "work" of the memory system (Ormrod, 1998). For Badeley (1986), the working memory is composed, above all, of “verbal articulatory loop” and the” visual-spatial sketchpad.” Therefore, teachers should present their lessons mnemonically to enhance both visual-spatial and verbal articulatory skills. There are probably other aspects of the working memory, considering the other senses such as sense of touch, smell, taste, etc. but verbal and visual-spatial skills are crucial most crucial in learning. Although maximizing the sensory perception of a learner is probably the best way to make learning more memorable, targettng the two aspects identified by Badeley will do enough to facilitate learning and retention. In particular, teachers of primary schools should never proceed with their lessons without visual aids and script. The two should always go hand in hand. Visual aids may include technology-based materials such as films, movie strips, computer graphics, and so on. Mathematics teachers should always have some props or drawings to illustrate problems, and in case only numbers are to be used for computation, they should make sure to use different colors of markers. Writing materials may also be varied to stimulate sensory response. For example, instead of always using the board or the students’ workbooks, students may be made to use small boards or flash cards on which students can write easily, Likewise, teachers should encourage the use of colored pens to stimulate visual register. Specifically, Science teachers such as those teaching Biology should use real things to ensure learning and better retention. For instance, students learning about reptiles will achieve better results if they see and touch real frogs. Hence, to make the learning more meaningful, which is the goal of cognitive learning, students may be made to dissect a frog or a lizard because such activities would maximize their sensory input. By dissecting a reptile, students will be able to relate their prior knowledge or the information gathered previously from a lecture to the parts of the frog during the experiment, thus using both visual and verbal registers to make learning more meaningful. Likewise, teachers teaching about history should always have films ready. Nevertheless, visual materials are not limited to what can be bought commercially. Visual materials may include human resources acting out a specific historical account or a current issue. The second recommendation is to teach based on the background or experience of the students. Teaching strategies should be context-based. This means that teachers should consider the prior knowledge of the students and their situation or experience when introducing a new idea or developing mastery of it. The prior knowledge of the students would help them to generate information on their own. Without prior knowledge, new knowledge or piece of information would be more difficult to learn or retain in the long term memory. For instance, storing the terms chordata and reptilia in the working memory would be more difficult if students have not even seen a reptile. Therefore, it wil be more beneficial if students will gain experience first like seeing or holding a lizard, to allow them to form their own knowledge about the subject matter. It will be easier for them to understand what reptiles are and how these animals are different from other classes if the students have seen some examples. Thus, it is important that students have some background of the subject matter in order to understand the lesson well. Slamecka and Graf (1978) suggest having the learner generate information on their own, which means making them identify the parts of the body of a reptile based on given data. Likewise, elaboration (Stein & Bransford, 1979), which is a means to link information from prior knowledge to the new knowledge is also another good practice. Considering prior knowledge of the student would make retention easier because the new learning episode will be a means to reinforce prior learning structure. As such, problems in math should make use of ideas within the learners’ environment. For instance, calculating school concert proceeds, attendance in junior-senior prom, etc. are good problem solving content because of their relevance to the students’ context or experience. The third recommendation is to consider both content and procedure. Teachers should consider both learning propositions and procedural skill acquisition. Many teachers would design their lessons first with the content or learning propositions in mind. For Biology teachers, this means teaching phylum, classes, family, and so on and asking students to memorize information. However, teachers will find it rather difficult to have students memorize content like scientific names. Therefore, it is imperative to design instruction with the procedural skill in mind more than the learning proposition. This is possible if the teachers focus on the skills to be taught, and not on the information or data per se. As such, when teaching scientific names to students, teachers should aim at having students provide examples, which denotes the ability or skill to link instruction or new knowledge to their prior knowledge. This way, teachers focus more on procedural skill acquisition more than content or learning proposition. For example, when teaching about reptiles, students should be asked to note down their observations of reptiles (how they look like, how they walk, what they eat, etc.) instead of the teacher giving the information on the characteristics of reptiles. This way, the lesson becomes inductive. The students discover first the characteristics pertinent to reptiles before they make up conclusions on what reptiles are. This is in contrast to the usual practice which requires students to confirm whether the characteristics of reptiles listed in books are found in reptiles being dissected. Meanwhile, language teachers should not emphasize the definitions of parts of speech or figures of speech in the higher levels; rather enhance the skills of students in using the language instead. Such approach, also known as communicative approach (Richards & Rodgers, 1999; 2001) aspires to let students maximize the use of the language in varied communication situations instead of teaching about definitions and kinds of nouns, adjectives, etc. Likewise, to promote knowledge of literary devices, higher levels should be able to identify and make their own literary devices or figures of speech instead of the limiting them to tracing the figures of speech used in a given text or memorizing definitions. Focusing on the procedure suggests improving teaching strategies from a content-based approach to learner-centered and skill-based approaches. The fourth recommendation is for teachers to state ideas or thoughts clearly to avoid confusion. Teachers should avoid linguistic ambiguity when they deliver lessons verbally. Linguistic ambiguity may result if information is not expressed in ways that have been proven to retain memory. As Kintsch (1990) posits, the number of propositions serves as a good predictor of the time to read and understand a paragraph. Thus, the more words are used in a statement the more difficult it is for students to understand it. Kintsch also noted that as people read, they store propositions in their working memory. Propositions are not words but ideas people extract from words. Thus, to help better retention, teachers should make it a practice to limit the number of words but prioritize propositions. For example, in Geometry, some teachers would say, “a polygon with six sides” instead of “a six-sided polygon” or simply, “a hexagon.” Note that the phrase “a polygon with six sides” could be more difficult to comprehend than a hexagon because the latter expresses a more concrete view of the shape. This is similar to the statement, “The passengers entered and chose their seats in the ship that travels to the Pacific Island” which could be simply expressed as “The passengers boarded the ship to the Pacific Island.” The second statement may be clearer and easy to understand because of its brevity and concreteness in meaning. In the first sentence, learners are given learning propositions as follows: The passengers entered the ship. The passengers choose their seats. The ship is traveling or moving. The ship is going to the Pacific Island. Hence, four propositions are being introduced by the first statement, whereas the other statement introduces only two, thus: The passengers boarded the ship. The ship is going to the Pacific Island. Therefore, it is not difficult to determine that the second statement will be easier to process and retain in the memory. Such is the concept behind the use of symbols in math such that: 7 + 8 = 15 Instead of saying, seven plus eight equals fifteen, number symbols are used to signify the same meaning. Given this, we may conclude that simplifying information or learning statements would help to address the difficulties of the learners. Notably, teachers should minimize the use of relative pronouns to introduce a new idea. These include that, which, where, etc. to introduce a relative clause. Relative clauses could make statements longer and confusing. For example: The father of Kate, the student who will be awarded with nine medals, which Kate deserves, will be attending the graduation. To revise this statement, one can simply come up with the following: Kate will be receiving nine medals and her father will be attending her graduation. Note that the use of relative clauses in the first sentence causes ambiguity to the meaning of the statement. Conclusion Cognitive psychology promotes meaningful learning by analyzing the nature of learners, exploring their ways of thinking, responding and behaving in relation to propositions. Basically, cognitive study promotes the role working memory as an important factor to learning and long-term retention. Particularly, efforts to improve retention have been explored, giving teachers an easier task of teaching despite individual differences of students. As mentioned in this paper, some recommendations include the combination of visual-spatial and verbal content for teaching materials, relying on the experience or context of students, focusing more on the process of learning rather than content, and avoiding ambiguity in sentences. Although these four recommendations are very common, they would surely help to establish a better working memory and learning process. However, considering the recent changes in the education system, teachers and researchers should not stop to explore other means to improve instruction, References Baddeley, A.D. (1986). Working memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kintsch, W. (1990). The representation of knowledge and the use of knowledge in discourse representation. MA: Elsevier. Ormrod, J. E. (1998). Educational psychology: Developing learners. OH: Prentice Hall. Richards, J. & Rodgers, T. (1999). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Richards, J. & Rodgers, T. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. Mio, J. & Mio, J.S. (2009). Cognitive psychology. CA: Wadsworth. Stein, B. S. & Bransford, J. D. (1979). Constraints on effective elaboration: Effects of precision and subject generation. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 769–777. Slamecka, N.J. & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory, 4, 592-604. Read More