Hi, I’m Stephen Chew.
I’m a professor of psychology at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.
This is the fifth in a series of videos on the cognitive principles of effective teaching.
In this video, I discuss how all the cognitive factors we have discussed work together to
create a context for teaching and learning.
Teachers must control that context to bring about teachable moments.
Next, I talk about how formative assessments can help create a constructive learning context
in which learning becomes long lasting.
We’ve now discussed nine cognitive factors that affect students’ ability to learn:
Regardless of which pedagogy teachers use, they must consider all these factors, but
here is the key thing: They all interact with each other.
Changing one factor, changes others; improving one may worsen another.
For example, deeper processing improves learning, but it also increases cognitive load, which
hurts learning.
Activating prior knowledge helps when the knowledge is accurate but hurts it if there
is a misconception.
In other words, teaching is contextual; a dynamic, complex interplay of multiple factors.
The teachers challenge, then, is to manage this nine way interaction to bring about learning.
In order for learning to occur, the student must encounter new information, and one thing
I have yet to discuss is the actual pedagogical approach to introducing new information.
This was intentional, because the contextual nature of learning means that there is no
pedagogical magic bullet that will work for all teachers, all topics, and all students.
What works for one section of a class may not work for another section.
Now, are some pedagogies more likely to be successful than others?
Yes, but any pedagogy has limitations.
There will be times when the pedagogy that always worked before won’t work.
The teacher must constantly adjust their pedagogies according to the principles I’ve outlined.
I’ve listed out the cognitive principles of teaching using the framework that psychologists
study them.
But that isn’t the way that teachers might make use of them in a class context.
To address this, let’s consider a framework that better fits pedagogical practice.
It is based on the idea of the teachable moment, which I define as the point at which learning
can occur.
A teacher’s job is to bring about teachable moments and fully exploit them when
they occur.
Here is a framework that uses cognitive principles to promote the occurrence of and make the
most of teachable moments.
There are five issues in learning to consider, each of which has multiple parts. Let’s discuss each in turn:
1) Students must have an appropriate learning mindset
This covers the issues we discussed in the first video, such as a growth mindset,
high self-efficacy and a sense of trust in the instructor.
Students must believe that they belong in the class, that the goals of the class are
worth pursuing, and that, with proper effort, they can succeed.
2) Students must have effective learning resources.
This has to do with both the pedagogy used by the teacher and the cognitive resources
on the part of the student, because the two are linked.
The teacher has to present or activate all the relevant information needed to understand
a topic, and it should be done in a way that takes into account how people learn.
It should build on accurate prior knowledge, be organized promote chunking and schema development,
and it should promote generative thinking about the implications of the information.
The student must be fully attentive, devoting mental effort to understanding the topic,
relating it to prior knowledge, and reflecting on its implications.
Distraction and cognitive overload will undermine learning.
3) Students must be primed for learning.
This has to do with metacognitive awareness, prior knowledge, and misconceptions.
Students must have the appropriate prior knowledge activated.
They must be aware that there is a gap or limitation or misconception in their understanding.
They must see the value in correcting that shortcoming.
They must be able to recognize when they have achieved a better understanding, but they
should also recognize the limitations of this new knowledge.
Ideally, being primed for learning means that students are motivated to learn the information
for use beyond the exam and beyond the classroom.
If students already see their knowledge of a topic as sufficient even before a lesson,
or if they are unaware of the limitations in their understanding, they are unlikely
to learn.
4) Students must use effective learning strategies.
Any gain in understanding will only be temporary if students do not use effective
learning strategies that lead to long-term retention of the information.
The learning strategies should go beyond simply recalling information.
They should involve creating schematic knowledge that can direct future learning and reasoning.
5) Students must be primed to transfer their learning; that is, to use the information
appropriately and constructively in new situations.
(Slide 38) This has to do with learning to recognize the relevance and applicability
of information in novel situations.
Students should understand how experts use the information being taught.
We should judge the effectiveness of a teaching method by its ability to bring about teachable
moments within this context of factors.
In order to teach effectively, then, the teacher must constantly be aware of the cognitive
status of the students.
And for effectively learning, students must constantly be aware of their own beliefs and
level of understanding.
The best way to achieve both these goals is through formative assessment.
Formative assessments are brief, low-stakes activities that give both the teacher
and the student feedback about the students’ level of understanding.
They are used before summative assessment exams.
There is a wide variety of formative assessments, such as think-pair-share, muddiest point papers,
predict-observe-explain, and so-called “clicker” questions.
They can be adapted to any situation and can be designed to give both the teacher and student
whatever kind of feedback is needed.
For teachers, they can guide pedagogy, model the desired kind of thinking, help counter
misconceptions, and promote transfer of learning.
For students, they can improve metacognitive awareness, promote deep processing, and give
practice in recalling and applying information in the ways expected by teachers.
Formative assessments are a critical tool for promoting teachable moments regardless
of the pedagogy used.
Teachable moments make learning possible, but our goal is for students to learn information
and retain it for the long term.
What does it take for long-term retention to occur?
Graham Nuthall conducted extensive research on this issue and he proposes what I call
Nuthall’s Rule of Three.
It says that for long term learning to occur:
A student needed to encounter, on at least three different occasions, the complete set
of information she or he needed to understand a concept.
There are several key components to this rule: 1.
Students must possess all the information needed to understand a concept.
If the information is incomplete, either through omission by the teacher or lack of attention
by students, then students won’t learn.
The information must be encountered on at least three different occasions.
One good encounter is not enough.
These encounters can be brought about by the teacher in class or the students studying
outside of class.
Three is a minimum; complex concepts or concepts where there is a misconception may require
more learning experiences.
3.
By encounter, Nuthall means that the information must be fully interpreted and integrated into
working memory on each occasion.
This isn’t a superficial experience.
Students must be fully attentive and using all available mental effort to understand
information and relate it to prior knowledge.
The rule of three is a useful guideline to designing pedagogy and assignments, as well
as guiding students in how to study effectively.
In this series, I’ve tried to give you a comprehensive cognitive framework of how people
learn in order to inform and guide your pedagogy.
I’ve tried to replace vague concepts like engagement, active learning, and struggle,
with more refined concepts like attention, deep processing, and cognitive load.
We see that teaching effectively presents a huge challenge, far beyond simply presenting
information.
I hope this information has been helpful to you and I wish you the best in your teaching.