R12

Question:

What happens if a student has “a fixed mindset” as mentioned in Dweck’s article, as instead of the teacher? Would that “fixed” learner create a more difficult challenge for any teacher, one that has a fixed or growth mindset? Especially when considering students with certain disabilities, like ASD, and may have a fixed mindset, what strategies might work best?

Quote:

“To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success—the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history—with a society that provides opportunities for all” (Gladwell, 2008, p. 268).

Connection:

Gladwell’s quote above made me think about the United States’ track record of offering opportunity to its citizens. If Gladwell’s conclusion is true, doesn’t the United States provide conditions for opportunity better than most other countries? Although the country is not perfect, its forefathers seemed to understand and value this idea given its previous dependence on Great Britain. For students in America, having the strength and presence of mind to seize those opportunities, as Gladwell mentioned later, should be the focus. In social cognitive theory, the mindset of the student plays a key part in success. Potentially the education reform should be organized around helping students learn how to recognize and seize the opportunities that living in America affords them. Somehow immigrant students have learned how to do this part (seizing the opportunity) much better than American students.

Connection:

When Gladwell described the schedule of the KIPP student, it reminded me of the film, Race to Nowhere. This description suggested that students who spend more hours in school became better learners, but in Race to Nowhere the opposite seemed to be true. As students work harder and longer, do they ultimate hurt or help themselves to learn more? One main difference between the two scenarios is that students at KIPP seem to receive an amazing amount of support and specific guidance from teachers.

R11

Quote and Questions:

“A discovered problem, however, is one that must be recognized. Such a problem already exists, but it has not been clearly stated to the problem solver” (Pretz, Naples, & Sternberg, 2003, pp. 5-6). This quote stood out because it helps illustrate how important it is to focus on identifying the actual problem before attempting to solve it. It takes a certain amount of patience to do this. In addition, people must be aware of their tendencies of thought. The prior knowledge they have can easily hinder their ability accurately identify a problem in the first place. For some reason, this article makes me feel a bit pessimistic. Given the many ways we may have developed our thinking, it seems that when solving a problem, it is best to either not use those adaptations or prior knowledge, unless it is absolutely appropriate to do so. However in the moment, how do we avoid incorrectly categorizing information? How can we make this process more of an active task, rather than a passive one? More specifically and related to education, how do teachers teach students how to be more aware of their own cognition, especially if teachers may or may not aware their thought processes themselves? As I mention later in this response, many students who receive special education services have the opportunity to learn about their metacognitive knowledge and ways of thinking through goals in their IEP, but how can other students have an opportunity to gain this experience as well?

Connection:

“The shared language and discourse about cognition and learning among peers and between students and teachers helps students become more aware of their own metacognitive knowledge as well as their own strategies for learning and thinking. As they hear and see how their classmates approach a task, they can compare their own strategies with their classmates' and make judgments about the relative utility of different strategies. This type of discourse and discussion helps makes cognition and learning more explicit and less opaque to students, rather than being something that happens mysteriously or that some students "get" and learn and others struggle and don't learn” (Pintrich, 2002, p. 223). When I think back to my earlier experiences in school, I don’t recall spending time thinking about how I think, or how other students think. Making these types of strategies explicit would be beneficial so that students have a diverse set of thinking strategies in their repertoire. Many times I recall individual, spontaneous conversations with others about their thinking strategies, but there was no systematic way of capturing this knowledge for future use.

Connection:

“Rather than educate others to become followers, it is in our best interest to encourage problem solvers to become active problem finders, to stay curious so that they discover and create novel problems, and to think flexibly in the process of solving those problems” (Pretz, Naples, & Sternberg, 2003, p. 27). This particular quote reminds of recommendations found in the article by Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) we read last week for class. In that article the authors suggested that students should be followers to a certain extent and that teachers be effective guides. In terms of creating great problem solvers, how can teachers guide while allowing the students to be active and curious as the quote above suggests? Kirschner, Sweller and Clark do a good job of outlining the different needs for novices and experts, but how does one know when this line is crossed? When (if ever) should teachers begin to fade the level of guidance, to ensure their student’s proper growth? Should be based on grade level, years of experience, or simply capability? This is a larger question for our education system as well. Should students be restricted based on their age, as they are now or should they be allowed more freedom to move at a faster pace? We tend to focus on helping the lowest achieving students, but what about the students who are high achieving and potentially limited? The purpose of our current system is fuzzy, so solving the actual problem is even more challenging, given some of the information from the Pretz, Naples & Sternberg article.

R10

Quote:

“When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom” (Rosen, 2008, p. 110).

The two articles assigned this week were so interesting and full of useful information I found it difficult to choose one quote to post. The last quote of the Rosen article spoke to me because I wonder if we focus on knowledge so much so that we forget the idea of wisdom. Although knowledge may be important and easier to measure, I wonder if wisdom, in terms cognitive structures and processing, would be a valuable focus of study.

Question:

“When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention” (Rosen, 2008, p. 109). This particular quote leads me again to the idea of wisdom, due to its inclusion of judgment. I wonder, “How does one really learn judgment? Can increased time and exposure lead to better judgment? If so, how could multitasking actually improve, instead of hinder its growth?”

Connections:

One specific connection I would like to make to the Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) article relates to my six-year-old niece. When helping her with homework sometimes I (along with my sister) have noticed that when she does not know the answer to a problem, she attempts to guess the answer. Although it is great to see her take initiative, it is problematic because she sometimes learns the wrong way to solve a problem in the process. In these types of situations, guidance is essential. It does not seem to be beneficial for her to figure things out on her own, putting a high demand on her working memory, and leading to negative results.

This idea makes me think of an outside connection as well. This involves, errorless learning, a method introduced by Herbert Terrace which provides so much guidance to the student that errors are minimized and the likelihood of future errors is also minimized. In the Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) article, they mention worked examples and process worksheets, which can be related to errorless learning. The idea here is that so many prompts are available the student has less chance to practice errors. This type of learning could be effective for novices, as the article outlines, but also for students with certain disabilities including an autism spectrum disorder.

Memory vs. Experience in Happiness

This was an interesting lecture about how we experience and remember situations in terms of happiness. I thought it was interesting because he talks about how we make decisions based on what we remember, not necessarily on how we experience situations in the moment. It reminds of the idea behind scripts or schemas we use to store information in our long term memories. This lecture makes me wonder if this has implications for CBT and other types of therapy, where clients are instructed to change their thoughts and beliefs for improvement.

Module 6

http://theinvisiblegorilla.com/blog/

This is a blog maintained by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, both psychologists who designed the famous Invisible Gorilla experiment. It offers timely information about cognition, perception, and memory, along with connections to the gorilla experiment. I like the blog because it has a diverse content including videos, summaries of scholarly research, book reviews and anecdotes that can help audiences better understand how people learn and perceive...beyond the famous experiment.

R9

Quote:

“They believe that Galton’s wall often has much less to do with our innate limits than with what we consider an acceptable level of performance. They’ve found that top achievers typically follow the same general pattern. They develop strategies for keeping out of the autonomous stage by doing three things: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented and getting immediate feedback on their performance” (Foer, 2011).

Question:

When we think about an “acceptable” level of performance, who sets that for our students and why? Are they qualified to make that type of decision?

Connection:

“In other words, regular practice simply isn’t enough. To improve, we have to be constantly pushing ourselves beyond where we think our limits lie and then pay attention to how and why we fail… More than anything, what differentiates top memorizers from the second tier is that they approach memorization like a science. They develop hypotheses about their limitations; they conduct experiments and track data” (Foer, 2011).

Given this quote, I wondered about my practice of developing intervention plans for students. Typically I create goals that are attainable so that students can feel a sense of success and hopefully continue to be a part of the intervention. So the idea is to take things slowly and build. I’ve once heard something similarly described as “go slow to go fast”. I wonder, when dealing with students that need to overcome considerable challenges, would Foer’s suggestions work for their improvement too?

Connection:

“Classroom teachers face the challenge of making the encoding of the information and skills that we are attempting to teach students as elaborate and deep as possible” (King-Friedrichs, 2001, p. 77). This quote makes me think of James’ idea that students need diverse opportunities and build strong connections to learn best. I wonder if this is at odds with teaching elaborate and deep information to students. Just as Foer (2011) also suggested, there is a delicate “balance between moving quickly and forming detailed images,” in practicing the art of memorization. I wonder how teachers can be efficient and offer diverse experiences, but also offer deep study to students.

R8

Quote: “The mechanisms of perception go to a lot of trouble to ensure that what we see corresponds to what is usually out there” (Pinker, 2002, p. 200). The idea of what is “usually out there” depends on a number of variables, so I’m not sure this is particularly helpful.

Question: Although Pinker managed to argue that cognition is not framed effectively by relativists nor naïve realists, I wonder how underlying beliefs and meaning fit into his “third alternative” theory? For instance, he mentioned that our experiences lead to more accurate perceptual systems. In this case, what is accurate? Must people not have beliefs about what “is usually out there” in the first place to determine accuracy? As Pinker mentioned, this is not arbitrary, but based on survival and our assumptions about the world. Isn’t it possible that our survival needs and assumptions about the world could create skewed beliefs, which are then later confirmed over and over again based on accuracy?

Connection: “People are not helplessly programmed with images; they can evaluate and interpret what they see using everything else they know, such as credibility and motives of the source” (p. 216). This idea is very questionable, based on experiences I have had working with children and students with disabilities. In every case, I must consider the development of the person and their capabilities. In working with a teenager who may be depressed, I cannot assume that they are able to evaluate and interpret images using credibility and motives. Actually, I might consider the exact opposite. They may not have a sufficient knowledge base or cognitive ability to assess reality or at least an adaptive reality for survival.

Connection: In reading Pinker’s article, I think about Piaget’s theory of cognitive constructivism. Since that theory seems to address individual meaning making and active participation, I wonder how Pinker would critique it. Although he manages to address social constructivism and its limitations, how would he address individual construction of reality? Would that be considered mature realism or relative truth?