11.20.06
Posted in Situative perspectives, Annotated References - Class readings, Miscellaneous at 1:06 am by youngsah
Resnick, L. B. (1987). Learning in and out of school. 1987 AERA Presidential Address. Educational Research, 13-20.
This paper asserted that school was a different, special, and separate place from daily life. The paper goes on to compare school learning and outside learning on many different fronts including individual cognition v. shared cognition and pure mental exercises v. tool use. The article also goes on to look at the purpose of education.
I preferred the organization of this paper to the Brown piece. As someone who was dissatisfied with some of their schooling (and who isn’t) the Situative perspective is nice in that it wants knowledge to have a point when so many school activities are too far removed from actual meaningfulness. However, should school be different than outside learning, is there a need for teaching things that aren’t directly applicable or used out in the world? I’m sure some philosophers and theorist might think so. Me, I’m not sure.
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Posted in Situative perspectives, Annotated References - Class readings at 12:52 am by youngsah
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 32-40.
These authors believe knowledge is situated and it should be taught in an authentic way like a “cognitive apprenticeship”. In this paper, they talk a lot about authentic activities and how school often presents learners with inauthentic activities. They also compare how just plain folks, students, and practitioners approach things to strengthen their argument.
I generally agree with the idea that there should be more authentic activities in schools but I don’t want to go as far as these authors did. Also, in some disciplines there would be disagreement about what kinds of activities would be most useful or most practitioner-like.
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Posted in Annotated References - Class readings at 12:17 am by youngsah
Adamson, L. B., Moster, M. A., Roark, M. L., & Reed, D. B. (1998). Doing a science project: Gender differences during childhood. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(8), 845-857.
In the article, the authors looked at two years of a elementary school science fair focusing on gender differences in areas of science, participation, awards given, as well as whether the parents and science fair judges had any obvious gender biases. They did this through observing science fair results and participants, a parent survey, and asking the judges to give their best guess as to the gender of the science projects they had judged. The authors found little difference in participation, but found females doing more projects in the biological/social sciences than males. No obvious gender biases were seen in either the parents or judges.
I could say loads about this article since we did a critique on it but I’ll be brief. As a social science major with many natural science/engineering friends in college I feel they needed to explain their categorization of the sciences a bit more. I would have been more comfortable if they had split natural and social sciences and then talked about biology as on odd case than the way the authors classified it in the paper. For more on this paper, see my critique.
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Posted in Socio-historic perspectives, Annotated References - Class readings at 12:16 am by youngsah
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society. Ch 4-6
Ch. 4 Internalization of Higher Psychological Functions – Vygotsky clarifies somewhat the relation between tool and sign as well as talks about how simple reactions become more complex processes and are then internalized.
Ch. 5 Problems of Method - Vygotsky makes the claim that though their perspectives may differ psychologist study things in strikingly similar ways. He then goes in to contrast his approach, which focuses on analyzing processes and explanation. Later there is a discussion of choice research.
Ch. 6 Educational Implications – Talks about three different perspectives in thinking about learning and development, then contrasts these with ZPD. I probably didn’t get as much out of chapter 4 as I should have, some more focused reading might be warranted. I also added on Chapter 6 because I’m a fan of ZPD. I liked Vygotsky’s approach to criticizing the scientific approach of other psychologists in chapter 5. I’m sure they all weren’t studying things in the same way, but to be able to say that most were does make one think.
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10.30.06
Posted in Cognitive, Annotated References - Class readings at 4:10 pm by youngsah
Phillips, D. C., & Soltis, J. F. (1991). Problem solving, insight, and activity. AND Phillips, D. C., & Soltis, J. F. (1991). Piagetian structures and psychological constructivism.
Chapter 4 Problem Solving, Insight and Activity, focused on Gestalt theory and Köhler but brought in Dewey as well.
Chapter 5 Piagetian Structures and Psychological Constructivism focused mainly on Piaget going over his stages, cognitive structures, and criticism of Piaget.
I liked the criticism of Piaget in part because the way that I’ve read of him before has either been through textbooks, which generally support his approach, or through the books he wrote, which of course support his theories though the books themselves are rather dense in them he is very often not very clear. As far as brining Gestalt and Dewey together, I liked that too. Since I have a psychological background (with little educational experience or knowledge to speak of) it’s nice when authors bring the two disciplines together. It helps me put things in better perspective.
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Posted in Achievement, cooperative context, Collaborative Learning, motivation, Cognitive, Cooperative Learning, Annotated References - RDP readings at 1:54 pm by youngsah
Gillies, R.M. (2003). The behaviors, interactions, and perceptions of junior high school students during small-group learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), p. 137-147.
This study examined over one hundred 8th grade students from multiple schools while participating in structured or unstructured group work in heterogeneous achievement groups over three semesters. Gillies focused on helping (both helping behavior and receiving help), task structure, and student perception. Students were less cooperative in unstructured groups than structured ones, but students showed similar learning outcomes. Students in structured group work also thought that group work was more fun and produced better quality work.
It would have been more interesting to have the structured and unstructured groups compared with competitive or control groups on these measures. But that wasn’t the author’s intent or line of inquiry. She wanted to look at whether there was a difference (looking at lots of measures) between structured and unstructured group learning experiences. She found a couple. Interestingly enough, although the interactions might be different the academic benefit was similar or the same. Students may feel differently about their group experiences but they were still educational experiences either way.
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Posted in Achievement, Meta-Analysis, Tutoring, Cooperative Learning, Annotated References - RDP readings at 11:18 am by youngsah
Rohrbeck, C.A., Ginsburg-Block, M.D., Fantuzzo, J.W., and Miller, T.R. (2003). Peer-assisted learning interventions with elementary school students: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2), p. 250-257.
This study is a meta-meta-analysis that looks at the effectiveness of peer assisted learning (PAL) methods in elementary schools. The authors state that it’s important to look at PAL in this age range because this is when children are forming their ideas about school and assimilating into the school culture. They then go on to criticize the PAL literature. They point out that many pieces are atheortical, that old meta-analyses are not as good as newer ones, and that there is often little ecological validity. Articles were found using searches on PsycINFO and ERIC. Results were then categorized and analyzed. The authors addressed publication bias by calculating the number of studies with no effect to negate the effects that the authors were finding, the results were nearly 200. Their results both summarized the literature and discussed it’s results. Most studies did not report the age, gender, or ethnicity of the subjects. Math, science, and social studies were the most popular content areas (this study only looked at PAL used to teach academic subjects). Generally PAL had an effect on student achievement outcomes. It was more effective for younger students, students in urban areas, and low income families.
Interesting overview of the literature. I don’t think I’ve read a meta-analysis that talks about other meta-analyses before. Though this study does analyze non-meta studies, it does discuss them a lot. It discusses the method and limitations of meta-analyses. This is certainly a study full of citations and data analysis. I’m somewhat impressed by the size of the data. I found their end caps of theory (they only mentioned it at the beginning and the end without going into any depth) a little sparse and not as useful or intriguing as they could have been.
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10.23.06
Posted in competitive, Intergroup competition, Achievement, Meta-Analysis, motivation, Annotated References - RDP readings at 1:54 pm by youngsah
Tauer, J.M., and Harackiewicz, J.M. (2004). The effects of cooperation and competitions on intrinsic motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(6), p. 849-861.
This paper looks at four studies. Three are behavioral and the other is survey based. All studies look at how competition and cooperation affect motivation and performance. The authors favor a combination of the two approaches: intergroup competition. The authors assert that intergroup competition, found in such circumstances as sports, work, and school, is something that is under researched and relevant to understanding of cooperation and competition. One experiment focused on free throw shooting at a basketball camp. There was a competitive condition (make more baskets than another person), cooperative condition (there is a goal of how many baskets to make) and intergroup competition (make more baskets than another team). Subjects in the intergroup competition condition enjoyed the task more and made more free throws than subjects in other groups. Studies 2 and 4 were behavioral studies similar to the first one with tweaks to test the explanatory influence of other variables. Results were similar. Study 3 asked subjects what kind of circumstances they might like better.
This article covered two concepts that I’ve been meaning to find out more about. First, there’s some debate as to how to evaluate cooperative/collaborative learning. Individual grades can often make people competitive while cooperative evaluation is very complicated. Second, many of the studies I have been reading have been on student opinions and feelings about cooperative learning and this study measures that but it also measures achievement. Now basketball achievement may not be affected in the same way as scholastic achievement but I’ll have to see that from my future readings. I liked the way that the authors kept modifying the first study to try to see if there was anything else going on.
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10.22.06
Posted in Cognitive, Annotated References - Class readings at 11:52 pm by youngsah
Phillips, D. C. (1995). The good, the bad, and the ugly: The many faces of constructivism. Educational Researcher, 24(7), 5-12.
This article focuses on the diversity of perspectives in the constructivism perspective. Phillips attempts to organize the perspective of constructivism along three axes. These axes were “individual psychology versus public discipline”, “humans the creators versus nature the instructor”, and “individual cognition” vs. “social and political processes”. The author gives examples from different disciplines of different theorists/researchers and their ideas and how they fit into these categories.
A good overview. Helpful not only in untangling the constructivism perspective but also in placing persons from diverse disciplines into the constructivist framework. I don’t know that there aren’t better categories for parsing these things out but it’s a helpful start. It was odd that the author bifurcated the second axis. It seems that would be reason enough to rethink an axis when it’s different than another axis. Putting together these three axes and mapping people on a three dimensional plane would be fine and dandy if the author hadn’t split the second axis. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Though I didn’t’ know all of the people Phillips talked about I knew some and that I think was helpful enough.
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Posted in Cognitive, Annotated References - Class readings at 11:51 pm by youngsah
Bruner, J. (1960). The Process of Education. Chapters 1 and 2.
The first chapter introduced Bruner’s theory on how education should be reformed and the things we should focus on in educating students. He had four themes he wished to explore: “structure, readiness, intuition, and interest”. The second chapter focused on the idea of structure. He anchored the section with four points. These were: students must understand fundamentals to understand a subject well, details are better remembered when they are put in a preexisting structure, understanding fundamentals in a subject can lead to transfer of knowledge or skills to another subject, ideas should be taught and built on to get students from “elementary” knowledge to “advanced” knowledge. Interesting. My first official exposure to Bruner. My first impression is that these chapters generally made sense. He also acknowledged that pragmatically this approach requires a balance between new discovery-based techniques and the old techniques where students are told something and then forced to test it. Knowing what I know about the memory system (in an information processing way) focusing on structure makes absolute sense. It’s difficult if not impossible to connect ideas to anything if there isn’t an underlying structure to ground them.
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