Prepared by Tim Simpson and Brandon Schakola (additions and comments by Frawley)
Readings: Bruer, Schools for Thought, Ch 5; Coleman, "Inducing a Shift from Intuitive to Scientific Knowledge with Inquiry Training"
The lecture began with a brief discussion of what learning is and what it means to understand. Learning is the acquisition of new elements, such as knowledge, skills, and beliefs, as well as a change in existing elements. It creates either a change in behavior or the capacity for a change that should be relatively permanent.
Note what effect the last clause has on explanation. Is learning a change in observable behavior (Turing) or a change in some unobservable computational element that may result in an overt change?
Learning occurs through practice and experience and exists in two forms: intentional and incidental. Incidental learning occurs without conscious awareness. Intentional learning, which is the type of interest to educators, is goal- directed and conscious.
Next, the question was raised of what makes science learning so difficult. Children enter school with naive concepts about how the world works. They usually involving assigning intentionality to inanimate parts of the environment. For example, a child might say, "The wind is like the air, only pushier." These ideas are internally consistent and well structured. This makes them very resistant to change, which is the goal of science education.
Note: naive beliefs are resistant to change because they are reliable! Part of the problem of science education is instruction in ideas that conflict with what is delivered to your mind-brain by the neurocognitive machine. For example, you have to learn the idea of action at a distance. Question: what of education can play on innate knowledge and what conflicts?
In order to discuss successful belief revision, we need to first know what determines success in science. Marcia Linn at Berkeley has proposed the three following criteria. First, the child must have the processing capacity to work with multiple variables simultaneously. Second, metacognitive strategies are needed to monitor revise understanding. Finally, previous subject matter knowledge makes it easier to organize new material and recognize false beliefs (cf. Prof. Ferretti's points about problem solving)
Dr. Coleman has performed an experiment to determine how children learn complex concepts, such as photosynthesis. In order to determine at what level a child understands a concept, she has them draw a concept map. This is a network that uses the key terms of the concept as vertices and the child draws directed connections between them. This is then compared to a concept map created by an expert in the subject. By the end of the experiment, the children had shown a revision of their belief system.
This prompts the question of how belief systems are changed. Piaget hypothesized that change occurred due to conflict resolution when the child was exposed to alternate ideas. Vygotsky argued that social interaction created scaffolding which brought the learner to the level of understanding. Freud linked belief revision with guilt and fear. Dr. Coleman concluded that, for revision of beliefs to promote "better understanding," it has to be a process and understanding must be seen as relative.
The application of cognitive science to science learning has many implications for education. Naive beliefs must be confronted and teachers, who need to utilize active engagement. They also must use graphics and analogies in their lectures. It is important that they create a community of learners, where students are able to interact at with each other in scientific activities.
Note how these recommendations would change the nature of the classroom culture. There would have to be more exploration in classrooms, and instruction would take much more time than it now does. Here the benefits of cognitive science run smack into the necessities of educational policy.