Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
“scaffolding” approaches to support student learning in their “zones of next develop-
ment” (Scott, 1998) they are in effect facilitating intermediate states between these
points.
A related issue concerns the social aspects of learning. One major area of con-
tention in research into learners' ideas in science has been the acceptability of
studies that treat learners as if effectively isolated thinkers who develop knowledge
individually without regard to the social context (Taber, 2009, pp. 191-193). There
are indeed two issues here. One concerns the admissibility of treating the social
context of learning as a complication that needs to be initially ignored to develop
first-order models of student learning. This is something of argument about degree:
both sides acknowledge the importance of the social dimension—but disagree about
whether it should be a core focus of research, or a complexity best addressed later
in the research programme.
However, there is also a school of thought, the construct
ionist
view, that questions
whether it is ever sensible to consider that the individual is the locus of knowledge:
believing that knowledge is always distributed across a social network. To those
working in the personal constructivist tradition—exploring what
individuals
think,
know and understand—such a position seems quite bizarre. Indeed it suggests that
the objects of their research are a kind of epiphenomena, and are not sensible foci
for study. That both sides tend to talk across each other in such debates may again
be related to the common practice of researchers operating with common-sense folk
psychology definitions of knowledge, knowing, understanding, etc.
Perception and Conception
Another useful area of cognitive science that can inform our understanding of stu-
dent thinking and understanding is work on perception. An important feature of
studies in this area is to erode another simplistic distinction—that between “pure”
perception and thought. A simple model considers that perception is a process by
which information from the environment is captured and presented to mind, where
it can become the subject of thought. Work in cognitive science has demonstrated
that perception involves multi-stage processing, so that the conscious mind seldom
experiences anything close to “raw perceptual” data. As Gregory (1998, 9) reports
in the case of sight: “the indirectness of vision and its complexity are evident in
its physiology”. As the Gestalt psychologists first suggested, what is presented to
consciousness as the object of perception is usually a pattern that has
already been
interpreted
(Koffka, 1967): we see a bird or a snake or a tiger: not just patches of
moving colour and shadow.
A cognitive science perspective suggests that in modelling thinking, remember-
ing is much like perceiving—in both cases the available “data” (electrical signals
from sensory organs; electrical patterns modulated through memory “circuits”)
undergoes various processing (“interpretation”) before being presented to con-
sciousness. The evolutionary advantage of this is clear: quick responses—we can
