Cognition, Education, and Communication Technology

PETER GARDENFORS, Petter Johansson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135632533
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Technologie de l'éducation

Cognition, Education, and Communication Technology presents some of the recent theoretical developments in the cognitive and educational sciences and implications for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the organization of school and university education. Internationally renowned researchers present theoretical perspectives with proposals for and evaluations of educational practices. Each chapter discusses different aspects of the use of ICT in education, including: *the role of perceptual processes in learning;
*external cognition as support for interactive learning;
*the role of meta-cognition;
*simulation learning environments as cognitive tools;
*the role of science controversy for knowledge integration;
*the use of ICT in the development of educators; and
*the role of narratives in education.ICT has great potential for revolutionizing education. Large investments of resources are being made, often without a strong understanding of how ICT will or should be implemented. The expectation is that students will show immediate improvements in terms of their motivation to learn and their learning achievements, but reality is different. Progress of ICT in education requires more than just computers in the classroom. It demands an understanding of the complex processes contributing to human learning and how they interact with new technologies. This text provides theoretical perspectives on the learning processes that can be used as a foundation for constructing pedagogically valuable tools based on ICT.The combination of results--from cognitive science and pedagogy, with more practically oriented suggestions for how ICT can be used in various forms of education--makes this book suitable for researchers and students in the cognitive and educational sciences, as well as for practitioners and planners of education.

1

Introduction to Cognition, Education, and Communication Technology

Petter Johansson

Peter Gärdenfors

Lund University, Sweden

Computers are quickly becoming natural components in many educational settings. Some years ago, there was a tendency to believe that if one could only install enough computers in the school, many educational problems would be solved. However, students as well as teachers are to an increasing extent questioning the value of information technology in education. Even if computers are frequently used for word processing, information search, e-mail, and chatting, the worry is whether these tools really improve how students learn.

The fundamental problem seems to be that one does not know enough about the interplay between learning and tools for learning. In particular, the potential of modern information and communication technology (ICT) seems far from fully exploited in education. Educators clearly need more developed and more encompassing theories of learning that can help educators choosing the right kind of technical support and how it should be used in education.

What would such theory of learning look like? There have been more than 100 years of research on learning, memory, attention, and problem solving in psychology and brain sciences. If this research is worth anything, it should be possible to derive an encompassing theory for how learning works. The seemingly obvious answer is that one should be able to construct the following three cornerstones:

1. A descriptive theory of the processes of learning.
2. A prescriptive theory of instruction derived from or anchored at the descriptive level.
3. A theory of instructional design including implementational recommendations for the use of ICT.

In the construction of these three parts of a unified theory of learning, one should also be able to benefit from the insights derived from the accumulated body of educational practice. These insights should serve as the empirical foundation for theories that could support their validity.

If this answer is so obvious, why have these three components not been developed? For comparison, in physics and in medicine, theoretical gains have led to immensely powerful practical applications. Why have psychology and the brain sciences not had the same effect on education?

An analogy with the development of medicine may be helpful here. Before modern medicine was developed, there was a large body of folk medicine—practices to treat illnesses that were based on a mixture of traditional knowledge of the effects of various herbs and treatments with myths and superstition. These practices did not have any backing in the form of controlled experimental testing. They often resulted in conflicting recommendations and, in retrospect, many of them were directly harmful. Gradually, this epistemologically chaotic state has been replaced by modern medicine that is based on an increased knowledge about the functioning of various bodily systems together with strictly controlled experimentation before new drugs are introduced. Science is now reaching the state in which new drugs can be chemically designed rather than found by laborious trial- and-error testing on laboratory animals.

The analogy we hold out is that the knowledge of how education should be practiced is still on the level of folk medicine; pedagogy has not yet found its Pasteur. Most instructional practices are motivated by a combination of folk psychology and a reference to tradition that leads to inconsistencies and potentially harmful recommendations.

The reason folk psychology still functions as a foundation is that the sciences of learning are not as mature as could be hoped. What one finds is not one unified theory of learning but a multitude of theories on different levels of explanation—from learning in neurons to learning in groups of individuals. The theories are often fragmented and far from complete, and they cover scattered application areas. In most cases, it is difficult to see how the theories can be made to work together for more general explanations and recommendations. As a matter of fact, different theories sometimes result in conflicting recommendations. There are a lot of conflicts among researchers in the fields of learning, and they seem to have widely diverging visions of what learning really is.

If now the sciences of learning and instruction are in a state analogous to the pioneering wild West, it would be premature to attempt a unification of existing theories. To be sure, there have been attempts at such unification. For example, Skinner (1954) presented a theory of instruction based on the behaviorist theory of learning. However, later developments have found the behaviorist attempts rather limited.

Furthermore, regardless of the validity of the theories, it could be questioned whether all aspects of the descriptive enterprise are actually relevant for theories of instruction and implementation. For example, what are the potential benefits to be gained by understanding the mechanisms of neural encoding of memory from an instructional perspective? If one aims for instructional design, does one really need to be informed of all levels?

On the other hand, who is to identify one level of description as the most fruitful and promising? For the time being, one must accept that there is no limited set of universal laws covering all aspects of learning. Therefore, one must still accept a plurality of theoretical positions in the educational sciences. It could even be the case that learning is not one unified phenomenon but must be described in terms of many mechanisms operating on a multitude of levels. After all, what is common in the learning of pottery, navigation, grammar, mathematics, and so forth?

It is also important to note the fundamental tension between the descriptive and prescriptive aspects of learning as regards their aims. The main aim of a descriptive theory is to explain various aspects of learning processes. On the other hand, the prescriptive aims essentially involve developing an optimal theory of instruction in relation to a set of educational goals. In the attempts to develop a descriptive theory, that is, an explanatory theory of how learning occurs, the learning process is observed and manipulated but not guided. The problem when trying to utilize existing models from a descriptive level in education is that it is not at all certain that they convey the most efficient approach. In other words, they try to capture how humans learn things, not necessarily how we best learn things.

Another difference between descriptive and prescriptive theories is that they are based on different methodologies. In chapter 2 (this volume), Schwartz, Martin, and Nasir describe the difference in methodology as follows: In cognitive psychology and other descriptive theories, one tries to isolate variables that are relevant for learning to experimentally investigate their effects. In contrast, in a real-life instructional setting, all variables are active at the same time and cannot be treated in isolation, so a holistic solution to the educational framework must be sought.

Even if the relation between descriptive and prescriptive theories is somewhat problematic, many descriptive models of learning can be useful when dealing with educational issues. As we show in the next section, many more or less successful attempts have been made to ground new educational initiatives in existing theories from psychology and cognitive science.

The third cornerstone of a theory of instruction is the role of ICT tools. Because they have only recently been introduced in educational practices, one cannot hope that these practices will tell us what the optimal use of ICT in education is. The space of possibilities is not sufficiently explored. Ideally, one should be able to derive what is the best use of these tools from the available theories. However, the fragmentation of the theoretical field makes it very difficult to formulate any generally applicable recommendations at the level of implementation.

The upshot is that one cannot hope to find a unifying theory of learning from which one can derive a generally applicable theory of instruction. In spite of the fragmented nature of the sciences of learning, we believe that nevertheless there is much to gain from the different theories that have been formulated and the experience that has been collected in different educational settings. The strategy should therefore not be to search for Utopia but to be more eclectic: Take what is available today and use it as a basis for recommendation on instructional practices, in particular, practices involving ICT. In the following, apart from providing a brief historical description of a few of the major theories of learning and education, we outline some consequences of these and other theories that we find important for the design of educational practices. In this, we also show where in the theoretical landscape the chapters of this book can be placed.

From a Historical Perspective

Behaviorism

Even if few copies would be sold if a new educational software were promoted as being developed in strict accordance with the principles of behaviorism, it is nevertheless true that much of what is being produced today is still guided by the basic tenets of Skinner (1967, 1968).

From having been the dominating theoretical approach in regular psychology as well as educational psychology and instructional design, behaviorism is now often treated primarily as a contrasting case, something that it is important to not be associated with (Jonassen & Land, 2000). Behaviorism is portrayed as representing learning without understanding, teacher-centered lectures with scant opportunities for curiosity and individuality, passive students, reductionistic, and conforming, that is, everything one wants to avoid in the modern school. Interestingly enough, much of Skinners (1954) ideas on education were aimed at resolving these very issues.

In a simplified summary of Skinners (1968) position, the phenomenon of learning is explained by a limited set of basic conditioning mechanisms. Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement (i.e., avoidance of an expected negative outcome) increase the probability that a response will be repeated in the future, whereas nonreinforcement and punishment decrease the likelihood of future occurrences of a response. The learning effect is further regulated by the reinforcement schedule, that is, at what ratio or interval a response is reinforced, and by the timing of the reinforcement, that is, at what time the reinforcement is delivered in relation to the response.

Having constructed what aspired to be a universal theory of learning covering all species as well as all instances of learning, the obvious next step was to apply these ideas to human society in general and education in particular (Skinner, 1948, 1954, 1968). The traditional educational method with a teacher up front holding a lecture and passive students listening and trying to absorb did not fit well with behavioristic ideas of learning. In Skinner’s (1954) highly influential article, “The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching,” he argued for a more individualistic approach in which the student should be the active part. Given Skinner’s (1954) concept of learning, this is not very surprising. It is only by strengthening responses that learning can occur, and in a passive learning situation, there is no behavior to reinforce. Skinner (1954) also emphasized the importance of immediate reinforcement. There is no point in taking an exam and then having to wait 2 or 3 weeks for the result; the reinforcement needs to be delivered immediately or the learning effect will be diminished dramatically. According to Skinner (1954), instruction and learning should also proceed in an incremental fashion, with small and manageable steps toward a preset and well-defined learning goal, that is, a method similar to shaping of behavior in animal training. These three steps, (a) an active learner, (b) immediate reinforcement, and (c) successive approximations toward a well-defined learning goal, form the core of what is known as programmed instruction.

To suitably direct and govern the individual students’ learning trajectory, each learning task must be examined and its components described in detail. This means that for each learning task, a detailed, step-by-step, instructional sequence should be produced as well as a description of the corresponding sequence of desired behaviors. For this to be of any value, there must of course also be a reliable procedure to measure and compare the students’ learning behavior with the original plan. This focus on task analyses and behavioral objectives came to be one of the most influential aspects of the behaviorists’ educational project.

In his critique of traditional educational methods, Skinner (1954) also pointed out that a single teacher cannot individually and appropriately reinforce an entire class of students. In his 1954 article, Skinner introduced the notion of a teaching machine to solve this problem. A machine could implement the instructional method of programmed instruction: present information or instruction, measure every response and reinforce appropriately, branch to the next level of difficulty depending on the individual’s performance, and so forth. This would not only increase the efficiency of schooling, it would solve a number of additional problems. It would give the teacher more time for emotional, artistic, and intellectual issues; to help those students that really need it; and so forth. It would also make it possible to individually tailor instruction and let each student work at her or his own level and pace. The machine would never get bored or impatient no matter how many times the student failed.

Skinner (1968) held great hopes for the use of technology in education: “There is no reason why the schoolroom should be any less mechanized than, for example, the kitchen” (p. 27). A number of different machines and accompanying instructional programs were built, increasingly more technically advanced (Glover & Ronning, 1987). However, after a few years of initial interest, the use of teaching machines in education started to decline. One reason for this was that even though the machine never got bored, the students often did. The step-by-step, incremental nature of the material became tedious and repetitive. This was before the advent of cheap personal computers, and the interface of levers, knobs, and slides did not make the task more appealing. The downfall of behaviorism as the dominant paradigm in psychology also lead to a decreased interest in the behaviorists’ recommendations for education.

Many of the first computer programs that reached the classrooms were of the drill and practice type, and this general approach is still quite common in certain domains such as foreign language vocabulary, geography, mathematics, and so forth. One example is “Jurassic Spelling,” which is a spelling practice program that provides a verbal reward every time a word is correctly spelled, and after gaining a certain number of points, the student is rewarded with a picture and information about a dinosaur. Present day tutorials, often accompanying software such as Microsoft^® Word or PowerPoint^®, are also examples of reinforced step-by-step learning, with progress to the next “level” only when initial stages has been mastered completely.

Additional criticism that can be leveled against behaviorism is of course its shortcomings as a general theory of psychology. By rejecting the use of internal mechanisms in its theoretical constructions, many aspects of human behavior were left unexplained. One of the important and much debated topics was language learning in which the reinforcement model did not seem to be a satisfactory answer (Chomsky, 1959; Skinner, 1957). When it comes to education, programmed instruction and teaching machines focus solely on the individual learner. There is no room for collaborative efforts; it is only the individual’s own progress that is taken into consideration. The use of excessive reinforcement is also somewhat problematic, as external reinforcement has a tendency to decrease intrinsic motivation (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999; but see Eisenberger, Pierce, & Cameron, 1999).

Cognitivism

Whereas behaviorism treated the mind as a black box not to be examined or included in its explanatory scheme of stimuli and response relations, the mechanisms of the mind is at center stage in the cognitivist tradition. The mind (and brain) is seen as an information processing device, with the computer as the basic metaphor. The information being processed is represented by symbols, and it is these symbols that are the carriers of the cognition taking place between perceptual stimuli and motor responses. Following the computer ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction to Cognition, Education, and Communication Technology
• 2. Designs for Knowledge Evolution: Towards a Prescriptive Theory for Integrating First- and Second-Hand Knowledge
• 3. Getting the Story Straight: The Role of Narrative in Teaching and Learning With Interactive Media
• 4. Technology and the New Culture of Learning: Tools for Education Professionals
• 5. Modeling the Perceptual Component of Conceptual Learning—A Coordination Perspective
• 6. Metacognition, Distributed Cognition, and Visual Design
• 7. External Cognition, Innovative Technologies, and Effective Learning
• 8. Seeing Through the Screen: Human Reasoning and the Development of Representational Technologies
• 9. WISE Design for Lifelong Learning—Pivotal Cases
• 10. Determinants of Discovery Learning in a Complex Simulation Learning Environment
• Author Index
• Subject Index