Applied Cognitive Research in K-3 Classrooms

S. Kenneth Thurman, Catherine A. Fiorello, S. Kenneth Thurman, Catherine A. Fiorello

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135597320
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This volume summarizes research on important topics in cognitive research and discusses what must be done to apply this research in early elementary classrooms. Purposefully, it focuses on areas of cognitive research that have only recently begun to be studied in early elementary classrooms or that, based on educational and psychological theory, appear to have the greatest implications for early classroom learning

• Part 1, "Cognitive Applications in Early Elementary Classrooms, " examines topics germane to the cognitive functioning of young children: working memory, executive functioning, theory of mind, phonemic awareness, and neuropsychological processing in the context of early elementary classrooms.

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• Part 2, "Considerations for Further Research: Methods, Policy, and Issues, " looks at practical and methodological issues of which applied cognitive researchers must remain cognizant: methodology, research designs, the gap between science and policy and means by which this gap can be diminished, and the need to consider how issues like ecological validity, individual differences, treatment integrity, and the relation between assessment and intervention are integral to designing applied cognitive research studies.

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The current emphasis on empirically supported treatments and research-based teaching and intervention in the schools, and legislation such as No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, have focused attention on the scientific basis of educational practice. However, applying research to the environment of the schools is not an automatic process. Bridging the gap has several prerequisites: researchers must attend to the ecological validity of their studies, universities must incorporate the results of research into their pre-professional training programs, and schools must support their inservice staff in developing new knowledge and skills. Applied Cognitive Research in K-3 Classrooms contributes strongly to these goals, not only by providing researchers, professionals, and graduate students in the fields of cognitive psychology, school psychology, educational psychology, educational research, and early elementary-level education with current understanding but also helping to set an agenda for further research that applies cognitive psychology in early elementary classrooms.

1

COGNITION IN THE EARLY ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM

Mary C. McKenna

Metropolitan University

Erin K. Jurgensen¹ and S. Kenneth Thurman

Temple University

VIRTUALLY EVERY DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY that has been promulgated across the decades teaches us that the foundation for later development is laid early in life. Each “block” in the sequence becomes the supporting structure for what follows. Underlying development are fundamental neurological processes that provide the infrastructure necessary for human beings to become who they are. A major by-product of this neurological structure is cognition, or the basic processes by which we come to know and understand our world. The research literature underscores the importance of early cognitive development for later learning (Evans, Floyd, McGrew, & Leforgee, 2002; Schrank & Flanagan, 2003; Weikart, 1998). For example, it is well-documented that later reading comprehension is related to the base of knowledge and information the beginning reader brings to his/her task (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Similarly, if one considers Piaget’s theory, it is clear that the development of formal operations could not proceed without the earlier development of concrete operation which in itself could not proceed without the cognitive base established during the sensory motor period.

Although no one would argue that children develop through their natural interaction with their physical and social environments, it is likewise the case that formal teaching and instruction play critical roles in the achievement of academic competence. Thus, to the extent that we can understand the role and functions of cognitive processes in classrooms and other applied settings, it should logically follow that instruction and consequently learning will improve. In the present context of evidence-based practice, further understanding of cognitive processes in classrooms and other applied settings becomes meaningful not only to bolster the learning sciences but also to assist school personnel in meeting the political and policy driven expectations of legislation like No Child Left Behind. Accountability for these expectations plays out in individual classrooms and is mediated by our understanding of cognitive processes required for academic learning to occur. The challenge lies in translation of the findings from cognitive research in controlled laboratory settings to the classroom. The first step in this translation is to recognize that the typical elementary classroom is a complex environment placing competing demands on the students, many of which are cognitive in nature.

Walter Doyle (1986,2006) has classified several features of classroom life that account for this complexity. Classrooms are multidimensional with many separate activities occurring simultaneously. Moreover, classrooms are public spaces where success or failure is readily apparent to all. A student’s grades on papers or exams or mistaken answers to teacher questions are almost impossible to conceal. Each of these features of the typical elementary classroom places cognitive, organizational, and psychological pressure on all students. Research on the conditions that promote learning and development in the classroom context derived from cognitive psychology were summarized by Rosenshine (1977) and contributed to the teacher effectiveness research as exemplified by Doyle. Given the critical role of cognition in bringing about classroom learning and the expectations for accountability alluded to above, it has become increasingly necessary to understand how cognitive processes are manifest in classroom learning and how the knowledge gained from cognitive science can more effectively support classroom instruction.

The purpose of this volume is to begin an examination of how various cognitive processes impact classroom learning in the early school years. Moreover, we are concerned with the challenges inherent not only in translating findings from cognitive science into classrooms but also in the development of strategies for conducting cognitive research in “real life settings.” To introduce the reader to the material, we have created a classroom scenario to illustrate how the topics discussed in Part 1 add to the complexity of the learners’ task in an elementary classroom. The scenario is based on the observations of actual classrooms over the years and represents a composite of our observations rather than any single classroom. It is meant not only to make explicit the cognitive demands of early elementary classrooms but also to provide the reader with a context for discerning the importance of each chapter in Part 1. The classroom described is a team-taught first grade which, while not necessarily the standard, allows us to more easily illustrate pertinent cognitive abilities.

It’s 8:30 in the morning on October 23nd in Ms. Hunter’s and Mr. Alonzo’s team-taught first grade classroom. The 20 children who are present have placed their belongings in their respective cubbies and have taken a seat on the large colorful carpet next to the windows. “Sit down quietly everyone, it’s time for morning meeting,” Ms. Hunter says as she sits in her chair facing the children and prepares to lead the first activity of the day. After the children are seated, Ms. Hunter addresses the students, “Good morning, boys and girls. I hope that you enjoyed our trip to the pumpkin farm yesterday. Who remembered to put their pumpkin in a special place when they got home?” All of the children raise their hands. “Ms Hunter,” Billy Rogers excitedly calls from his place near the back of the group, “I took my pumpkin to Grandma’s house and she’s going to use it to make a pie.” “That’s terrific Billy,” replies Ms. Hunter as she turns her attention toward the daily calendar.

“Who can tell me what day it is today?” Ms. Hunter asks. Billy Rogers raises his hand and before being called on says with enthusiasm, “If my grandma makes pumpkin pie then I can bring it in for the class to have a Halloween party.” “We can talk about that later Billy, right now we are going over the calendar,” Ms. Hunter says as she repeats her question to the class. “Who can tell me what day it is today?” A few of the students answer in unison, “Today is Tuesday October 23, 2007.” “If Halloween is on October 31, 2007, and that is on a Wednesday, then how many days away is Halloween ?” Ms. Hunter asks the class. The students look at the calendar with confusion. “Can anyone tell me? Steven?” Ms. Hunter asks. Steven blushes and replies shyly “31.” “Halloween is on the 31st,” Ms. Hunter corrects, “and that is 8 days away from today.”

In chapter two, “Working Memory and Classroom Learning,” Susan Gathercole and Tracy Packiam Alloway help us to understand why Steven and other children are having difficulty answering the question posed by the teacher: “If Halloween is on October 31,2007, and that is on a Wednesday, then how many days away is Halloween?” They describe working memory as “a kind of mental workspace that can be flexibly used to meet the storage demands of complex cognitive activities” (p. 18). Their research shows that working memory shows a steady developmental improvement between 4 and 11 years and that there is a substantial degree of variability at each age. So that in our classroom, there could be as much as 5 years of working memory capacity separating the highest from the lowest performers. They have developed profiles of the classroom behaviors of children with low working memory scores and Steven’s inability to answer the calendar question is a typical example. In this case, Steven has to keep the question in his consciousness while trying to figure out the answer. Even though the calendar is there in front of him and he could count off the days, Gathercole and Alloway point out that those children with low working memory ability often experience difficulty using memory aides. In the vignette, Steven was asked the question by the teacher. He did not raise his hand to be called upon. Not volunteering answers in group discussions and having no answer or the wrong answer when called upon are also behaviors in the profile of the student with working memory difficulties.

What could Ms. Hunter have done differently? Gathercole and Alloway stress that it is the responsibility of the teacher to modify her instruction by reducing the simultaneous storage and processing demands of classroom tasks. Therefore, Ms. Hunter could have asked the question again and then asked Steven to tell her what his task was. While modeling how to count off the days to give the answer, she could invite Steven to stand with her in front of the calendar and assist her by counting off the days. The authors describe working memory as a “bottleneck” for learning. They emphasize that many of the structure learning activities in the classroom place heavy demands on working memory and that the resulting task failures slow down and disrupt the normal pace of learning.

Chapter 3 focuses on Executive Function (EF), school readiness and school performance. Müller, Lieberman, Fry, and Zelazo place language functioning front and center in the child’s development of EF where EF is defined as the processes involved in the conscious control of action and thought. This chapter gives considerable insight into how language is involved in the self-regulation (decisions) that the child must engage in to make his or her way through the school day. For many of the situations that a child must deal with, s/he must figure out which rules are in operation and regulate his/her behavior accordingly. Furthermore, s/he must be able to shift if these rules no longer seem to be in operation or if they do not seem to be producing the desired effect.

Müller and colleagues define EF as the processes that are involved in the conscious control of action and thought and examine the relation between cognitive self-regulation and academic functioning. In this section of the vignette, we can see how much the capacity to self-regulate impacts the learning experiences of a student during a teacher lead, large group discussion so typical of the elementary classroom.

Participation in an activity such as morning meeting requires the executive function abilities of both inhibition and self-regulation. During a lesson, students have to inhibit irrelevant thoughts that come to their mind. They must also inhibit behavioral responses such as waiting to be called on before answering a question. Billy demonstrates difficulty with inhibition when he shouts out without being called on and when he cannot inhibit his thoughts about the pumpkin pie. Moreover, while the teacher’s attention was focused on Steven, students like Billy lost focus. Classroom instruction requires the ability to cognitively shift from one task (or instructional unit) to the next. Billy demonstrates cognitive inflexibility in his difficulty switching from the topic of the pumpkin to the calendar and in regulating his behavior to the demands of the task, which is to sit and listen when the teacher is interacting with another child.

Müller and colleagues highlight much needed areas for research and intervention. They note that “unfortunately, there is little research on the effects of training executive function skills and as of yet, no study has examined the effect of training of executive function skills on school readiness or school achievement” (p. 67). However, they highlight the impact of a pre-school intervention program developed by Bodrova and Leong (2001) where the theoretical background of the program is derived from Vygotsky (1994) and, hence, places language in a central role in the regulation of thought and behavior. Kindergarten children who participated in the program were reported by their teachers as better self-regulators than control peers in follow-up studies into grades 1 and 2 (Bodrova & Leong, 2001). Students like Billy therefore could possibly be helped more by fostering their language skills and play and play-like experiences to develop cognitive and control.

Ms. Hunter began the phonemic awareness activity saying, “Today, we will practice our vocabulary words for the Halloween stories that we will be reading and writing all this week. Right now I want to practice the letter /I/ and when it makes the short /I/ sound. We are going to use our pretend fishing poles (rulers with magnets at the end of a short string) to fish for words (the vocabulary words have been printed out, laminated, and mini-magnets are stuck onto them). Ms. Hunter carefully demonstrates how to safely fish. “No whirling the fishing poles around.” The first word that comes up is “stitch.” She spells out the letters s-t-i-t-c-h and says, “This is the word ‘stitch’ and it has the short /I/ so I can use this word to fill out my bingo sheet.” The sound bingo sheet has pictures of words that had short /I/ sounds such as pumpkin and some that did not (e.g., moon) and some that had the long /I/ sound. She looks at the sound bingo card and says, “This is great. I can match ‘stitch’ to the picture of the stitch on my bingo card.” The card shows a piece of knitting with a stitch off the needle. Marietta, the first student to “fish,” caught the word “night” and so Ms. Hunter says, “Can you read that word for us?” Marietta spells out the letters n-i-g-h-t and says “night,” and as she says, “This is a long /I/ sound,” she looks to see if there is a picture to match it on the sound bingo card. When it is Steven’s turn, Ms. Hunter prompts him saying, “Steven, it would help us all if you would tell us what we are to do and learn in this activity.”

“I’ve got to fish for words and tell if the word has a short /I/ or a long /I/ and then match my word to a picture on my sound bingo card.” Here we see an example of how working memory can be aided with a teacher’s prompt.

Meanwhile Mr. Alonzo is working with his guided reading group where the students and he are working on developing a strong foundation of vocabulary words. He has created his own story for them. They are reading about an enormous bonfire that some children in Mexico have created as part of the holiday celebration. It towers over them. So, he says, “Let’s figure out the meaning of some of these words.”

“We all know the meaning of the word ‘enormous,’ A student volunteers, “Something that is very, very big indeed.”

“So, now that we understand the word ‘enormous’ we can use that to help us to figure out the meaning of ‘towering.’ He continues, “First of all, what buildings have towers?”

One student says, “A church has a bell-tower “

“That’s right,” continues Mr. Alonzo. “What other buildings can we think of?”

When no one answers, he says, “Think back to some of the pictures in the books that we have been reading together.“

Lisa raises her hand and says, “Castles have towers.”

“Right,” says Mr. Alonzo. “So, keeping the word ‘enormous’ in mind, what do a bell-tower and a tower on a castle have that is the same?”

A student answers, “A tower is something big or is on a big thing like a castle.”

“That’s a great connection, so, if you are standing beside the big building, you could say that it towers over you, just like the enormous ‘bonfire’.”

In Chapter 5, Byrnes and Wasik provide a clear summary of the cognitive, developmental science that has implications for teaching reading and argue that “much could be gained by translating cognitive developmental science to the classroom” (p. 142). The chapter addresses two critical topics: phonological awareness and vocabulary development. Phonological awareness is a key skill that predicts success in learning to read. Deficits in phonological awareness are at the core of the reading difficulties of the dyslexic child. Furthermore, children whose family backgrounds are not rich in language use, appear to have...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 COGNITION IN THE EARLY ELEMENTARY CLASSROOM
• Part One: Cognitive Applications in Early Elementary Classrooms
• Part Two: Considerations For Further Research: Methods, Policy, And Issues
• AUTHOR INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX