Robert Glaser

Bio: Robert Glaser is an academic researcher from University of Pittsburgh. The author has contributed to research in topics: Cognition & Educational research. The author has an hindex of 48, co-authored 132 publications receiving 24267 citations. Previous affiliations of Robert Glaser include American Institutes for Research.

The Nature of Expertise

Abstract: Contents: M.T.H. Chi, In Memoriam. R. Glaser, M.T.H. Chi, Overview. M.I. Posner, Introduction: What Is It to Be an Expert? Part I:Practical Skills. D.R. Gentner, Expertise in Typewriting. K.A. Ericsson, P.G. Polson, A Cognitive Analysis of Exceptional Memory for Restaurant Orders. J.J. Staszewski, Skilled Memory and Expert Mental Calculation. Part II:Programming Skills. E. Soloway, B. Adelson, K. Ehrlich, Knowledge and Processes in the Comprehension of Computer Programs. J.R. Anderson, P. Pirolli, R. Farrell, Learning to Program Recursive Functions. B. Adelson, E. Soloway, A Model of Software Design. Part IIIIll-Defined Problems. E.J. Johnson, Expertise and Decision Under Uncertainty: Performance and Process. J.A. Lawrence, Expertise on the Bench: Modeling Magistrates' Judicial Decision-Making. J.F. Voss, T.A. Post, On the Solving of Ill-Structured Problems. Part IV:Medical Diagnosis. G.J. Groen, V.L. Patel, The Relationship Between Comprehension and Reasoning in Medical Expertise. A. Lesgold, H. Rubinson, P. Feltovich, R. Glaser, D. Klopfer, Y. Wang, Expertise in a Complex Skill: Diagnosing X-Ray Pictures. W.J. Clancey, Acquiring, Representing, and Evaluating a Competence Model of Diagnostic Strategy.

Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment

Abstract: Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.

Expertise in Problem Solving.

Abstract: : It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the quality of domain-specific knowledge is the main determinant of expertise in that domain. This paper begins with an examination of the shift from consideration of general, domain-independent skills and procedures, in both cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, to the study of the knowledge base. Next, the empirical findings and theoretical models of other researchers in physics problem solving are detailed and summarized. Then our own work is presented, consisting of eight empirical studies. These studies show, in general, the importance of differences in the knowledge bases of experts and novices to their problem solving success. More specifically, they show that it is difficult to use protocols of problem solving episodes to illuminate the differences in the knowledge bases of experts and novices, that experts and novices perceive the problem themselves differently, i.e., novices respond to the surface features of a problem while experts respond to its deep structure, that less successful novices, at least, have deficiencies in their declarative knowledge of physics, that novices tend to lack knowledge of when to use certain physics knowledge, and that deficiencies in knowledge appear to prevent novices at times from making key inferences necessary for solving problems. Finally, these results and their implications for theories of intelligence, are discussed. (Author)

The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.

Abstract: because observed behavior is the result of interactions between environmental factors and genes during the extended period of development. Therefore, to better understand expert and exceptional performance, we must require that the account specify the different environmental factors that could selectively promote and facilitate the achievement of such performance. In addition, recent research on expert performance and expertise (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988; Ericsson & Smith, 1991a) has shown that important characteristics of experts' superior performance are acquired through experience and that the effect of practice on performance is larger than earlier believed possible. For this reason, an account of exceptional performance must specify the environmental circumstances, such as the duration and structure of activities, and necessary minimal biological attributes that lead to the acquisition of such characteristics and a corresponding level of performance. An account that explains how a majority of individuals can attain a given level of expert performance might seem inherently unable to explain the exceptional performance of only a small number of individuals. However, if such an empirical account could be empirically supported, then the extreme characteristics of experts could be viewed as having been acquired through learning and adaptation, and studies of expert performance could provide unique insights into the possibilities and limits of change in cognitive capacities and bodily functions. In this article we propose a theoretical framework that explains expert performance in terms of acquired characteristics resulting from extended deliberate practice and that limits the role of innate (inherited) characteristics to general levels of activity and emotionality. We provide empirical support from two new studies and from already published evidence on expert performance in many different domains.

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge

Abstract: Research in the area of educational technology has often been critiqued for a lack of theoretical grounding. In this article we propose a conceptual framework for educational technology by building on Shulman’s formulation of ‘‘pedagogical content knowledge’’ and extend it to the phenomenon of teachers integrating technology into their pedagogy. This framework is the result of 5 years of work on a program of research focused on teacher professional development and faculty development in higher education. It attempts to capture some of the essential qualities of teacher knowledge required for technology integration in teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted, and situated nature of this knowledge. We argue, briefly, that thoughtful pedagogical uses of technology require the development of a complex, situated form of knowledge that we call Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK). In doing so, we posit the complex roles of, and interplay among, three main components of learning environments: content, pedagogy, and technology. We argue that this model has much to offer to discussions of technology integration at multiple levels: theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological. In this article, we describe the theory behind our framework, provide examples of our teaching approach based upon the framework, and illustrate the methodological contributions that have resulted from this work.

What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Abstract: Good computer and video games like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Pikmin, Rise of Nations, Neverwinter Nights, and Xenosaga: Episode 1 are learning machines. They get themselves learned and learned well, so that they get played long and hard by a great many people. This is how they and their designers survive and perpetuate themselves. If a game cannot be learned and even mastered at a certain level, it won't get played by enough people, and the company that makes it will go broke. Good learning in games is a capitalist-driven Darwinian process of selection of the fittest. Of course, game designers could have solved their learning problems by making games shorter and easier, by dumbing them down, so to speak. But most gamers don't want short and easy games. Thus, designers face and largely solve an intriguing educational dilemma, one also faced by schools and workplaces: how to get people, often young people, to learn and master something that is long and challenging--and enjoy it, to boot.

Classrooms: Goals, structures, and student motivation.

Abstract: This article examines the classroom learning environment in relation to achievement goal theory of motivation. Classroom structures are described in terms of how they make different types of achievement goals salient and as a consequence elicit qualitatively different patterns of motivation. Task, evaluation and recognition, and authority dimensions of classrooms are presented as examples of structures that can influence children's orientation toward different achievement goals. Central to the thesis of this article is a perspective that argues for an identification of classroom structures that can contribute to a mastery orientation, a systematic analysis of these structures, and a determination of how these structures relate to each other