New developments in the science of learning science of learning overview mind and brain how experts differ from novices how children learn learning and transfer the learning environment curriculum, instruction and commnity effective teaching - examples in history, mathematics and science teacher learning technology to support learning conclusions from new developments in the science of learning.

How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school.

Attention and Effort

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.

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

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.

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Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4

Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning

: The recent cognitive skills literature is reviewed and several principles of skilled performance are derived. One of the central issues in cognitive skills concerns the organization of knowledge and it was concluded that in a variety of domains, spatial knowledge is hierachically organized. This issue was explored in a map-drawing study and it was found that the most serious errors were due to a normalizing error, an error that is symptomatic of hierarchical organization. It was concluded that normalizing errors in large-scale environments are caused by incorrect representations at higher levels in the hierarchy (global errors). Finally, from an information processing analysis of spatial knowledge, the paper addresses the question of what are the cognitive processes underlying cognitive maps and cognitive mapping. (Author)

Cognitive Skill: Implications for Spatial Skill in Large-Scale Environments.

Visual information processing.

Seymour has shown recently that people take less time to judge that the word above correctly describes the spatial position of a small circle drawn above a large reference square than they do for the word below and the circle below the square. Seymour has attributed this asymmetry to the tendency for people to invariably scan a picture from top to bottom. In the present study, the first experiment confirms Seymour's results, but the next three demonstrate that the asymmetry Seymour found cannot be accounted for by an attentional-scanning process. Instead, it is proposed that people interpret the words above and below as abstract symbols at a first stage of processing, interpret the pictures above and below as abstract symbols at an independent second stage, and compare these two sets of symbols at an independent third stage. In support of this model, the results show, for example, that above is interpreted about 80 msec. faster than below at the first stage quite independently of what happens at the second and third stages. The asymmetry Seymour found is therefore attributable to the difference in the interpretation times of above and below at the first stage of processing.

Semantics in the perception of verticality.

Modality and similarity effects in short-term recognition memory.

It is shown that in Sternberg’s item recognition task Ss need not make a judgment of the absolute size or color of the test item before comparing it with memory. However, Ss do use size or color information, when possible, to reduce long reaction times for large memory loads. The results suggest that Ss are able to scan memory for form in parallel with testing for gross stimulus features, like size or color. This finding has important implications for sequential two-stage theories of attention.

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William G. Chase

Papers

Cognitive Skill: Implications for Spatial Skill in Large-Scale Environments.

Visual information processing.

Semantics in the perception of verticality.

Modality and similarity effects in short-term recognition memory.

Parallel processing in item recognition