Reading: Schwartz, D. L., Sears, D., & Chang, J. (2007). Reconsidering prior knowledge. In M.C. Lovett & P. Shah (Eds.) Thinking With Data (pp. 319-344). New York: Erlbaum.
One of Kirsch’s assumptions from last week’s article was this: history matters. According to Schwartz et. al, history – or rather prior knowledge – is one of the most important aspects of learning. The authors state that “people learn by building on prior knowledge and abilities.” However, they suggest that most instruction focuses on Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, and aims to have students complete complicated tasks with help, in order to later on be able to complete like tasks independently. But if a student is poorly prepared for the lesson or has no informal knowledge, learning becomes much more difficult.
Teachers assume that their students come to them knowing certain things, though not always the things they are expected to know. The example in the article was of middle school students’ concept of random sampling; some of the students understood the concept, but when a sample was put into a specific context (a fun booth at a carnival), their ideas for sampling became decidedly un-random. Their intuitions were to sample people who might be interested in their booth, rather than a truly random sample. Intuition is different from mastery, and the authors suggest that a mastery approach to teaching focuses on developing “relevant prior knowledge.”
I found the ideas about learning as reconciliation interesting. Plato’s learning paradox is defined: people cannot learn something if they don’t already know it in some form, so is new knowledge even a possibility? The authors suggest that incommensurables are the key; people are uncomfortable because something is outside their understanding, and they want to correct that. Good instruction 1) points out the incommensurables, 2) provides motivation for reconciling them, and 3) finally, provides the solution for comparison. Prior knowledge is vital because it is what defines the incommensurables.
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Yes prior knowledge is important. I think this article is interesting, in that they try to somehow build prior knowledge into the participants.
ReplyDeleteBradsford and Schwartz also wrote an interesting piece called a time to tell, that deals with prior knowledge. This also sort of reminds me of an article that we read on short term versus long-term memory which posits that if students do not have something in their long term memory that they basically short circuit when trying to do problem solving (like is so popular today with constructivism). This is because the short term memory is like working memory and a computer and can only handle so much data. A person can not handle both problem solving AND all of the needed data in the short term or working memory. It might have been Kirshner but I can't remember the author.
Ah, yes it is! So I loved this article and would point here:
Paul A. Kirschner and John Sweller and Richard E. Clark
Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching [find similar] [try Google]
Educational Psychologist, 41(2), pp. 75-86, 2006.