c) Suggest one strategy for educating a pupil with reading difficulties. Using your knowledge of psychology, give reasons for your answer. (8).
Recent research conducted by Reynolds (2004) of Exeter University at a primary school in Solihull involves exercising the cerebellum to overcome dyslexia. The cerebellum is involved in the control of fine motor co-ordination. Dyslexics are thought to find fine motor co-ordination a particular problem. Reynolds suggests that dyslexic children should exercise, for example, the cerebellum by standing on a soft, wobbly surface and throwing a beanbag to a partner. This exercise needs to be carried out twice a day. Reynolds found that there were significant long-term improvements in reading ability for those children who took part in the activity.
a) Describe one way of improving the effectiveness of learning (study skills) (6)
SQ3R – Survey, Question, Read, Recall, Review. Good for revision, reading texts. Survey – quick flick through looking at headings, diagrams, bold print, summaries, etc
Question – set oneself question(s) to be answered by one’s reading
Read
Recall – After each section close the book and try to answer questions
Review – check answers by re-reading relevant parts of text. At end try to answer all questions, and look back where necessary.
b) Evaluate ways of improving the effectiveness of learning (study skills) (10)
4MAT
SQ3R
Metacognitive techniques
Study skills programmes
Bowers (1987)
44 gifted yr 6 students
Randomly assigned to 4MAT or textbook group
Newton’s First Law of Motion
Significant differences in test results in favour of 4MAT
Sangster and Shulman (1988)
Pilot programme
Secondary schools
31 teachers
572 students
Questionnaires and Interviews
Both teachers and students perceived the system favourably
Gives students a chance to use their preferred learning style as well as giving them the opportunity to use other styles
Useful in many curriculum areas
All ages and ability levels
Simple to use
Leland-Jones (1997)
Yr 6
Social studies
Study skills emphasising use of resource material, interpreting data and creating chapter outlines.
Results – increased knowledge of study skills and higher achievement scores.
Brown and Forristall (1983)
Computer assisted study skills programme
Interactive instructions on time management, improving memory, taking lecture notes and reading textbooks.
Significant improvements in study skill and academic abilities.
Playing for success
Underachievers at KS2 and 3
Inner city areas
Study support from First Division Football clubs
Literacy and numeracy skills related to football
Centres provide ICT, study skills training and homework facilities.
Equal numbers of boys and girls participate
Both boys and girls improved attitudes to education and also had improved reading and maths abilities (Sharp et al. 1999).
1. Identifying "what you know" and "what you don't know."
At the beginning of a research activity students need to make conscious decisions about their knowledge. Initially students write "What I already know about..." and "What I want to learn about...." As students research the topic, they will verify, clarify and expand, or replace with more accurate information, each of their initial statements.
2. Talking about thinking.
Talking about thinking is important because students need a thinking vocabulary. During planning and problem-solving situations, teachers should think aloud so that students can follow demonstrated thinking processes. Modelling and discussion develop the vocabulary students need for thinking and talking about their own thinking. Labelling thinking processes when students use them is also important for student recognition of thinking skills.
Paired problem-solving is another useful strategy. One student talks through a problem, describing his thinking processes. His partner listens and asks questions to help clarify thinking. Similarly, in reciprocal teaching (Palinscar, Ogle, Jones, Carr, & Ransom, 1986), small groups of students take turns playing teacher, asking questions, and clarifying and summarizing the material being studied.
3. Keeping a thinking journal.
Another means of developing metacognition is through the use of a journal or learning log. This is a diary in which students reflect upon their thinking, make note of their awareness of ambiguities and inconsistencies, and comment on how they have dealt with difficulties. This journal is a diary of process.
4. Planning and self-regulation.
Students must assume increasing responsibility for planning and regulating their learning. It is difficult for learners to become self-directed when learning is planned and monitored by someone else.
Students can be taught to make plans for learning activities including estimating time requirements, organizing materials, and scheduling procedures necessary to complete an activity. Access to a variety of materials allows the student to do just this. Criteria for evaluation must be developed with students so they learn to think and ask questions of themselves as they proceed through a learning activity.
5. Debriefing the thinking process.
Students reflect on thinking processes to develop awareness of strategies that can be applied to other learning situations.
A three-step method is useful. First, the teacher guides students to review the activity, gathering data on thinking processes and feelings. Then, the group classifies related ideas, identifying thinking strategies used. Finally, they evaluate their success, discarding inappropriate strategies, identifying those valuable for future use, and seeking promising alternative approaches.
6. Self-Evaluation.
Guided self-evaluation experiences can be introduced through individual conferences and checklists focusing on thinking processes. Gradually self-evaluation will be applied more independently. As students recognize that learning activities in different disciplines are similar, they will begin to transfer learning strategies to new situations.
Goals of Instrumental Enrichment:
The main goal of Instrumental Enrichment is to enhance the cognitive modifiability and social adaptability of the individual, so as to increase his capacity to benefit from his direct exposure to environmental stimuli and life experiences.
To help achieve this central goal, six subgoals have been formulated:
Questions for rest of week
Tips for evaluation
1 Evaluation directly from textbook or website
2 Research that backs up approach or theory
3 Squeezing technique – recall what you know and apply your psychological evaluation skills as you go.
Tuesday
a) Describe how the cognitive approach has been applied to education.
b) Evaluate
c) Suggest how the cognitive approach could be used to teach science classes in a primary school.
Scaffolding -
Discovery learning – Magnets – floating – suits mixed ability and most topics, avoid labelling.
Advanced organisers
Structure the material so that it fits a hierarchy
Spiral curriculum
Theory, example, reason
Piaget
- child interacts with environment to assimilate and accommodate. Schema.
Learner - 'Constructs' - knowledge
Make our own versions of reality
Discover our own meanings
schools should foster the discovery of relationships.
Teacher presents information, not in its final form, but students are required
to organise it themselves.
Piaget and Bruner – advocate discovery learning
Less teacher involvement. Teachers offer guidance.
Teachers need to get the balance between over or under guidance.
Ausubel would see Bruner's recommendations as wasteful of teaching time - discovery learning
does take time. He would appreciate that if discoveries are made, teaching
would be effective.
Ausubel is naturally against meaningless learning by rote. Instead, his theory
demands that material, to be learnt, is structured. (Advanced
organisers)
Meaning is brought about by establishing a relationship between old and new
material. [Cognitive structure].
Cognitive structures -
hierarchically organised concepts (subsumers) similar to Bruner 's coding system (see figure
6.2, p158).
Subsumers - (comes
from the word subsume) - subsume material to existing cognitive material.
[definition of subsume: to
classify within a larger category or under a general principle].
Derivative subsumption
- deriving material from pre-existing structure.
Correlative subsumption
- an extension of what is already known.
Forgetting, or loss of ability to recall is seen as the inability to dissociate
new material from the old - obliterative
subsumption.
Teachers need to use advance organisers - highly generic concepts presented
before the lesson. Place the new material in the context of the old - bring to
mind, previous material and clarify the relationship between new and old
material.
Ausubel – Advantages of discovery learning
Students will use information that they have discovered rather than
information that has been taught.
Ausubel believes that after the age of 11 - discovery approaches are a waste of
time. Learner has enough background material by then.
Scientific comparisons between 'discovery' and 'receptive' approaches full of
methodological problems.
- half the studies on effectiveness of advance organisers say they are effective, half say not.
good teacher should use both methods
key to successful learning is organisation of material.
Piaget
According to Piaget, children cannot learn a concept before they are ready. You cannot speed up development. In fact teaching a child a concept before they are ready prevents the child from discovering it for itself and thus limits their understanding of the concept (Piaget 1970). However, Bruner and Vygotsky believe that you can speed up or accelerate cognitive development.
In one study, Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) attempted to teach 3 and 4-year-old children to assemble a complicated block pyramid. It was felt that it was not until the age of 7 that a child would be in a state of maturational readiness and would be able to do this task without assistance. The children were instructed by their mothers in how to do the task. Some children benefited from instruction while others did not. So can language instruction enhance or accelerate cognitive development? It would seem that the issue is not whether the use of language enhances cognitive skills, but what factors regarding the language of communication are responsible for cognitive development. Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) found the following:
• Strategies that had tutors showing the child what to do first (i.e. ‘Now watch what I do. Now you try it’) did not work. The authors speculated that this approach overloaded the child’s powers of concentration.
• Strategies that relied on verbal instructions (i.e. ‘Put the big one there, and the small one there’) did not work. Again the authors speculated that children did not understand the commands without the commands being acted out.
• Contingent instruction — that is, specific instructions geared to the child’s perceived need — seemed to be the most effective. This involved two main rules: when struggling, offer more help; and when succeeding, withdraw help.
The teacher’s aim is to provide opportunities where disequilibrium will occur. Interacting with other children could also provide these opportunities. If a child realised that other children had different viewpoints this could provide a source of socio-cognitive conflict that would encourage the development of new schemas.
Of course this view does pose some practical difficulties. Assessing each student in terms of what they know, knowing exactly what to ask them and what activities to give to them to provide disequilibrium, could prove challenging to the teacher.
Spiral curriculum
Teaching a topic throughout a child’s life, starting with a simple approach and then every year or so coming back to the topic and teaching it at a higher level. Algebra could be taught at age 5 with bags of sweets on a balance.
Vygotsky would further state that instruction needs to be targeted to the individual’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The question is how can a teacher assess a child’s potential or ZPD? How does a teacher know whether the instructions given are under- or overestimating a child’s ability? More importantly, what form should this instruction take?
Vygotsky felt that individuals should be taught via a process called scaffolding. The concept of scaffolding has been taken up and expounded by other theorists, notably Bruner.
Scaffolding is when an adult helps the child to do something, explaining as they do things. Gradually the help is withdrawn. At first the child is encouraged to speak as they work at the task, and finally they work in silence.
Thursday
a) Describe a number of teaching styles
b) Evaluate
c) Suggest a teaching style that could be specifically applied to teaching one area of your psychology course.
4MAT (already revised)
Fontana (1995)
High initiative – low initiative
Can be used with Formal and Informal styles
High initiative teachers have children with high initiative.
Characteristics of high initiative teacher
|
Characteristic |
Effect on teaching |
|
Aware of the needs of individual students |
Varies learning tasks |
|
Willing to learn from students |
Uses relevant, task-centred appropriate questions |
|
Allows students to make full use of their skills and abilities |
Uses a variety of tasks which challenge and stretch students |
|
Allows children to make informed choices |
Manages the curriculum in a flexible and stimulating way |
|
Encourages the development of self-confidence, independence and responsibility in students |
Allows students to make decisions and sets up problem-solving activities. |
Bennett (1976) describes these:
|
Formal |
Informal |
|
Subject taught separately |
tend to integrate subjects |
|
emphasise individual rather than group work |
provide students with considerable freedom in determining their activities |
|
assign class seating |
allow students to select their seating |
|
restrict students' movement |
|
|
emphasise assessment and achievement |
Do not emphasise tests and academic achievement |
|
make extensive use of external motivation such as grades |
rely on internal sources of motivation like self-satisfaction. |
|
Result High academic Achievement |
result Attitudes related to being thoughtful and creative |
|
|
|
Flanders (1970) describes these:
A mixture of direct-indirect is best - depends on students/situation. All three styles overlap - unlikely to find a purely directive or non-directive teacher
Grasha identified five teaching styles that represented typical orientations and strategies college faculty use. He claims that these styles converge into four different clusters that, like colours on an artist's palette, make up the characteristic ways professors design instructional settings. A brief description of each cluster is detailed below. You can find specific details by clicking on the links.
The expert/formal authority cluster tends toward teacher-centred classrooms in which information is presented and students receive knowledge.
The personal model/expert/formal authority cluster is a teacher-centred approach that emphasizes modelling and demonstration. This approach encourages students to observe processes as well as content.
The facilitator/personal model/expert cluster is a student-centred model for the classroom. Teachers design activities, social interactions, or problem-solving situations that allow students to practice the processes for applying course content.
The delegater/facilitator/expert cluster places much of the learning burden on the students. Teachers provide complex tasks that require student initiative, and often group work, to complete.
For Grasha there are a number of factors which influence which cluster will be appropriate in "painting" the classroom environment. The teacher's response to student learning styles, the students capabilities to handle course demands, their need for teacher to directly control classroom tasks, and their willingness to build/maintain relationships are important elements in determining what teaching style will be adopted in a classroom.