Tag: learning

Every once in a while, I come up with something I think is clever. The challenge at this point is to convince others that my insight is clever and usually to try to get them to understand my insight.

Here is my new conceptual proposal – to an effective learner all content they encounter is really experienced as a primary source. The inability to experience content in this way limits understanding and eventual application. This inability can be due to poor aptitude or poor attitude. In practice, these problems can be interrelated and mutually inflammatory. Additional learning experiences are necessary to address either problem.

The context for this observation was my thinking about an upcoming discussion of direct vs. constructivist models of instruction. I decided that making this traditional distinction is flawed and actually violates what constructivism means when constructivism is used as a description of learning. Constructivism as a description of cognitive activity implies that each learner engages in unique, knowledge building activities to make sense of experiences in the context of what a learner already knows. Simulations are experiences. Daily observations of life events are experiences. Reading a book is an experience. Listening to a presentation is an experience. Constructivism is about what the learner does with external experiences and not some classification of these external experiences.

The notion of primary source (as used say by a historian) takes a similar perspective. The inputs  (data of some type) are subjected to processing in an effort to achieve meaning.The distinction between a primary and a secondary source is really most accurate for the individual who has generated the secondary source. Even a secondary source as traditionally described (say a textbook) has to be treated as a primary source by the effective learner. Processing is required for understanding.

For anyone who processes an input, flaws may arise from lack of skill or motivation. Lack of useful existing knowledge may limit integration. Lack of motivation may limit the willingness to search for relevant existing knowledge, to add new knowledge to benefit understanding, or to test alternative interpretations.

I get tired of the strange description that those of us who were educated by reading books and listening to presentations had knowledge dumped into our heads. It seems possible that we accepted this as an input (attitude) and understood our job was to think about such inputs. Additional inputs may have been necessary and helpful when personal processing was not initially sufficient, but whether learning resulted from the initial or the secondary inputs, the personal processing was what ultimately determined whether we understood or not.

I am writing and attempting to make my way between the conflicting views on instructional strategies. The controversy between those who support direct instruction and those who support authentic, problem-based learning activities has always troubled me. Both seem to make sound arguments and those supporting direct instruction point to multiple meta-analyses demonstrating the superiority of greater structure. We want to offer teachers sound advice and we would feel more comfortable if we could come to some personal way to resolve what seem to be inconsistent positions.

Strange as it may seem my person way of thinking about this situation has been informed by a topic I cover when teaching Introduction to Psychology. There was an interesting and long term controversy within the field of perception that concerned the mechanism by which we experience color. One position, the trichromatic theory of color perception, proposes that we have three types of color receptors differentially sensitive to red, green, and blue. The ratio of neural activity generated by the differential stimulation of these three types of receptors is thought to generate what we perceive as color. There is good evidence for this position. There are different patterns of color blindness, but the specific colors that cannot be identified by those with different types of color blindness can be accounted for by assuming that one or more of the three types of receptors are missing. The competing theory, the opponent process theory, assumes that color perception is the result of receptors that are sensitive to a continua – white to black, red to green, and yellow to blue. The experience of a negative afterimage, the color you see after staring at a color for some time and then looking at a white background, offers convincing evidence for the opponent process explanation. On some occasion, you may have experienced a demonstration in which you stared at an American flag with green and blue stripes and black stars against a yellow background and then viewed the colors of the actual flag when looking at a pure white background.

What is challenging about this controversy and what may be germane to other disputes is that the competing explanations are each supported by convincing evidence. Each side holds on to its position and unique evidence not really addressing the evidence that supports the other perspective. With color vision, eventually a more general theory was offered to reconcile these competing theories. It was proposed that these mechanisms were both valid but operated in stages. The trichromatic theory appeared to apply to the cones and the opponent process theory at a latter point as information moved from the eye to the brain. It turned out both explanations made a contribution and both were necessary. A Nobel award was involved.

I think the same model may be applied to experiential and direction experiences – maybe both are useful. Sometimes, a learner has little personal experience and some experiences might be the way to begin. Sometimes, learners have many experiences but no model for understanding them. Perhaps this is when direct instruction makes sense. It may be the mix and the order that we should be discussing rather than blasting away with a model takes all approach.