Complex Cognitive Processes

1
Complex Cognitive Processes

• Teaching for Transfer
• Based on work by Woolfolk, 2005

2
Transfer

• Recall the important factors to learning
• Students must be cognitively engaged
• Students must invest effort
• Students must think and process deeply
• Students must regulate and monitor their own
  learning

3
Learning Strategies and Tactics

• Research had indicated
• Students must be exposed to a number of different
  strategies, not only general learning strategies
  but also very specific tactics
• Students should be taught conditional knowledge
  about when, where, and why to use various
  strategies
• Students may know when and how to use a strategy,
  but unless they also develop the desire to employ
  these skills, general learning ability will not
  improve

4
Deciding what is important

• Students often focus on seductive details maybe
  because they are more interesting
• Some learning strategies that may be helpful
• Having students summarize material can often be
  helpful, but students often dont know how to
  summarize without being taught. By asking
  students to write a topic sentence for each
  paragraph or section, identify big ideas that
  cover several points, find supporting information
  for those big ideas, and avoid including
  redundant information and unnecessary details,
  teachers can help students learn to summarize
  well.

5
Visual Tools for Organizing

• Visual strategies can be useful when trying to
  help students make connections and show
  relationships between ideas
• Graphic organizers (maps, charts, etc., may be
  more effective than outlining)
• Venn Diagrams
• Concept Map
• Hierarchical Graphic Depictions
• Tree diagram
• Timelines
• Go to this site to learn more about graphic
  organizers (remember to right click on the link
  and open the link in a new window)

6
Reading Strategies

• The following are reading strategies that help
  students comprehend better what they are reading.
  Youll know about some of these. There are
  others as well. Remember to right click on the
  links and open them in a new browser window.
• READS ( Students Review headings and subheadings,
  Examine boldface words, Ask what do I expect to
  learn, Do it (read), Summarize
• SQ3R
• PQ4R
• CAPS (Students as themselves who are the
  Characters, what is the Aim of the story, what
  Problem happens, how is the problem Solved) this
  is a strategy for narrative texts
• KWL
• For each, you should know
• The grade level it is appropriate for
• The type of texts it is appropriate for
• The specific steps of the strategy

7
Applying Learning Strategies

• Even if students have a repertoire of powerful
  learning strategies, what types of things must be
  in place for them to use them?
• Learning task must be appropriate
• Students must care about learning and
  understanding
• They must have goals that can be reached using
  strategies
• They must believe that the effort and investment
  to use strategies is reasonable
• They must believe they are capable of using the
  sophisticated strategies

8
A Contemporary View of Transfer

• Transfer occurs when you use something previously
  learned to help you solve a current problem, or
  when solving a previous problem affects how you
  solve a new problem
• Low road transfer is spontaneous and automatic
  transfer of highly practiced skills. There is not
  much need for reflection This would be a highly
  practiced skill, used often, but in a variety of
  situations, until it is automatic. Ex. Transfer
  of browsing skills from IE to Firefox transfer
  of Microsoft skills from Word to PowerPoint, etc.
• High-road transfer is the application of abstract
  knowledge learned in one situation to a different
  situation
• Forward reaching transfer is learning a principle
  or strategy that you intend to use in the future
  for a different purpose
• Backward reaching transfer is when you are faced
  with a problem and you look back to other
  situations to figure out how to solve the new
  problem
• Negative transfer is when the effect of past
  learning is not positive. Functional fixedness
  and response set are examples of these (they are
  attempts to apply familiar but inappropriate
  strategies to a new situation)

9
Teaching for Positive Transfer

• Transfer is very difficult
• Research has found that people do not always
  apply school learning to problems they encounter
  in real life
• Because knowledge is learned as a tool to solve
  particular problems, we may not realize that the
  knowledge is relevant when we encounter a problem
  that seems different
• How can you make sure that your students will use
  what they learn, even when situations change?
• Keep students actively engaged make sure they
  are active in the learning process
• Greater transfer can be ensured by overlearning,
  for example
• Provide students with instruction about a
  strategy and how to use it allow them to
  rehearse the strategy and practice being aware of
  how and when to use it
• Provide practice with feedback
• Provide new problems that can be solved with the
  same strategy, even though the problem is
  slightly different on the surface
• Point out to students how the strategy will help
  them
• Help students practice the skill in authentic
  conditions (like those that will exist when the
  skills are needed later)
• Involve families