For NCW MSP

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How Students Learn

• For NCW MSP

2
Initial Learning Task

• A man in a restaurant asked a waiter for a juice
  glass, a plate, water, a match, and a lemon
  wedge. The man poured enough water onto the plate
  to cover it."If you can get the water on the
  plate into this glass without touching or moving
  this plate, I will give you 100," the man said.
  "You can use the match and lemon to do this."A
  minute later, the waiter walked away with 100.
  How did the waiter get the water into the glass?
• Take one minute to think about a solution by
  yourself.
• Discus your solution with a partner for one
  minute.
• Collect material to attempt a solution with a
  partner.

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Initial Learning Task (continued)

• Hint The glass will be upside-down when the
  water is in it.
• Answer First, the waiter stuck the match into
  the lemon wedge, so that it would stand straight.
  Then he lit the match, and put it in the middle
  of the plate with the lemon. Then, he placed the
  glass upside-down over the match. As the flame
  used up the oxygen in the glass, it created a
  small vacuum, which sucked in the water through
  the space between the glass and the plate.

4
Reflect on Learning task

• Discuss the following questions with your
  neighbor.
• Was this exercise easy or difficult?
• What made it easy or difficult?
• How could the instructor made the learning
  experience easier?
• Discuss as a class
• Think, Pair, Share
• For about 30 seconds, write down some
  characteristics of expertise.
• Talk to your neighbor about what each of you
  wrote.
• Lets develop a class list.

5
The Nature of Expertise

• Expertise is on a continuum from novice to
  expert.
• Expertise is typically field-dependent.
• Characteristics of expertise
• Expert learners have well-organized knowledge,
  not just problem-solving strategies.
• Expert knowledge is organized to support
  understanding, not just recall.
• An expert's fluency allows the easy retrieval of
  relevant knowledge.
• There are adaptive experts and routine experts.

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Challenges to Developing Expertise

• What are some challenges to developing student
  expertise?
• Think, pair, share.
• Novices typically don't know much of the content
  so they have little to which they can relate what
  they're attempting to learn.
• Since novices typically don't grasp the
  fundamental principles in a field, they tend to
  adopt an idiosyncratic organizational scheme for
  what they are learning.
• The expert's fluency can conceal the very
  principles and strategies that the novice must
  learn in order to become more expert. These
  principles and strategies are often invisible to
  the expert because they are second nature.
• How do these points relate to the introductory
  exercise?

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Creating Effective Learning Communities

• According to the cognitive research in How People
  Learn , environments that promote learning have
  these characteristics
• Pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills,
  attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the
  educational setting. (Learner-centered)
• Take seriously the need to help students learn
  the well-organized bodies of knowledge that
  support adaptive expertise. (Knowledge-centered)
• Provide frequent formal and informal
  opportunities for feedback, focused on
  understanding, to encourage and reward meaningful
  learning. (Assessment-centered)
• Foster norms for people learning from one
  another, and continually attempting to
  improve. (Community-centered)

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Implications for Teaching

• Promote student thinking Have students engage in
  activities that make visible the processes of
  their thinking, rather than just the conclusions
  of their thinking.
• Model expert thinking Be careful to make
  explicit the strategies and techniques that are
  implicit in expert thinking.
• Be aware of knowledge level of students. The
  knowledge (and misunderstandings) they bring with
  them into the class will shape what they learn in
  the class.
• Use contrasting cases as examples. Contrasting
  cases--two examples whose differences highlight a
  particular point or set of points--can illustrate
  the points you are highlighting as a teacher and
  facilitate novice ? expert thinking. See
  http//ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/
  case.html

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Relationship to Learning Progressions
Learning Progression Step Relation to How People Learn
Standard Teacher takes seriously the need to help students learn the well-organized bodies of knowledge that support expertise
What I need to know Teacher pays attention to what knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the educational setting
What skills I must show Teacher provide frequent opportunities for feedback, focused on understanding, to encourage and reward meaningful learning
What does this look like Relates to all three of the above plus the teacher foster norms for people learning from one another, and continually attempting to improve.
10
Working through the methods of science

• You gathered a lot of scientific data today. Now
  it is time to develop a plan for using that data.
• The thought process for the methods of science is
  similar to developing a learning progression
• You will develop a testable question based on
  some aspect of the data you collected this
  morning, a hypothesis, a prediction, and a list
  of steps needed to test the hypothesis.
• Testable questions
• They should be formatted such as What will
  happen if? and What is the relationship
  between?
• How and Why questions are not appropriate for
  a short, testable experiment.

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An effective hypothesis

• Your hypothesis must involve a manipulated and a
  responding variable.
• The manipulated variable is the one that you
  decide to change (manipulate).
• The responding variable is the one that changes
  (or not) because of the choices you made with the
  manipulated variable.
• General hypothesis format
• If I change the manipulated variable in some way,
  then the responding variable will change in this
  way because of this reason.

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Hypothesis vs. prediction

• The prediction is a specific choice based on the
  hypothesis.
• Example from consumer science
• Question Is there a relationship between paper
  towel thickness and the weight it will hold?
• Hypothesis If I increase the thickness of the
  paper towel I use, then the towel will hold more
  weight because there are more fiber connections
  within the towel.
• Prediction Paper towel B will hold the most
  weight because it is the thickest.

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Using the methods of science

• Develop a testable question based on the data you
  collected earlier in the day.
• Get feedback on your question from an instructor
• Develop a hypothesis and prediction based on your
  testable question.
• Get feedback on your question from an instructor
• Create a short list of steps (a procedure) for
  testing your hypothesis.
• If time and equipment permit, complete your
  procedure and evaluate your hypothesis.

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References

• How People Learn Brain, Mind, Experience, and
  School
• How People Learn Bridging Research and Practice
• How Students Learn Science in the Classroom
• All of these are available for purchase or to
  read free online from the National Academy Press
  at http//www.nap.edu/.
• Many ideas for this presentation are from
  http//www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/resources/teaching_r
  esources/theory/HPL.htm.