Week 7's readings

Declarative Knowledge Learning

It involves "knowing that".

E.g. I know the procedures to set up a wireless network at home.

Words that are often used to describe declarative knowledge performance are explain, describe, summarise and list

There are three subtypes within declarative knowledge learning, which are labels & names, facts & lists, and organized discourse.

Labels & Names

It involves pairing of information. Learners need to mentally construct connections between two elements, either propositional or imaged-based.It gets more difficult as number of labels increases, similiarity among information pair increase or when connections between idea pairs is less meaningful.

E.g. in chemistry Qualitative Analysis (QA), certain combinations of chemicals mixing together produce different colours.What students learn in Secondary 3 is a few basic one.As they proceed onto Sec4, they learn more variations,and in some cases,combinations do produce the same color.Hence,learning of labels can be a hassle.

It can be referred as paired associate learning.Learning labels does not necessarily require learning the meaning of the two linked ideas but rather learning that one thing links to the other.When one do not already possess concepts,it makes learning of labels even more tough as it lacks meanings.Back to the example of chemistry QA,if students do not know the concept behind color changes of solutions when they mix,then learning of labels pose a tough challenge for those who have not grasp the concepts.

Facts & Lists

It is fundamentally propositional in naure.Fact is usually a statement that describes a relationship between or among concepts.List is a group of elements that must be remembered together.To make learning of facts & lists meaningful, learners must integrate them with knowledge.

For example,in Biology,students learn about respiration and carbon dioxide as one of the end products of the process.If students blindly memorise this fact,it serves no meaning.However,if students understand the process,the knowledge about the process utilizing oxygen for cellular activities,hence giving off carbon dioxide,the fact about respiration just become meaningful learning.

It is to be noted that facts & lists can be learned as individual facts, apart from other information, and as network of interconnected information.

For example,the YIH Study Room opens at 8.30am during school term.It is a meaningful thing for those students who study there even though its an isolated fact.

As the network or knowledge base becomes larger & more complex,it becomes easier to add yet more.

Organized discourse

It is propositional in nature.Learning is done through reading a text.

Instructional Strategies for Fact Learning

The core of the process of learning declarative knowledge is the creation of meaning.It can be done in the following ways:

Organizing Strategies

As we receive new information,we actively organize it by clumping or chunking sets together, and establishing relationships among sets.

Organization may add meaning by placing new unfamiliar material into some existing 'slot'. Slots can assist recall by providing a beginning point for recall of the rest of the schema or by limiting the spread of activation of memory to a smaller and more germane area.

Instruction either provides organization or help people to engage in organization themselves.

Organizational techniques for processing information in learning facts and lists include the use of expository structures, graphic organizers and narrative structures.

Examples of expository structures are description,chronology,comparison-contrast,cause-effect, problem-solution,and problem-solution effects.

Graphic organizers are great assistants in the information processing of organized discourse learning.They provide a visible,distanced(e.g written word & graphics that is available for inspection & manipulation) pattern on which to build a schema.w

Examples are networks,concept structuring,schematizing and mapping.Take concept mapping as an example,it is a graphic means of depicting relationships among ideas.It is part of a presentation or may be generated by learners.In concept mapping,a wide variety & flexibility exists in arranging elemetns and depicting their relationships.

Linking or Association Strategies

These techniques assist learners to make associations that aid learning.Examples are the use of images,mnemonics and analogies.

Images are employed often to assist in the memorization of facts and lists.The use of images can be instruction-supplied or learner-generated.In the context of organized discourse, the use of verbal description of images sometimes invoke more vivid mental imaginery than is possible to achieve on film or video.Supplantive use of images for processing attention in organized discourse include users of illustrations in text.Images can be explicative and represent information,in addition to their attentional and retentional roles.

Metaphoric devices provide a link between the known & the unknown,providing intellectual stimulation & interest through the figural use of concrete images. The use of metaphors,in which a known vehicle is used to convey a new topic through settign up an identity.Analogies are vehicles used to convey the topic through a relationship between pairs.An example is stated below:

"Pupils are more like oysters than sausages. The job of teaching is not to stuff them and then seal them up, but to help them open and reveal the riches within. There are pearls in each of us, if only we knew how to cultivate them with ardor and persistence."
(Sydney J. Harris, "What True Education Should Do," 1964)

A more common example would be the case of an inferior individual competing against a superior rival,despite knowing that he is going to lose the fight."it is like an egg hitting itself against a stone".

The use of analogies in instruction needs to be practised with caution as learners need to be familiar with the vehicle of analogy,to be capable of analogical reasoning,to be able to identity the limitations of the analogy and to visualise verbally presented analogies.

Common mnemonic techniques include:

single-use coding (ADDIE),

the use of pegwords (where a list of things is arbitrarily associated with a sequence of numbers beginning with 1), e.g. 0 for sea, 1 for hat, 2 for hen, 3 for ham ...

the use of time-honored method of loci(to commit a list of words or topics to memory,one imagines a familiar location), e.g. this method was used as a memory tool b y Greek orators who took advantage of the technique to give speeches without the aid of notes.

the use of keyword(involving the creation of a memorable image that will stimulate recall of the pair of elements in question)

e.g. the Spanish word 'carta' sounds like English word 'cart',so keyword is cart.Then I link it with an image. 'carta' means letter in spanish, so I has an image of a letter in a cart.

Elaboration Strategies

When new information is received, learners tend to reconstruct or add to that piece of information,so as to make it meaningful for themselves and easier for them to retrieve the information. Types of elaboration include filling in gaps, making inferences and imagining examples.

Elaboration is a basic process by which link are made within information being received as well as for connecting new information to existing knowledge and structures.The techniques of elaobration involves making elaborations on the material being learned, including elaboration into sentences and devising rules.

e.g. why certain elements in the periodic table are arranged in a particular row, column & order

Elaboration of concepts into sentences may lead to their being learned as concepts rather than remaining declarative knowledge,depending on a variety of factors such as the practice available on examples and non-examples.

Concepts

Concepts are sets of specific objects,symbols or events which are grouped together on the basis of shared characteristics and which can referenced by a particular name or symbol.

There are two kinds of concepts - concrete & abstract. Concrete concepts are known by their physical characteristics. Abstract concepts are not perceivable by their appearances,are also known as defined concepts that fit a particular definition.

Attributes of a concept are:

intrinsic: an invariant property of an observable thing or class of things that typically can be pointed to

functional: relates to how something works and what its use might be

relational: a quality a concept may possess defined in terms of something else

functional & relational attributes are called variable attributes - qualities that can be possessed by an example of a concept that can vary from instance to instance.

Cognitive Processes & Structures in Concept Learning

Concept learning requires two cognitive processes - generalization & discrimination.

Generalization: process by which generalities are induced from particulars

When exposed initially to a member of a concept, one must learn to generalize beyond the single instance of that concept to others that fall into the same category.

Over-generalization: thinking of new experiences in terms of old experiences.Occurs when a non-instance is classified as an example of the concept

Discrimination: distinguishing or noting/perceiving differences which exist

Gradually,one will learn to discriminate between examples of a concept and non-examples that may share some features with the concept,but not the critical or 'criterial' attributes that make it a member of the class.Discrimination can be made first during a learning process,followed by generalizations.

Concept learning can go wrong in two ways.One can either continue to overgeneralize or undergeneralize(classify examples of a concept as non-examples)

When concepts can be grouped togher in instruction, representing one domain, they are considered to be either successive concepts or coordinate concepts.

Successive concepts are sets of concepts with a common,superordinate parent concept.They are thought to have clearly distinguishable critical & variable attributes.Successive concept learning therefore should focus foremost on generalization skill development through the use of example-only instruction.Undergeneralization tends to occure with this group of concepts as the concentration is only on examples.Individuals fail to recognize true examples as members of a class of concepts because generalizing too narrow a sampling of the concept category.

Coordinate concepts are sets of concepts in which the characteristics for one concept are in part supplied or defined by others in the set.They have multiple,common,critical and variable attributes.Therefore,they are better learned through the use of matched sets of examples and non-examples.Overgeneralization tends to occur with this group of concepts.

E.g. A convertible car can be incorrectly classifed as a sedan of the same style and manufacturer