How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

National Research Council (2000)

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.)

Chapter 1:

Some of the most influential early work-Wilhelm Wundttried to subject human consciousness to precise analysis
School of Behaviorismrestrict study to observable behaviors and the stimulus conditions that controls them
Learning: process of forming connections between stimulus and response
Thorndike (1913)hungry cats had to pull a string hanging in a puzzle box in order to open a door (let them escape
and get food). Argued that rewards increased the strength of the connection between stimuli and responses
1950s Cognitive Sciencemultidisciplinary perspective
Research on expertise: experts abilities depend on a rich body of knowledge. Experts knowledge is connected and
organized around important concepts (eg. Newtons second law of motion). It is conditionalized to specify the
contexts in which it is applicable; supports understanding & transfer to new contexts

People construct new knowledge & understanding based on what they already know & believe. Teaching explicit
and clear background/correct misconceptions

-Common misconception of constructivist theories (that existing knowledge is used to build new) is that teachers
should never tell students anything directly but instead should always allow them to construct for themselves. This
confuses theory of pedagogy with theory of knowing.
Learning enhanced when teachers pay attention to the knowledge & beliefs learners bring to a task

Metacognition-peoples abilities to predict their performances on various tasks. Sense-making, self assessment,
reflection

Scientific Basis of Learning:

-memory and the structure of knowledge

-problem-solving and reasoning
-early formulations of learning
-regulating processes that govern learning including metacognition
-how symbolic thinking emerges from culture

Key Findings:

1) Students come with perceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they
may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but
revert back to preconceptions outside the classroom.
2) To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, b)
 understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and c) organize knowledge in ways that
facilitate retrieval and application.
-pattern relationships, discrepancies
-organizing information into a conceptual framework allows for greater transfer
3) A metacognitive approach to interaction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by
defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them.
-predict outcomes, explain to oneself, note failures to comprehend, activate background knowledge, plan ahead,
apportion time and memory

Implications for Teaching

Draw out pre-existing understandings

-use of frequent formative assessmentmake students thinking visible

Teach some subject matter in depthproviding many examplescoverage of fewer topics that allows key concepts
in that discipline to be understood
State testing should assess deep understanding rather than surface knowledge
The teaching of metacognitive skills should be integratedexplicitly emphasized

Chapter 2: Experts vs. Novices

Expertsextensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, & interpret
information
Meaningful patterns of information: (De Groot, 1965)world class chess masters: Both chess masters and non-
masters considered possibilities for moves that were of higher quality. Masters were more likely to recognize the
meaningful chess configurations & realize the strategic implications
-Superior recall ability of expertsthey chunk various elements of a configuration that are related by
underlying functions or strategies. Memory is enhanced when people are able to chunk information into familiar
patterns.
-Development of organized conceptual structures, or schemas, that guide how problems are represented and
understood.
Organization of knowledge: knowledge is organized around concepts of big ideas that guide thinking about
domains
-Experts possess an efficient organization of knowledge with meaningful relations among related elements
clustered into related units that are governed by underlying concepts or principles. P. 38

Context and Access to Knowledge:

-Experts do not have tosearch through everything they know in order to find what is relevantsuch an approach
would overwhelm working memory
-Experts are good at retrieving the knowledge that is relevant to a particular task ie., expert knowledge is
conditionalizedit includes a specification of the contexts in which it is useful p. 43

Fluent Retrieval: automatic and fluent retrieval are important characteristics of expertise
-effortless processing places fewer demands on attention (eg., LaBerge & Samuels, 1974).
-Learning to drive a car good example of fluency and automaticity (Hasselbring, 1987)
-The use of instructional procedures that speed pattern recognition are promising (Hasselbring)

Experts and Teaching

-The content knowledge necessary for expertise in a discipline needs to be differentiated from the pedagogical
content knowledge that underlies effective teaching
Adaptive Expertiseroutinized vs. flexible

Chapter 3: Learning and Transfer

-Transferthe ability to extend what has been learned in one context to new contexts
-initial learning is important for transfer
-knowledge that is overly contextualized can reduce transfer; abstract representations of knowledge can promote
transfer
-transfer is best viewed as an active, dynamic process rather than a passive end-product of a particular set of
learning experiences
-all new learning involves transfer based on previous learning, and this fact has important implications for the
design of instruction that helps students learn p. 53

Elements that Promote Initial Learning:

-understanding vs. memorization
-time-realistic about the amount of time it takes to learn complex subject matter. Eg. World class chess masters need
50,000 to 100,000 hours (10 yrs). They rely on a knowledge base containing about 50,000 familiar patterns (Chase
and Simon 1973) p. 56
-pattern recognition skills that support the fluent identification of meaningful patterns
-Beyond time on tasklearning most effective when people engage in deliberate practice
-contrasting cases
-Motivation to Learn: challenges must be at the appropriate level of difficulty in order to be and remain motivating
-contributing to group; sharing with otherswe are social
-relevanceseeing the usefulness of what they are doingespecially impact on the local community (connection to
Berger here)
Other Factors that Influence Transfer:
-contextpeople can learn in one context and then fail to transfer (eg., Brazilian street childrenperform math
when making sales on the streets but fail similar math problems when presented in a school context)situated
learning
-transfer more difficult when subject is taught only in a single context
-case-based and problem-based learningcomplex, realistic learning environments (Cognition and Teaching
GroupVanderbuilt)

-Problem representationtransfer is enhanced by instruction that helps students represent problems at higher levels
of abstraction
-principles underlying the problems
-Relationships between Learning and Transfer Conditions:
-transfer between tasks is a function of degree to which tasks share cognitive elements
-knowledge representations are built up through many opportunities for observing similarities & differences across
diverse events
-Active vs. Passivelearners to actively choose and evaluate strategies and receive feedback
-transfer should be viewed as increased speed in learning a new domain
Transfer and Metacognition
-transfer can be improved by helping students become more aware of themselves as learners who actively monitor
their learning strategies and resources & assess their readiness for particular tests & performances
-eg., Reciprocal Teaching: Provision of teacher as an expert model of metacognitive processesteachers and
students take turns in leading the group
-modeling coaching, scaffolding
Learning as Transfer from Previous Experiences
-even the initial learning phase involves transfer because it is based on the knowledge that people bring to any
learning situation
-Help activate prior knowledge
-Students may misinterpret new information because of previous knowledge they use to construct new
understandings
-Students may have difficulty with particular school teaching practices that conflict with practices in their
community
-existing knowledge can be a barriereg. Early knowledge of counting does not support concepts of fractions
-make sutdents thinking visible and find way to help faulty conceptualizations
-cultural knowledge sometimes supports and sometimes conflicts with school learning

Chapter 4: How Children Learn

Infants: tabula rasa ideas/ language as a prerequisite for abstract thought
-it is now known that young children are active agents of their own conceptual development
-Piaget discussed (1920s to mid century)
-Then information processing theories (see Connell)
-Vygotskyzone of proximal development (1970s)

Infant studies with Habituation and Expectation Violation paradigms (infants look longer at impossible events)
-early number concepts
-concepts of mass
-concepts of movement

Early attention to language: infants distinguish their own language, attend to features of speech such as
intonation, attracted to human faces

-One view of learning in children is that they have less memory capacity than adults. eg., short term memory
capacity increases as children mature
-Another view- the mental operations of older children are more rapid, enabling them to make use of limited WM
capacity more effectively p. 96
-another view is that children have to develop strategies (eg. Rehearsal, chunking, elaboration, summarization)
-clusteringorganizing disparate pieces of information into meaningful units. Depends on organizing knowledge
Miller (1956) and famous chunking experiments
-Metacognition
-MI Discussed: different approaches to the topic
-Self-directed vs. Other-directed learning
-natural curiosity
-drive to solve problems
-learning strongly influenced by social interaction

Scaffolding childrens learning p. 104

-interesting the child in the task
-reducing # steps required to solve a problem by simplifying the task, so that child can manage components &
recognize when a fit with the task requirements is achieved
-maintain pursuit of the goal
-making the critical features of discrepancies between what a child has produced and the ideal solution
-controlling frustration & risk in problem solving
-demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be performed

Learning to read and tell stories discussion

-early literacy experiences and story tellingpractice with books, reading and modeling

Cultural Variation in Communication

-some variations are more likely than others to encourage development of the specific kinds of knowledge and
interaction styles that are expected in typical US school environments
-eg. Learning may occur through observing adults
-some environments adults directly interact
-participating in adult activities in some cultures but not others
-language learning occurring by eavesdropping
-extended family-community-tutoring in school-based skills and general knowledge
Schooling and the Role of Questioning:
 -striking differences in how adults & children interact verbally
-eg. 1 study examined differences in how people treat questions & answers: Questioning behavior of white middle
class teachers and questioning behavior of working class African American pupils homes
White: questioning begins almost immediately. Children in these contexts are happy to provide information they
know the adult already has
African American: less central role for questioning. No known answer rituals. Common question forms were
analogy, story starting, accusatory. These forms rarely occurred in white homes. Eg., whats that like? and Whos
he acting like? instead of Whats that? (Heath, 1981;1983) P. 111

Chapter 5: Mind and Brain

Discusses Neuromyths

Key Findings from Neuroscience:

1) Learning changes the physical structure of the brain
2) These structural changes alter the functional organization of the brain (learning organizes and reorganizes)
3) Different parts of the brain may be ready to learn at different times

Role of experience in wiring the brain

-Example: If eye is deprived of visual experience early in development it loses ability to transmit visual information
into the CNS. When the eye that was incapable of seeing was corrected later, the correction did not helpneurons
died. Pathway for each eye is pruned down to right # of connections. By overproducing synapses and then
selecting the right connections, the brain develops an organized wiring diagram that functions optimally.
-different roles in different parts of the brainother changes in addition to overproduction and pruning include
modification of existing synapses and the addition of new synapses. Driven by experience.
-interactive presence of a social group and direct physical contact with the environment are factors
-different kinds of experiences condition the brain differentlynot just activity alonebut learning. Learning
imposes new patterns of organization on the brain.
-Brain development is often timed to take advantage of certain types of experiences (eg. The vision example).
-Different brain systems develop according to different time frames. Childrens brains may be more ready to learn
different things at different times.
-There appear to be separate brain areas that specialize in subtasks such as learning words, seeing words, speaking
words, etc.Coordinated practice for related skills with different brain representations is recommended p. 122
-Example of ASL p. 123When a deaf individual learns to communicate with manual signes, different nervous
system processes have replaced the areas normally used for language. Cortical areas that normally process auditory
information become organized to process visual information.

Memory and Brain Processes:

-Two major groups of studies:

1) Show that memory is not a unitary construct
2) Studies that relate features of learning to later effectiveness in recall
-declarative hippocampus
-procedural-neostriatum

-Superiority effect for pictures (Roediger, 1997)

-mind is actively at work in storing and recalling
-people organize into sequences that make sense to try to recall
-mind using an inferencing process to relate events
-mind creates categories for processing information
 ie., the mind imposes structure on the information available from experience

Practice Increases Learning

Mentions John Bruers Bridge Too Far article from 1997

Chapter 6: The Design of Learning Environments

Early 1900sassembly line analogy. Teachers as technicians

-Development of standardized tests

-Today students have to understand the current state of their knowledge and build on it, improve it, and make
decisions in the face of uncertainty. John Dewey identified these two notions of knowledge

Learner Centered Environments:

-environments that pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs learners bring to the setting
-Culturally responsive
-building on the conceptual and cultural knowledge students bring
-key strategy is to prompt children to explain & develop their knowledge by asking them to make predictions about
various situations and explain their reasons
-help students test their thinking
-teachers deliberate in learning about students home and community cultural practices and language use
incorporate into literacy instruction

Knowledge Centered Environments

-well organized bodies of knowledge that support planning and strategic thinking
-understanding and transfer
-standardsdefine the knowledge and competencies students need to acquire
-critical examination of existing curricula
-explore and test big ideas
-issue of mile wide and inch deep
-emphasis on sense makinghelping students become metacognitive
-eg. it is possible to make sense of mathematics and think mathematically
-acquiring the concepts and procedures of a discipline
-Older views that young children are incapable of complex reasoning have been replaced by evidence that children
are capable of sophisticated levels of thinking and reasoning when they have the knowledge necessary to support
these activities.early access to students of important conceptual ideas
-organizing knowledge into coherent wholes
-balance understanding and automaticity of skills necessary to function efficiently withot being overwhelmed by
WM demands (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Hasselbring, et al., 1987)

Assessment-Centered Environments

-key principles of assessment are that they should provide opportunities for feedback & revision
-formative vs summative
 -studies of adaptive expertise, learning, transfer, and early development show that feedback is very important.
Students thinking must be made visible & specific feedback provided. Opportunities for feedback should occur
continuously but not intrusively (eg. CBM). Students should also learn to assess their own work. Feedback most
valuable when students have the opportunity to use it to revise their thinking as they are working. New technologies.
Working in groups.

Formats for Assessing Understanding:

Use actual situations to assess depth of understanding

-Portfolio assessments provide format for keeping ongoing records of student work & for allowing students to
discuss their achievements with others (eg. Berger).

Theoretical Frameworks for Assessment:

-Characterizing student performance in terms of cognitive activities focuses attention on the differences in
competence and subject-matter achievement that can be observed in learning and assessment situations.
-combinations of content knowledge and process skills

Community-Centered Environments:

-people learning from one another and continually trying to improve.

-degree of connectedness is important
-Norms and practices impact what is learned and how it is learned.
-culture
-positive and negative impact of grading practiceseg., Navajo students do not treat tests and grades as competitive
eventsexample of a high achiever bulleting board making them uncomfortable.
-Japanese teachers spend considerable time with the whole class, and they frequently ask students who have made
errors to share their thinking with the rest of the class. Classroom culture where students learn from one another and
respect analysis of error as a learning tool
-connections to family, community, experts outside of school (eg. Berger)
-motivating fro students to share their work withothers in the community (eg. Berger)

Discussion of television and educational programming p. 150

-Provides images and role models (TV) p. 150

-Sex role stereotypes p. 151
-educational programmingbeneficial effects on school achievement p. 151

The Importance of Alignment:

-task analysis
-alignment between what they are learning and the assessment of that learning
- A systems approach to promote coordination among activities is needed to design effective environments
-competing activities and interruptions discussed/schedules p. 152
Chapter 7 : Effective TeachingExamples in History, Mathematics, and Science
 See examples from various classrooms p. 155-189

Chapter 8: Teacher Learning:

-relatively new research topic

-own practice
-interacting with other teachers
-formal inservice
-consultants, teacher education programs, PD in schools
Action research and preservice education discussed
-one-shot PD, fragmented and decontextualized
-no opportunity to try techniques or skills

National Commission on Teaching and Americas Future:

-inadequate time
-fragmentation
-uninspired teaching methods
-superficial curriculum-little depth, not enough focus on research in teaching and learning, not enough subject-
matter courses