Complex Cognitive

Processes
Chapter 9; Educational Psychology
Objectives
When you have completed this 9.4 Explain how creativity is
chapter, you should be able to: defined, assessed, and
encouraged in the classroom.
9.1 Discuss roles of metacognition
in learning and remembering. 9.5 Identify factors that influence
students’ abilities to think critically
9.2 Describe several learning and and to form and support
study strategies that help students arguments.
develop their metacognitive
abilities. 9.6 Discuss how, why, and when
knowledge learned in one
9.3 Explain processes involved in situation might be applied to new
problem solving and factors that situations and problems.
can interfere with successful
problem solving.
Metacognition
Metacognitive Knowledge & Regulation
Donald Meichenbaum and his coleagues (1985)
- described the metacognition as people’s “awareness
of their own cognitive machinery and how the
machinery works”.
Metacognition literally means cognition about cognition
– or thinking about thinking.
John Flavell and his colleagues in the early 1970s
- They introduced the term into discussions of child
development.
- Metacognition is higher-order knowledge about your
own thinking as well as your ability to use this knowledge
to manage your own cognitive processes such as
comprehending and problem solving (Bruning, Schraw,
& Norby, 2011).
Three kinds of knowledge
 Declarative knowledge
about yourself as a learner, factors that influence your
learning and memory, and skills, strategies, and resources you
need to perform a task – knowing what to do
 Procedural knowledge
knowing how to use strategies

 Self-regulatory knowledge
to ensure the completion of the task— knowing the
conditions, when and why, to apply the procedures and strategies
Three essential skills
 Planning
involves deciding how much time to give to a task, which
strategies to use, how to start, which resources to gather, what order to
follow, what to skim and what to give intense attention to, and so on

 Monitoring
the real-time awareness

 Evaluating
involves making judgments about the processes and
outcomes of thinking and learning.
Individual Differences in
Metacognition
Lessons for Teachers: Developing Metacognition
 Metacognitive Development for Younger Students:

K - What do I already know about this subject?

W - What do I want to know?
L - At the end of the reading, what have I learned?
 know
K

want
W

learned
L
 Learning
Strategies
The student/learner must be:

 cognitively engaged to learn

- they have to focus attention on relevant or
important aspects of the material

 process deeply
- they have to invest effort, make connections, elaborate,
translate, invent, organize, and reorganize

 regulate and monitor their learning

- keep track of what is making sense and noticing
when a new approach is needed, that is, they must be metacognitive.
Being Strategic About Learning
Learning Strategies
- are flexible kinds of procedural knowledge
Ex: Mnemonics

- Cognitive (summarizing, identifying the main idea)

- Metacognitive (monitoring comprehension)
- Behavioral (using a dictionary, etc.)
Deciding what is important
 Learning begins with focusing attention – deciding what is
important.

Summaries
 Creating summaries can help students learn, but students have
to be taught how to summarize (Byrnes, 1996; Palincsar & Brown,
1984).
Steps in summarizing:
- Find or write a topic sentence for each paragraph or section.
- Identify big ideas that cover several specific points.
- Find some supporting information for each big idea.
- Delete any redundant information or unnecessary details.
Example of Learning Strategies
EXAMPLES
Planning and Focusing Attention Setting goals and timetables
Underlining and highlighting
Skimming, looking for headings and topic sentences
Organizing and Remembering Making organizational charts
Creating flowcharts, Venn diagrams
Using mnemonics, imagery
Comprehension Concept mapping, webs
Summarizing, outlining and note-taking
Creating examples
Explaining to a peer
Cognitive Monitoring Making predictions
Self-questioning and self-testing
Identifying what doesn’t make sense
Practice Using part practice
Using whole practice

Source: Educational Psychology, p.298

Underlining and Highlighting
Do you underline or highlight key phrases in textbooks?
In studies that limit how much students can underline, for example, only
one sentence per paragraph, learning has improved (Snowman, 1984).

It must be:
- being selective
- should actively transform the information into your own words as
you underline or take notes.
- look for organizational patterns in the material and use them to
guide your underlining or note-taking
Taking Notes
You have to hold the lecture information in working memory by;
select, organize, and transform the important ideas and themes and
write down the ideas and themes - all while you are still following the lecture
(Peverly et al., 2007).

Taking notes strategies:

- Taking notes focuses attention during class
- Taking notes makes you construct meaning from what you are hearing,
seeing, or reading, so you elaborate, translate into your own words, and
remember
- Notes provide extended external storage that allows you to return and
review.
- anticipated use and modify strategies, use personal codes to flag
material that is unfamiliar or difficult, and so on.
Visual Tools for Organizing
 Concept map - is a drawing that charts the relations among
ideas.
 Cmaps - Tools for concept mapping developed by the Institute
for Human and Machine Cognition that are connected to many
knowledge maps and other resources on the internet.
 Venn diagrams - which show how ideas or concepts overlap,
and tree diagrams, which show how ideas branch of each other.
 Time lines - organize information in sequence and are useful in
classes such as history or geology.
Reading Strategies
effective learning strategies should help students focus attention,
invest effort so they process information deeply, and monitor their
understanding.

Example:
R Review headings and subheadings.
E Examine boldface words.
A Ask, “What do I expect to learn?”
D Do it—Read!
S Summarize in your own words.
(Friend & Bursuck, 2012)
Reading Strategies
A strategy that can be used in reading literature is CAPS:

C Who are the characters?

A What is the aim of the story?
P What problem happens?
S How is the problem solved?
Applying Learning Strategies
Production deficiencies - where students learn strategies, but do
not apply them when they could or should(Pressley & Harris,
2006).
Several conditions must be met:

Appropriate tasks - the learning task must be appropriate

Valuing learning - using sophisticated strategies is that students must
care about learning and understanding
Effort and efficacy - must believe the effort and investment required to
apply the strategies are reasonable, given the likely return
Problem
Solving
Problem is ;
has an initial state, a goal, and a path for reaching
the goals.
can range from well structured to ill structured.

Problem Solving is ;
usually defined as formulating new answers.
going beyond the simple application of previously
learned rules to achieve a goal.
what happens when no solution is obvious.
Specific Problem-solving strategies
the problem-solving strategies in mathematics are
unique to math;
the strategies in art are unique to art;
and so on.

General Problem-solving strategies

identifying the problem,
setting goals,
exploring possible solutions and consequences,
acting,
and finally evaluating the outcome.
A key first step in any problem solving—general or specific—is identifying that a problem exists
Identifying: Problem Finder
Defining Goals and Representing the Problem
To represent the problem and set a goal, you have to focus
attention on relevant information, understand the words of the problem, and
activate the right schema to understand the whole problem.

 Focusing attention on what is relevant

finding the relevant information and ignoring the irrelevant details

 Understanding the words

understanding the meaning of the words, sentences, and factual information in
the problem

 Understanding the whole problem

assemble all the relevant information and sentences into an accurate
understanding
Translation and schema training
Worked examples reflect all the stages of problem solving such as:
Identifying the problem
Setting goals
Exploring solutions
Solving the problem
Evaluating the outcome

Problem schemas practices:

- recognizing and categorizing a variety of problem types
- representing problems
- selecting relevant and irrelevant information in problems.

 Schema-driven problem solving - Recognizing a problem as a “disguised”

version of an old problem for which one already has a solution.
Exploring Possible Solution Strategies
 Algorithms - step-by-step procedure for achieving a goal.
 Heuristics - strategy that might lead to the right answer.
Means-ends analysis - problem is divided into a number of intermediate
goals or subgoals.
Working-backward strategy - begin at the goal and work back to the
unsolved initial problem
Analogical thinking - limits your search for solutions to situations that
have something in common with the one you currently face
 Verbalization - Putting your problem-solving plan and its logic
into words.
Factors that Hinder Problem Solving
 Functional fixedness - Inability to use objects or tools in a new way
 Response set - getting stuck on one way of representing a problem

SOME PROBLEMS WITH HEURISTICS.

Representativeness heuristic - to make judgments about possibilities
based on our prototypes
Availability heuristic - judgments are based on the availability of
information in our memories
Belief perseverance - the tendency to hold on to our beliefs even in the
face of contradictory evidence
Confirmation bias - tendency to search for information that confirms our
ideas and beliefs
Expert Knowledge and Problem Solving
Knowing what is important
Memory for patterns and organization.
Procedural knowledge
Planning and monitoring
 Creativity and
Creative Problem
Solving
Defining Creativity
Creativity - the ability to produce work that is original, but still
appropriate useful (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004)

Most Psychologist agree that:

there is no such thing as “all-purpose creativity”.
people are creative in a particular area
to be creative, the “invention” must be intended.
Assessing Creativity
 Divergent thinking - component of many conceptions of
creativity the ability to propose many different ideas
or answers
 Convergent thinking - the more common ability to identify only
one answer. originality, fluency, and flexibility

Three aspects of divergent thinking:

Originality - usually determined statistically
Fluency - the number of different responses
Flexibility - generally measured by the number of different
categories of responses
What are the Sources of Creativity?
 Domain-relevant skills
including talents and competencies that are valuable for
working in the domain
 Creativity-relevant processes
including work habits and personality traits
 Intrinsic task motivation
or a deep curiosity and fascination with the task.
Creativity in the Classroom
 Brainstorming - generate ideas without evaluating them

Rules for brainstorming:

1. Defer judgment.
2. Avoid ownership of ideas
3. Feel free to “hitchhike” on other ideas.
4. Encourage wild ideas.

Individuals as well as groups may benefit from brainstorming.

 Critical thinking
and argumentation
Developing Critical Thinking
Critical thinking skills ;

involve evaluating conclusions by logically and

systematically examining the problem,
the evidence,
and the solution.
Critical Thinking in Specific Subjects
What Is a Critical Thinker?

Assuming that critical thinking is reasonable reflective thinking focused

on deciding what to believe or do, a critical thinker:
1. Is open minded and mindful of alternatives.
2. Tries to be well informed.
3. Judges well the credibility of sources.
4. Identifies conclusions, reasons, and assumptions.
5. Judges well the quality of an argument, including the acceptability of
its reasons, assumptions, and evidence.
 6. Can well develop and defend a reasonable position.
7. Asks appropriate clarifying questions.
8. Formulates plausible hypotheses; plans experiments well.
9. Defines terms in a way appropriate for the context.
10. Draws conclusions when warranted, but with caution.
11. Integrates all items in this list when deciding what to believe or do.

Source: Adapted from Robert H. Ennis. Retrieved May 26, 2011, from
http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/rhennis/index.html .
Critical Thinking in Specific Subjects
Critical thinking skills taught were:

Sourcing: Looking at the source of the document before

reading and using that information
Corroboration: Making connections between the information
in different texts and noting similarities and contradictions.
Contextualization: Imaging the time, place, people, and
culture that is the context for the event

Argumentation - The ability to construct and support a position, to argue

The heart of argumentation is supporting your position with evidence and understanding,
and then refuting your opponent’s claims and evidence.
Teaching for
Transfer
Transfer
 Transfer
“the productive use of cognitive tools and motivations”
emphasizes doing something new (productive), not just
reproducing a previous application of the tools

Several dimensions of transfer:

Learning across subjects
Across physical contexts
Across social contexts
Across time periods
Across functions
Across modalities
Kinds of Transfer
Direct Application Preparation for future learning
Definition Automatic transfer of highly Conscious application of abstract
practiced skill knowledge to a new situation
Productive use of cognitive tools
and motivations
Key Conditions Extensive practice Mindful focus on abstracting a
Variety of settings and principle, main idea, or procedure
conditions that can be used in many
Overlearning to automaticity situations
Learning in powerful teaching-
learning environments
Examples Driving many different cars Applying KWL or READS strategies
Finding your gate in an airport Applying procedures from math in
designing a page layout for the
school newspaper
Source: Educational Psychology; p.323