Chapter 2: Meaningful Learning in an Information Age

This Chapter is focused on the following questions:

• What types of change are being advocated by those promoting educational reform?
• What does it mean to be an "active learner," and how do theories of learning support this approach?
• What are "authentic activities," and what would be necessary for classroom experiences to be more "authentic"?
• Where are some of the elements involved in he social context of learning?

A. School Reform in an Information Age (pps. 35-39)

Schools deal with a considerable amount of controversy. Most issues involve fundamental notions of what students should learn and what learning experiences they should have. Some would prefer that they could avoid anyone questioning educational practice. While schools are sometimes unfairly scapegoated and the target of those grandstanding for attention, the opportunity to think seriously about the purposes and practices is useful.

A.1 Pressures for change

A.1.a Technology creates challenges and may provide some solutions

To the extent that technology has changed society - how people live and work - it represents a challenge for educational institutions. Students need to acquire knowledge and skills relevant for tasks they will encounter.

Technology offers new resources and new tools for developing knowledge and skills.

A.1.b Lifelong learning

The fundamental idea of lifelong learning is that we must expect to be learners for the rest of our lives. This commitment is usually assumed as a matter of vocational survival, but a good case could also be made for the importance of learning as a component of the quality of life.

There are some concrete implications of the general concept of lifelong learning:

A.1.b.1 The boundary between school and work will blur and more institutions will see education as at least a partial responsibility.

Education will be less focused in a specific time frame and less the total responsibility of specific institutions. Traditional educational institutions (e.g., colleges) will likely collaborate with business, industry, and professions. This collaboration might involve the use of guided "work experiences" as part of education and might also result in educational institutions tailoring specific educational experiences to those already functioning in work settings.

A.1.b.2 Learners must become more autonomous.

Learners must acquire greater skill in developing their own learning goals and take greater responsibility for achieving these goals.

A.1.b.3 Educators will work with a more variable population of students.

A.1.b.4 Educators will be attempting to help learners develop "different" skills.

A.1.c The information explosion

The idea of an "information explosion" recognizes that we all will encounter a greater quantity of information. Access to information will be more immediate and more efficient. In some ways, access will not be optional - we will be exposed to more information whether we seek it out or not. Access and quantity suggest the importance of some different skills. Easy access to information reduces the need for internal storage (i.e., memorization). The abundance of information implies the need to develop skills such as critical thinking, analytical thinking, and evaluation.

A.2 Key Themes in Reform

The following chart contrasts traditional and structured schools.

	Conventional Setting	Restructured Setting
Student Role	Learn facts and skills by absorbing the content presented by teachers and media resources	Create personal knowledge by acting on content provided by teachers, media resources, and personal experiences.
Curriculum Characteristics	Fragmented knowledge and disciplinary separation. Basic literacy established before higher-level inquiry is encouraged. Focus on breadth of knowledge.	Multidisciplinary themes, knowledge integration and application. Emphasis on thinking skills and application. Emphasis on depth of understanding.
Social Characteristics	Teacher-controlled setting with students working independently. Some competition.	Teacher functions as facilitator and learner. Students work collaboratively and make some decisions.
Assessment	Measurement of fact knowledge and discrete skills. Traditional tests.	Assessment of knowledge application. Performance of tasks to demonstrate understanding.
Teacher Role	Present information and manage the classroom.	Guide student inquiry and model active learning.
Possible Use of Internet	Source of information for absorption.	Source of information for interpretation and knowledge creation. Outlet for original work.

B. Models of School Learning (pps. 39-48)

The assumptions that educators make about what learning is and how it occurs influence their approaches to instruction. We belief that all educators have "personal theories" of learning that serve guide their interaction with students. The section on models of learning is intended to encourage reflection on your personal theory of learning. We offer several "formal theories" of learning as a way to encourage this reflection. Most of the activities we propose throughout this book are based on the perspective provided by these theories.

One effective way to understand learning and thinking is to represent the student as a processor of information. The fundamental question is what type of processing do different approaches to education assume must occur for learning experiences to be effective. Educational reformers emphasize that students not only receive and store information, but must also construct personal knowledge by processing this information.

B.1 "Process-Oriented" Models of Learning

B.1.a Meaningful learning (Ausubel)

Meaningful learning occurs when new experiences are related to what a learner already knows. Meaningful learning can be contrasted with rote learning which is equivalent to storage without integration.

Meaningful learning assumes:

B.1.a.1 Relevant existing knowledge exists.

B.1.a.2 Students are motivated to find connections

Learning tasks contribute to meaningful learning by increasing the likelihood students will find and activate relevant personal knowledge or provide new relevant experiences when existing knowledge is deficient.

B.1.b Generative learning - Wittrock

Wittrock offers a similar perspective suggesting that students generate knowledge by selectively attending to events and generating meaning from these events by related them to what is either known or what can be implied by inference.

Old ideas can assist a learner in interpreting new experiences. In addition, new experiences may cause the learner to modify or rethink old ideas. In both cases, the process of connecting old and new is different from simple storage.

B.1.c Constructivism

The term constructivism has been used in reference to many issues ranging from the philosophy of personal "knowing" to the mechanisms involved in learning. The perspective on learning is similar to that of meaningful or generative learning, and argues that learners build personal understanding. The most generally accepted principles argue that:

B.1.c.1 What a person knows is not passively received, but actively assembled by the learner.

B.1.c.2 Learning typically serves an adaptive function. The role of learning is to help the learner operate within his/her personal world.

B.1.c.3 Implications of constructivism for teaching/learning:

B.1.c.3.a Learning must be accomplished by the learner and learners must mentally act on information in order to create a personal understanding.

B.1.c.3.b The presentation of information alone does not generate understanding. Teachers can also contribute by engaging students in activities that encourage productive mental activity.

B.1.c.3.c Context influences learning because context helps learners establish the personal world within which knowledge will be applied. "Authentic tasks" provide a way teachers can establish a context likely to produce learning that transfer.

B.2 Metacognition

In the 1980s, psychologists added a new component to models of thinking and learning. This new component provided a way to explain the adaptive nature of thinking and learning. This component has been described in several ways:

B.2.a Metacognition

Metacognition is demonstrated in planning, regulating, and evaluative behaviors. The term implies that learners can reflect upon the success and failure of their own efforts to learn and make necessary adjustments.

Metacognitive skill has received extensive attention because the skill seems an important source of variability in classroom success.

B.2.a.1 Metacomprehension refers to a learner's success in evaluating personal understanding.

You have probably had the experience of wading through a textbook chapter that you did not find particularly interesting. You may have reached the point at which you realized that you were not longer thinking about what you were doing and that you did not really know what you had just read. The realization that comprehension had failed indicates the success of metacomprehension. Knowing that you do not know allows you to take action - you can simply locate the point at which it seems you stopped paying attention and reread.

One of the cruel truths about poorer readers appears to be that they are less likely to understand (more frequent failures of comprehension is pretty much the definition of poor comprehension) and also less likely to realize when they do not understand. This combination of failures creates a cumulative set of problems.

B.2.a.2 Study behavior at all levels relies heavily on metacognitive skills.

Put yourself in this situation. You have an important exam in two hours. Do you have a pretty good idea of how you will do? Would you know what to spend your last hour of study time reviewing?

Students differ in their ability to perform these behaviors. Some are much more insightful than others and know how well they understand course material and what topics or skills represent deficiencies.

Study behavior represents a great example of the importance of students taking an active role in their own learning. Some efforts to help improve their study behavior are ways to improve metacognition. For example, many study skill techniques include questioning - asking yourself questions, study teams in which members ask questions of each other, questions inserted at the end of book chapters or delivered using technology. Attempting to respond to questions helps learners identify areas of failed understanding.

B.2.b Self-regulated learning

Work on the concept of self-regulated learning has different theoretical origins than metacognition, but the emphasis is very similar capabilities - analyzing task requirements, setting personal goals, modifying behavior when goals are not being achieved.

B.3 Implications for Practice (pps. 48-58).

Making the effort to consider learning theory is valuable to the extent this understanding helps educators make decisions about classroom activities.

• How should learners spend their time?
• Which types of learning experiences should be offered more frequently?

B.3.a A summary of Ideas about school reform and the implications of the learning theories we have prioritized converge in certain general suggestions for classroom practice:

B.3.a.1 Students should spend more time on authentic tasks. Authentic tasks provide a richer context for learning requiring students to apply knowledge and create personal understanding.

B.3.a.2 The social environment within which learning occurs is important and should provide:

• Access to domain experts functioning as practitioners allowing an apprenticeship experience for learners.
• Teachers who understand their role to include facilitation as well as information transfer.
• Cooperative arrangements among students requiring the exploration of alternative perspectives and ideas and also the development of skills in collaboration.

B.3.a.3 Greater emphasis needs to be placed on the processing information (reflective thinking and application). Tasks that involve the generation of products are one way to encourage both reflection and application.

B.3.b Authentic activities

We like Brown's way of defining authentic tasks (Brown, Collins & Duguid). Authentic activities are the ordinary practices of a culture. The connection with curriculum comes from attempting to create learning experiences that approximate tasks present in the culture of practice.

Here is the way you might think about authentic tasks. Take a content area familiar to you (history, psychology, biology, Spanish) and ask yourself what practitioners of the discipline associated with this content area do. What do historians do? What do psychologists do? What do speakers of a specific language do?

Now, consider the difference between learning about some subset of what a practitioner knows and developing the skills and using knowledge to do some subset of the work that a practitioner does. While the information (possibly not the skills) may be the same, the information is processed and applied within a different context and new ideas are likely learned with a different intended use. Learning what biologists have discovered in the familiar role of student implies that the purpose for knowledge is test performance. Processing the same information within the context of biologist as practitioners more likely involves a very different purpose - e.g., proposing and often implementing a course of action in response to a unique set of environmental conditions.

Are there ways in which "the practice" of disciplines of study can be scaled to the expertise of students and the time and resource constraints of the classroom? We feel that at least on occasion the answer to this question is yes and that technology offers some unique opportunities in addressing the time and resource constraints. Our goal is not to convince you to move entirely to an educational system based on learning through practice, but to encourage greater use of such experiences.

B.3.b.1 Inert knowledge

Research showing the prevalence of inert knowledge provides one justification for the consideration of different learning experiences. Inert knowledge is knowledge that appears to exist (stored in memory) but that is not recalled and used when appropriate.

B.3.b.2 Projects, Authentic activities and the Internet

Involving learners in the application of knowledge appears to influence how knowledge is generated and whether or not it will be used consistently. The Internet provides some of the components for application by contributing:

B.3.b.2.a Access to a culture of practice

The Internet provides social contacts and an outlet for "knowledge" products.

B.3.b.2.b Access to primary sources

"Primary sources" represent information or data on which learners act to produce personal knowledge. This is a good way to think about the information available through the Internet.

B.3.b.3 Social context of learning

Learning is a personal accomplishment typically facilitated by a social context. Researchers focused on social context offer some useful ways to understand how interaction can facilitate learning.

B.3.b.3.a Cognitive apprenticeship

What does it mean to teach complex "thinking" skills? Since complex behaviors can be difficult to explain and mental skills cannot be directly observed, what form of interaction can encourage and direct skill development?

Cognitive apprenticeship places the learner in the role of apprentice to an expert practitioner.

• Opportunities for "externalizing" mental behaviors are important in this approach.
• Teachers and students should have opportunities to describe what they are trying to do as the work on tasks that involve the target thinking behaviors.
• The descriptions provide less experienced learners something to consider and emulate.
• The descriptions provided by the less experienced learners provide something for the teacher to evaluate and offer advice.
• Internet projects allow opportunities for the apprenticeship relationship.
• Working on projects allows opportunities to model and evaluate communication, information gathering, information integration, and problem solving.

B.3.b.3.b Cooperative learning

There is a body of experience suggesting formal methods that contribute to effective cooperative learning tasks. Internet projects provide the opportunity for cooperative learning experiences.

B.4 Standards

The generative model of learning, the emphasis on project-based learning, and the perspective that technology offers tools appropriate to content area learning are all ideas consistent with educational standards.