In general, our minds need to contextualise or conceptualise the information it receives in order to proceed them for understanding. In the video, ‘A private universe’ I will argue that Heather who has little training about astronomy used the information she had to create a mental representation to help her understand how the weather changes. After a formal lesson on astronomy. The way she conceives the weather changes has improved as she was able to replace some wrong mental representation she had with the right ones.
In fact, based on their prior knowledge, the students need to conceptualise the instruction given by the teacher in order to understand and retain them. Students’ experiences are different as they all have different cognitive approach to learning mostly depending on how information is presented to them.
Ball (1993) observes that “current proposals for educational improvement are replete with notions of ‘understanding’ and ‘community’ – about building bridges between the experiences of the child and the knowledge of the expert” (p. 374). She then inquires,
How do I create experiences for my students that connect with what they now know and care about but that also transcend the present? How do I do value their interest and also connect them to ideas and traditions growing out of centuries of mathematics exploration and invention? (p. 375). (Paul Cobb, Where Is the Mind? Constructivist and Sociocultural Perspectives on Mathematical Development, p 14).
I believe we should give time to our students to cognitively process the information they receive. Also, technology is a good mean to help the students to mentally represent their knowledge. In mathematics, my students usually struggle to represent the phase shits of a sinusoidal functions on a graph. Their misconceptions are generally cleared out with the use of math software such as Geogebra and Demos, where we can visualize dynamic graphs. Also, graphic display calculators (GDC) is a great tool to make mathematics accessible to the students. When I was in high school we were not allow to use GDC to represent and interpret function, and solve algebraic equation. I used to be confused with function transformations. In math and science, collecting and processing data should be done with fastidious care, in order to avoid errors while solving problems. This stage in problems solving can take quite lots of time while we still need to analyze and interpret our results. GDC helps a lot in reducing the time spend on collecting and processing data and provide good opportunity for analyses and interpretation.
Technological environment helps to develop good understanding of concepts taught in math and science. The challenge remains to find activities rich in skills and experiences to help the students develop their own cognitive approach.
Jere, Confrey. A Review of the Research on Student Conceptions in Mathematics, Science, and Programming. Review of research in Education, Vol. 16 (1990), pp. 3-56
Paul, Cobb. Where is the Mind? Constructivist and Sociocultural Perspectives on Mathematical Development. Educational Researcher, Vol 23, No. 7 (Oct., 1994), pp.13-20.
Sara, Hennessy., Pat, Fung., Eileen Scanlon. The Role of the graphic calculator in mediating graphing activity. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology.
Vivien,
I think you pointed out a very good point when you said that students understand things differently depending on their different ways of processing information. Many times, we as educators present things in the way that makes the most sense to us, but forget that others may need it presented in vastly different ways (perhaps even ways that aren’t helpful or sensical to our brains) in order to fully grasp a concept.
It made me think of a quote I heard once but no matter how I search now, I can’t find it. It was something like, “A good teacher is someone who can say one thing in a 100 different ways.” That quote makes me think about a chapter from a book I read by Bransford, Brown, & Cocking (2000) which talked about how good teaching is more like coaching. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter that I especially liked:
“Students’ initial ideas about mechanics are like strands of yarn, some unconnected, some loosely interwoven. The act of instruction can be viewed as helping the students unravel individual strands of belief, label them, and then weave them into a fabric of more complete understanding.” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking 2000)
The use of technology, like you pointed out, can be just another great tool that is used in helping them unravel and reconstruct their knowledge in a way that is more cohesive and sustainable.
Thanks for a great post!
-Jonathan-
Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (2000). Effective teaching: Examples in history, mathematics, and science. How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school, 155-189.