Roschelle
From Eduwiki
Learning in Interactive Environments: Prior Knowledge and New Experience Jeremy Roschelle
This is a summary of a summary, being that Roschelle's article already decalres itself a summary of the "research on the roles of prior knowledge in learning." I will do my best, however, to compress as much as I can.
Roschelle's article mainly focuses on the idea that learning come firstly out of prior knowledge that the learner brings with them and only secondly relies on the materials presented to them. The article warns that a neglect of the learner's prior knowledge when trying to teach new material to them can result in the learner actually learning something totally opposed to the educator's intentions no matter how well those intentions are manifested in "exhibit, book, or lecture."
The author presents that previous to contemporary times, learning was basically perceived as a process of accumulating information or experiences. In recent years, however, it has been scientifically proven that prior knowledge is important in the act of learning. This acknowledgment has forced a shift in understanding learning as "conceptual change" rather than information absorption. From this point on, the article declares that evidence proves it is necessary that the designer of interactive experiences work more effectively with their audience's prior knowledge. The author states that "educators rally to the slogan of constructivism: create experiences that engage students in actively making sense of concepts for themselves. On the other hand, research tends to characterize prior knowledge as conflicting with the learning process, and thus tries to suppress, eradicate, or overcome its influence." This paradox in viewpoints seems to create an irresolvable contradiction, but this article sets forth to try and show how "designers" can effectively use prior knowledge to make the learning experience successful.
Roschelle breaks the article up inot three pieces. In the first part, he describes how scientists learn and make use of prior knowledge in their learning processes. In the second part he examines the idea of "conceptual change" and correlates with the findings of Piaget, Dewey, and Vgotsky. In the third section, the author summarizes empirical methods that can be used for building successful learning experiences using prior knowledge.
Science and Mathematical Learning
The author points out that the study of scientific process reveals that science does not start with abstract ideas, but is imbedded in the scrutiny of everyday knowledge. Einstein is quoted as having said that "everyday knowledge provides a huge store of useful metaphors and ideas" which can be mined for the beginnings of scientific theory. In fact, the article goes so far as to point out that there have been no accounts able to establish a firm divide between everyday and scientific knowledge. This is because scientific knowledge cannot be "cut free" from the biases and preconceptions of everyday knowledge. This is apparently because of a concept rooted in the contrast between replacement and re-use. New knowledge cannot be assumed to replace prior knowledge, but rather prior knowledge is refined by the new knowledge and filed into a larger, more encompassing structure than it was previously.
This concept of re-use is the basis for conceptual change. A person's whole concept must sometimes be changed or re-developed. This process can only happen slowly, however, and it involved a "complex restructuring of prior knowledge to encompass new ideas, findings, and requirements. This means that designers of interactive experiences (i.e. teachers) should seek to refine prior knowledge, anticipate a long-term learning process, and remember that the success of that process is going to depend on social interaction. Roschelle says that conceptual change attempts transitioning away from ordinary ways of perceiving, directing attention, conceptualizing, and justifying in order to prevent learners from distorting experiences to fit their prior knowledge theories.
The main roadblock to this process appears to be a learner's desire to hang on to their prior knowledge assumptions and to disregard any new ideas or knowledge that asks them to challenge those previously (and usually experiential) concepts. The best way of attempting this, according to Roschelle, appears to be an "interpretive theoretical framework that accepts the flawed character of some prior knowledge, but still gives it a positive role". The author then spends three solid pages describing, in detail, this framework. Read it yourself.
Prior Knowledge in Theories of Learning
In this portion of the article, the author gives descriptions of three theorists' ideas of learning process and how those descriptions entail support for this new idea of re-using prior knowledge. Roschelle reminds us that Piaget emphasized psychological changes to schemata, Dewey emphasized the transformative possibilities of learning to experience, and Vygotsky relied on the importance of social interaction to restructure the relationship of structures to experience. In a four page revisitation to Educational Psychology. the author lays out specifically what in each theorist's big ideas supports the re-use of prior knowledge and the design of interactive experience. The article then moves on, however, to describe two of the predominant battling theories of the later 20th century: information processing and "situated cognition".
Information processing is a view of knowledge acquisition that relies on knowledge assimilation where data is modified to fit existing schema. This concept, though, has been most successful only where prior-knowledge is of content is weakest such as "rule dominated logic and gaming tasks". Therefore, in recent years, a new idea has risen to challenge information processing. Situated Learning serves to rectify information processing's "neglect of physical and social context". Situated Learning, most closely following Dewey's theories, "holds that all learning occurs within experiential transactions- coordinations between personal agency and environmental structures." Situated Learning most importantly focuses on the notion that prior-knowledge of an individual is often identity based. Therefore, when conceptual change needs to occur, there is also the requirement of an individual to change somewhat on an identity level, which is of course, no easy task.
How to Investigate Prior Knowledge
in interactive experiences, such as what we as teachers offer our students, it is apparently "crucial to get learners to talk and then to pay careful attention to what they say and do." The only way to find out what our learners already know, or think they know as it might be, is to continually take in and evaluate what we hear them saying and see them doing. There are three methods that have been developed in the research community that can help us with this task:
Clinical Interview is a process developed by Piaget in which the learner manipulates physical materials. The task at hand is best simple, therefore any strange set of actions on the part of the manipulator will be readily apparent and the interviewer can then explore the manipulator's course of actions and thought processes without using leading questions.
The think-aloud protocol collects information about a learner's problem solving process by having the learner "think aloud" as they perform a simple task, like addition. The verbalization of the stream of consciousness enables to observer to analyze their thinking processes.
Video recordings are also useful for studying prior knowledge and environmental context. The ability to repeatedly review occurrences is useful in the analysis of learning situations.
In his conclusions, Roschelle asserts that prior knowledge is diverse and pervasive in its effects on learning. Due to the effects of prior knowledge, knowledge itself can no longer be seen as just material that needs to be presented in a successful or entertaining way. Instead, knowledge is now to be seen as raw material that needs to be refined. The learner must be given credit for having prior knowledge, and if that prior knowledge conflicts with the new learning they must accomplish, the educator must be able to ease them out of the defensiveness they are sure to entertain in the protection of their prior knowledge.
