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1 Introduction
Pages 1-28

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From page 1...
... This foundation offers conceptions of learning processes and the development of competent performance that can help teachers support their students in the acquisition of knowledge that is the province of formal education. The research literature was synthesized in the National Research Council report How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School.1 In this volume, we focus on three fundamental and well-established principles of learning that are highlighted in How People Learn and are particularly important for teachers to understand and be able to incorporate in their teaching: 1.
From page 2...
... The frog continues with descriptions of cows, which the fish imagines as black-and-white spotted fish with horns and udders, and humans, which the fish imagines as fish walking upright and dressed in clothing. Illustra tions below from Leo Lionni's Fish Is Fish © 1970.
From page 4...
... . The understandings children carry with them into the classroom, even before the start of formal schooling, will shape significantly how they make sense of what they are BOX 1-1 The Development of Physical Concepts in Infancy Research studies have demonstrated that infants as young as 3 to 4 months of age develop understandings and expectations about the physical world.
From page 5...
... But they can impose serious constraints on understanding formal disciplines. College physics students who do well on classroom exams on the laws of motion, for example, often revert to their untrained, erroneous models outside the classroom.
From page 6...
... Competent performance is built on neither factual nor concep tual understanding alone; the concepts take on meaning in the knowledge rich contexts in which they are applied. In the context of Lionni's story, the general concept of adaptation can be clarified when placed in the context of the specific features of humans, cows, and birds that make the abstract concept of adaptation meaningful.
From page 7...
... Memory of factual knowledge is enhanced by con ceptual knowledge, and conceptual knowledge is clarified as it is used to help organize constellations of important details. Teaching for understand ing, then, requires that the core concepts such as adaptation that organize the knowledge of experts also organize instruction.
From page 8...
... 8 HOW STUDENTS LEARN BOX 1-4Experts Remember Considerably More Relevant Detail Than Novices in Tasks Within Their Domain
From page 9...
... This proce dure was repeated for multiple trials until everyone received a perfect score. On the first trial, the master player correctly placed many more pieces than the Class A player, who in turn placed more than the novice: 16, 8, and 4, respectively.
From page 10...
... Even the best instructional efforts can be successful only if the student can make use of the opportunity to learn. Helping students become effective learners is at the heart of the third key principle: a "metacognitive" or self-monitoring approach can help students develop the ability to take control of their own learning, consciously define learning goals, and moni tor their progress in achieving them.
From page 11...
... moved from laboratory settings to the classroom. One of the most striking applications of a metacognitive approach to instruction was pioneered by Palincsar and Brown in the context of "reciprocal teaching."14 Middle school students worked in groups (guided by a teacher)
From page 12...
... Such questioning models the kind of dialogue that effective learners inter nalize. Helping students explicitly understand that a major purpose of these activities is to support metacognitive learning is an important component of successful teaching strategies.17 Supporting students to become aware of and engaged in their own learning will serve them well in all learning endeavors.
From page 13...
... · The community-centered lens encourages a culture of questioning, respect, and risk taking. These aspects of the classroom environment are illustrated in Figure 1-1 and are discussed below.
From page 14...
... They must find the strengths that will help students connect with the information being taught. Unless these connections are made explicitly, they often remain inert and so do not support subsequent learning.
From page 15...
... · What are the core concepts that organize our understanding of this subject matter, and what concrete cases and detailed knowledge will allow students to master those concepts effectively? · How will we know when students achieve mastery?
From page 16...
... Because textbooks sometimes focus primarily on facts and details and neglect organizing principles, creating a knowledge-centered classroom will often require that a teacher go beyond the textbook to help students see a structure to the knowledge, mainly by introducing them to essential con cepts. These chapters provide examples of how this might be done.
From page 17...
... In some cases, the formative assessments are formal; in elementary mathematics, for example, the number knowledge test allows teachers to quickly assess the current mastery level of a student in order to guide the choice of the subsequent instructional activities. But even when informal, the teaching described in those chapters involves frequent opportunities for both teachers and students to assess understanding and its progress over time.
From page 18...
... Some teachers in both the United States and China saw the knowledge to be mas tered as procedural, though the proportion who held this view was considerably higher in the United States. Many teachers in both countries believed students needed a concep tual understanding, but within this group there were considerable differences.
From page 19...
... Rather, it suggests that procedural knowledge and skills be orga nized around core concepts. Ma describes those Chinese teachers who emphasize core concepts as seeing the knowledge in "packages" in which the concepts and skills are related.
From page 20...
... If classroom norms encourage and reward students only for being "right," we would expect students to hesitate when asked to reveal their unschooled thinking. And yet revealing precon ceptions and changing ideas in the course of instruction is a critical compo nent of effective learning and responsive teaching.
From page 21...
... The teacher­student interactions described in the chapters of this volume and the discipline-specific examples of supporting students in monitoring their thinking give texture to the instructional challenge that a list of metacognitive strategies could not. INTENT AND ORGANIZATION OF THIS VOLUME In the preface, we note that this volume is intended to take the work of How People Learn a next step in specificity: to provide examples of how its principles and findings might be incorporated in the teaching of a set of topics that frequently appear in the K­12 curriculum.
From page 22...
... Following the introductory Chapter 9, the science part treats three very different topics: light and shadow at the elementary school level (Chapter 10) , gravity at the middle school level (Chapter 11)
From page 23...
... Mathematics chapter authors Sharon Griffin, Joan Moss, and Mindy Kalchman all worked closely with Robbie Case, whose untimely death prevented his intended participation in this volume. Case and his colleagues did extensive research on central conceptual structures in mathematics, making the treatment of core conceptual understandings a strength of these chapters.
From page 24...
... The examples discussed in this volume are not offered as "the" way to teach, but as approaches to instruction that in some important re spects are designed to incorporate the principles of learning highlighted in How People Learn and that can serve as valuable examples for further dis cussion. In 1960, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, who was well known as an extraordinary teacher, delivered a series of lectures in introductory physics that were recorded and preserved.
From page 25...
... We expect our understanding to evolve as we design new learning opportunities and observe the outcomes, as we study learning among children in different contexts and from different backgrounds, and as emerging research techniques and opportunities provide new insights. These chapters, then, might best be viewed as part of a conversation begun some years ago with the first How People Learn volume.
From page 26...
... , Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and class room practices. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
From page 27...
... . Using qualitative problem solv ing strategies to highlight the role of conceptual knowledge in solving prob lems.
From page 28...
... , Metacognition in educational theory and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.


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