I stepped aside from my struggles with the incredible amount of homework taking six graduate course credits in six weeks entails long enough to look at what I was learning about research.\u00a0 I’ve a long way to go yet, but here’s a partial list:<\/p>\n
I have discovered that locating sources from the reference list helps me discover practical applications for research findings.\u00a0 The cognitive load theory research by Wong, Leahy, Marcus, & Sweller (2012) led me to Sweller’s 1994 work on cognitive load theory, a substantial read during which I accomplished very little writing, but a lot to think about that begins to converge with my teaching practice.\u00a0 Sweller’s “schema”, his word for algorithms or methods we retrieve from long-term memory to solve problems without having to analyze or figure them out from scratch (my interpretation, not paraphrase), require very little working memory, and storing these schema in long-term memory, he claims, is the goal of learning (1994).\u00a0 This seemed a bit simplistic and behaviourist; “but it was 1994” I typed in a PDF comment.\u00a0 Then I discovered his “goal-free problems” (Sweller, 1994, p. 301) example where the teacher removes the goal of finding a specific angle in a trigonometry problem and asks students instead to find the value of as many angles as they can.\u00a0 By removing the specific goal, the students are freed from the cognitive load of determining “the” intermediate steps and, solving what they can, inductively formulate the schema (Sweller, 1994; Sweller, Ayres, & Kalyuga, 2011).\u00a0 I have more reading to do, but this promises to transform my developmental math instruction.<\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Sweller, J. (1994). Cognitive load theory, learning difficulty, and instructional design. Learning and Instruction, 4<\/em>(4), 295\u2013312. http:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/0959-4752(94)90003-5<\/p>\n Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive Load Theory. Springer Science & Business Media. Retrieved from https:\/\/books.google.ca\/books?id=sSAwbd8qOAAC<\/p>\n Wong, A., Leahy, W., Marcus, N., & Sweller, J. (2012). Cognitive load theory, the transient information effect and e-learning. Learning and Instruction, 22<\/em>(6), 449\u2013457. http:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.learninstruc.2012.05.004<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I stepped aside from my struggles with the incredible amount of homework taking six graduate course credits in six weeks entails long enough to look at what I was learning about research.\u00a0 I’ve a long way to go yet, but … Continue reading