[Note: this essay began
with the last posting (8/30/16). In
order to understand the context for what follows, I suggest you click on to
that entry by using the archival feature found on the right side of this page.]
With the overall explanatory remarks found in the last
posting, hopefully we at least have a feel for the processing elements of
thinking described and explained by cognitive psychology; that is, we have an
idea of what this concern for processing knowledge entails. But there is a backdrop to all of this of
which an educator needs to be keenly aware.
That would be the genetically determined developmental aspect of our
ability to process information and knowledge.
I think the best way to describe this aspect is to delve
directly into one of several models cognitivists have formulated to describe
this longitudinal process. Let me take
this opportunity to point out that there is no physical component one can point
to that houses these distinguishing features between brain and mind. An MRI will not be able to detect that portion
of the brain where the mind resides. Yes,
scanning devices can detect where in the brain certain types of thinking take
place, but this is mostly speculative interpretations of neurological and blood
flow changes that coincide when certain types of experiences take place. But does this reflect where or what the mind
is doing as opposed to some other physiological phenomenon? Who knows?
But what we do know is that it is convenient to describe psychological
functions and activities in the ways the last posting went about it. And so it is with this developmental or
growth component of the mind.
We do know we develop in discernable ways and we do know we
don’t learn how to do it. It just takes
place. But studying the patterns that
people tend to experience and by using some creativity, cognitive psychologists
have developed models that trace the development over the years in which the
process takes place. I will in this posting
share two of these models: that of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg.
Probably the most famous one is the one provided by Jean
Piaget – have you heard the name? Piaget’s
model gained notoriety in the US in the 1950s and ‘60s. Like other such efforts, his model identifies
stages that begin at birth and go on until death. They are the sensorimotor stage, the
preoperational stage, the concrete operation stage, and the formal operation
stage.
Let’s look briefly at how each stage manifests itself:
1) Sensorimotor stage (birth to two years of age) in which
the young child learns to consciously react to surroundings, as opposed to
reflexive reaction which characterizes his/her initial behavior. Also, the infant to toddler period teaches
the young one that things have permanence; if you store something, for example,
it will be there in the future.
2) Preoperational stage (two to seven years old) in which the
child places conceptual or symbolic qualities onto things (clothes are for
wearing; crayons are for coloring). This
conceptualization includes the rudimentary ability to attach attributes and
categorization qualities to common sets of things.
3) Concrete operation stage (seven to eleven years old) in
which the child is beginning to make more complex and logical relationships
among objects and even ideas. The level
of complexity is still relatively low, but complexity is beginning to
characterize mental relationships as long as the child is dealing with familiar
things or ideas. So, for example, he or
she can figure out, especially in the physical realm, reversibility and
reciprocal relations in the physical world (water, if chilled sufficiently,
will turn to ice, and ice, if heated, will turn to liquid and, if heated more, will
evaporate or, in another conceptual relation, he/she understands that a long,
thin glass can hold as much water as a short, wide one).
4) Formal operation (11 years old to death) in which the
person can begin and continue the ability to understand, apply, and develop ideas
of ever more sophistication and complexity.
These ideas can, as the years and education advance, be of increasing abstraction. This progression also leans toward the
universal, as opposed to the parochial.
Learning no longer depends on direct experience but on knowledge derived
from instruction and reading and other exposure to communication outlets. The nature of the learning process takes on
more formal forms such as the adoption of rules governing logical
argumentation.
While these are the developmental stages identified by
Piaget, an individual’s progression will be influenced by many factors. Some are inborn, but many are
environmental. This reflects the
nature/nurture debate which is still very much a part of scholarly and popular
discussion over such matters. “Nurture”
factors include the quality of parent/child relations, the quality of household
conversations including the topics family members address and the assumptions such
discussions develop and promote, the quality of the schooling that a subject
experiences, the opportunities presented (either planned for or occurring by
chance), the presence and quality of any mentors a subject encounters, and the
like.
The other developmental model I will review is one I have
referred to in this blog several times.
That is the model offered by Lawrence Kohlberg. Highly influenced by Piaget, Kohlberg
developed a moral developmental model.
His model consists of the following:
1) Pre-conventional level in which behavior is simply judged to
be good or evil based on, first, whether it elicits punishment (observed as the
bad) and then, whether it elicits rewards (observed as the good). I still remember the first time my son
confronted the bad at this level – he was not happy.
2) Conventional level in which good and evil are dependent on
what others (mostly parents) think of the child, as a person. This is likely to take the form of, first,
being considered nice (observed as the good) or considered not nice (observed
as the bad) and then, later, whether the person lives by the rules (observed as
the good) or does not act in accordance with the rules (observed as the bad).
3)Post-conventional level in which ideals of morality are
generally based, at least initially, on what other people feel or on
perceptions of who or what has authority (parent, schools and churches, police,
government officials, one’s own conscience).
This is followed by a concern or determination to obey contractual
provisions (observed as the good) or not obey contractual provisions (observed
as the bad) and then, at the highest level of moral thinking and feeling, abiding
by one’s own accepted principles of morality (observed as the good) or not
abiding by those principles (observed as the bad) and ultimately by one’s own
principles of conscience which are self-defined principles or accepted, universal
principles (such as those contained in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights). Again, the progression is
toward the abstract and the universal.
Of course, not all of us get to the upper levels. Often, the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and
Martin Luther King are given as two individuals who made the complete
progression as outlined by Kohlberg’s model.
One can either agree or disagree with these examples, but I am sure that
it is generally accepted that only very few people will have advanced through
these three stages or six hierarchical dimensions of moral thinking and living.
Other names associated with cognitive psychology are John
Dewey (of course), Jerome Bruner, Lev Vygotsky (an interesting example to look
up), Howard Gardner (multiple intelligences), and Daniel Goleman (emotional
intelligence). An offshoot of cognitive
psychology is constructivism which focuses on the processes by which
“knowledge” is formed. The term, “construct,”
which has been used extensively in this blog, is derived from this
perspective. Let me quote Ornstein and
Hunkins on this view’s take about understanding the world:
Meaning is imposed on the world by
those who reflect, those who think about the world. Meaning does not exist in the world
independent of us. It is we who
structure the world, as we construct reality so as to comprehend it. In other words, learners do not simply “bank”
knowledge from the external world into their memories. They do not receive understanding
as a gift. They do not arrive at knowing
as a prize received for persistent practice.
Rather, they must engage in conjecture, question themselves and their
views, contemplate projections of their held views, then formulate interpretations
of the world shaped by their past experiences and interactions with the world. They must bring into their cognitive
processes their “world knowledge.” They
must draw on their perceptions of context, present and past. Reflecting on contexts relevant to their
learning results in the emergent formulation of understanding.[1]
Excuse the length of this citation, but I think that in
relatively few words, its authors capture not only the essence of
constructionism, but also all of cognitive psychology. Before I was exposed to this fancy language,
I realized that if you wanted students to learn something – whatever that meant
– they had to reflect upon it.
Otherwise, it would not be much better than short-term memory. Oh, there were those students with good
memories who would retain the material for the weekly test and get their good
grades. In most schools, they are still
the ones honored on the dean’s list and other designations. But they are not necessarily the ones who
later on will excel in the professional world.
It will be those students who learn to reflect or had at least an
intuitive sense for what Ornstein and Hunkins describe above.
Let me end with an anecdote:
It came to be when I taught high school students that I got to know a
young lady quite well. She graduated
from the high school where I taught back in the 1990s. She was not my student but was dating another
student to which I was quite close – a family connection. She graduated with top honors, just about a
straight A student. She went on to matriculate
in an undergraduate program at one of the state universities and graduated cum
laude with only one grade below an A – reflecting some foul-up in which she was
deprived of the higher grade due to some arbitrary act by an unreasonable
prof. She then signed up, at another
state university, in a psychology doctoral program. She couldn’t finish that program.
During that time, we talked and what
I could figure out was that in all of her preparation for this last schooling challenge,
she had not been taught how to think; most of her experience consisted of
seeing knowledge as something you memorize, and now she was being asked to
construct knowledge. Unfortunately, in
terms of getting through the doctoral program – which entailed a hefty
investment in funds, by the way – she was simply not prepared and had to eventually
drop out.
She is presently doing fine, has a
good job in the financial world and lives in the D.C. area. I guess her experiences, as opposed to her formal
education, taught her how to reflect and appropriately engage System 2 thinking
in order to do her job and to do it well.
[1]
Ornstein,
A. C. and Hunkins, F. P. (2004). Curriculum: Foundations, principles, and issues. Boston, MA:
Allyn and Bacon, p. 117.
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