Cognitive Approach to Learning

It is the scientific study of mental processes and how information is encoded, stored, organised and recalled. It focuses on the importance of 'cognitive strategies and a recognition of the importance of relationships among items of information'.

Piaget's Theory

  • Piaget suggested that a child moves through four developmental stages as it develops cognitive abilities.

Four stages:
a. Sensorimotor (0-18 months) - focuses on motor movements and sensory information


b. Pre-operational (18-6 yo) - relates self and the environment (egocentrism)


c. Concrete Operational (7-12 yo) - dealing with problems that are not abstract


d. Formal Operational (12 yo-older) - can manage abstract thought and adult reasoning

  • We develop schemas as we interact with the world:
    1) Accommodation - the process of adjusting the schema to fit new information
    2) Assimilation - the process of absorbing new information into existing schemas

Implication of Piaget's Theory


  • Education must be appropriate for the developmental stage of the students.
  • Work should be presented in an ordered sequence.
  • Children are active when learning and in developing their cognitive processes (active learning).
  • Visual and tactile representations of the concepts will aid comprehension.
  • Math education - children need to be at a certain developmental maturity in order to understand certain concepts.

Discovery Learning (Bruner, 1961)

  • Bruner's Philosophy: Constructivism (every individual constructs their own version of reality through their experiences).
  • Emphasised the importance of understanding the structure of the subject, reasoning skills and active learning.
  • Encompasses the Scientific model and thus requires intuitive thinking.
  • It is a more student-centred approach.

In order for discovery learning to work:
i. The learner must be ready
ii. The learner's level of arousal should be moderate
iii. The learner must be exposed to info
iv. Need to be prepared to discover specific info

Types:
i. Case-based learning
ii. Incidental Learning
iii. Reflection
iv. Simulation

  • It stars with the specific and moves to the general (inductive reasoning)

Expository Teaching/Reception Learning (Ausubel, 1977)

  • States that people acquire knowledge through reception rather than discovery.
  • It stresses meaning fully verbal teaching.

Expository Teaching: i. Teachers present materials in a carefully organised, sequenced and finished form.
ii. Students receive the most usable material in the most efficient way in this manner.

  • Learning therefore should progress deductively, that is, from the general to the specific.

Advanced Organiser - an introductory statement describing the relationship of high level concepts, broad enough to encompass all the information that will follow.

  • Purpose:
    i. To direct attention to what is important.
    ii. To highlight the relationship among ideas.
    iii. To remind the relevant information already in memory.
  • Two Types:
    i. Expository Organiser - chapter overview.
    ii. Comparative Organiser - comparison (similarities and differences).

Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky)

  • Believes that learning precedes development and that children can often complete tasks with the help of others than they could not accomplish independently.

The Zone of Proximal Development is the difference between an individual's current level of development and his potential level of development.

According to Vygotsky, the role of education is thus primarily to provide children with experiences which are in their ZPD, thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning.

  • Implication: students should be put into situations where they have to reach to understand, but where support from other's (mko's) are available.