What is new in Cognitivism?
After discussing how behaviorism might be too simple to explain the human’s behavior since it is mainly focused on the environment, a new learning theory called Cognitivism focuses on what occurs in the learner’s mind.
In 1950, psychologists who critiqued the simplicity of behaviorism, started to consider more internal factors (memory, thought, knowledge and problem-solving) instead of only considering the external environment.
Cognitive psychologists believe that humans are not merely responding to an external event or stimuli, they have an active role in this process, and they interact with the new information received through internal processes such as attention, memory or problem-solving. As a result, they produce original thoughts connected with the new learning.
Cognitive Psychologists
1. Piaget
Piaget (1896 – 1980) is mostly known for establishing a differentiation between children and adults in their interaction with the environment. Knowledge is a result of the interaction of the environment and cognitive abilities.
In Elementary Education, we are fully aware of these stages and the curriculum of Math, Literacy or Science is designed based on the cognitive abilities of the students.
2. Vygotsky
Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) agreed with Piaget about considering the learner as an active agent in the learning process. However, he gave more importance to the social interaction to construct that learning. As a former teacher, I completely agree that when kids learn cooperatively in a small group, the impact in their learning is bigger than when I teach any content to the whole class.
His second contribution is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), known as the zone beyond what learners can accomplish independently. In this zone, learners learn with guidance. In Education is what we know as scaffolding (offering support based on needs, and removing that support progressively when it is not needed). In order to achieve the best results, we should teach in the ZPD of the learner.
3. Bruner
Bruner (1915 – 2016) continued with Piaget’s work. Bruner still has a great impact in k-12 curriculum since most of the lesson plans include hands-on experiences and real world connections.
The concept of scaffolding was also mentioned by Bruner as a necessary piece to include in the learning process. Bruner believed in the active role of the learner in his own learning. His idea of a “spiral curriculum” that connects the new learning with previous knowledge has still an impact in current k-12 education.
4. Bandura
Following previous theories, Bandura (1925 – 2021) also includes interpersonal interactions in the learning process. In particular, he considers observation, imitation, and social experiences as the main factors in learning.
Bandura introduces the idea of motivation as self-efficacy, defined as the belief in their capacity to accomplish specific tasks. Bandura’s social learning theory has influenced the group learning experiences and mentorship programs.
Strengths and connections with Education
The learner is not passive in cognitivism. Now, he has an active role in building his knowledge. He is able to analyze and draw conclusions. The teacher has not only to focus on WHAT students learn, but HOW they learn that content, considering all the internal and cognitive factors.
In 1956, Bloom and his colleagues, influenced by the cognitive’s theories, established a hierarchy of learning, starting from the remembering level through to evaluating/creating. As experts in learning, our goal will be to educate active learners able to reach the top levels.
In Education K-12, we use Bloom’s taxonomy in all the grade levels. We based our interventions in this cognitive theory. When we design our lessons and think about their goal or purpose, we usually refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy levels to select the cognitive process that we expect from our learners. Are the students going to explain, classify, apply or something else?
Limitations of Cognitivism
The cognitivism was not able to cover all the limitations of the behaviorism. It was able to include all the internal cognitive processes, but emotions and moral reasoning are again left outside of the learning factors.
Another of the critics of cognitivism is that all the cognitive processes such as memory or attention, are hard to measure. We can only measure the outcome or response, and infer the internal process behind it.
Implications with Instructional Design
In week 2, we learned that the behaviorism was critiqued by its simplicity, but it actually worked for some learning. For example, when we are learning facts (multiplication tables) the stimulus and response principals can be applied.
If we need to teach more complex learning tasks, we need to take into consideration the internal processes included in the Cognitive theories.
The learner has an active role in the learning process. Instructional designers must know the audience in addition to the requirements of the learning task. Following Bandura’s theories, the self-efficacy of the learner is going to impact his motivation to learn a new material.
Another strategy to facilitate the learning is to connect the new learning with the previous knowledge and past experience of the learner. The scaffolding was introduced by Vygotsky and Brunner as a way to support the learner’s need and adapt the level of complexity of the material to the learner’s cognitive abilities.
When we consider how to design a curriculum or any instructional material, we also should take into consideration Piaget’s stages, especially if that material is going to be learned by children. The learning tasks must match the learner’s current cognitive stage.
Finally, instructional designers need to include feedback to the learners. Again, considering the adults as active agents in their learning process, giving feedback about their performance, will increase their opportunities and success with the new material.
Another strength of Cognitivism is to include the concept of Cognitive load. This is the amount of mental effort and resources required to process information during learning. We need to know that this Cognitive load is limited and the learner’s attention too.
Instructional material example and connection with Cognitivism
I selected an extract of the original Piaget’s article Teaching Part I: Cognitive development in children: Piaget development and learning included in the Journal of Research in Science in 1964.
My purpose was to compare the same content (Piaget’s 4 stages of development) that we had to study this week, knowing how this content was originally presented in 1964 and how I presented it in this current article to an adult learner.
Why Piaget is not following the principals of Cognitive Load?
Piaget just writes all his ideas in two columns with no separation in ideas or bullet points. All the information is presented at the same time and the learner just has to read it and “absorb it”.
- The learner has a passive role.
- Learner’s perception used is only visual with letters, there are no other visual elements included.
- There is no connection with previous learning and the content is not created for a specific audience.
- There are no tasks included.
- Feedback is not provided.
Luckily for us, now we know that the content could be presented in a more attractive and efficient way following the cognitive strategies that we learned this week.
What did I do in this article to follow the principles of Cognitive Load?
Since I had to create an article about Cognitivism and Piaget this week, I thought about differences between Piaget’s original article and my own article about Cognitivism, so we can compare two ways to present the same content:
- I broke up the content in small pieces. I created different sections in my article and ordered them with logic, being connected.
- The information presented was only visual, but I used different sizes and fonts for paragraphs and headings, using bold letters for important words and ideas.
- I created brain breaks in different parts of the article using slides, so the reader can interact with the information (click to pass the slides) and have a more active role during the reading.
- I knew my audience, so I connected this article with the previous knowledge about Behaviorism and how both theories are connected to facilitate the understanding of the new material.
- In the future, I would like to include a collaborative activity and a feedback survey.
All the slides, videos and posters were created by Pilar Gonzalez using Google Drawings. The photo’s author is Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash