Transfer from school to everyday environments is the ultimate purpose of school-based learning.

Opportunities to engage in problem-based learning during the first year of medical school lead to a greater ability to diagnose and understand medical problems than do opportunities to learn in typical lecture-based medical courses (Hmelo, 1995).

New technologies make it possible for students in schools to use tools very much like those used by professionals in workplaces (see Chapter 8).

Sometimes new information will seem incomprehensible to students, but this feeling of confusion can at least let them identify the existence of a problem (see, e.g., Bransford and Johnson, 1972; Dooling and Lachman, 1971).

One way to deal with lack of flexibility is to ask learners to solve a specific case and then provide them with an additional, similar case; the goal is to help them abstract general principles that lead to more flexible transfer (Gick and Holyoak, 1983); see Box 3.7. A second way to improve flexibility is to let students learn in a specific context and then help them engage in “what-if” problem solving designed to increase the flexibility of their understanding. They might be asked: “What if this part of the problem

Transfer is also affected by the context of original learning; people can learn in one context, yet fail to transfer to other contexts. For example, a group of Orange County homemakers did very well at making supermarket best-buy calculations despite doing poorly on equivalent school-like paper-and-pencil mathematics problems (Lave, 1988). Similarly, some Brazilian street children could perform mathematics when making sales in the street but were unable to answer similar problems presented in a school context (Carraher, 1986; Carraher et al, 1985).

Learners of all ages are more motivated when they can see the usefulness of what they are learning and when they can use that information to do something that has an impact on others—especially their local community (McCombs, 1996; Pintrich and Schunk, 1996).

Social opportunities also affect motivation. Feeling that one is contributing something to others appears to be especially motivating (Schwartz et al., 1999).

Motivation affects the amount of time that people are willing to devote to learning. Humans are motivated to develop competence and to solve problems; they have, as White (1959) put it, “competence motivation.” Although extrinsic rewards and punishments clearly affect behavior (see Chapter 1), people work hard for intrinsic reasons, as well.

For example, feedback that signals progress in memorizing facts and formulas is different from feedback that signals the state of the students’ understanding (Chi et al., 1989, 1994).

Providing students with time to learn also includes providing enough time for them to process information. Pezdek and Miceli (1982) found that on one particular task, it took 3rd graders 15 seconds to integrate pictorial and verbal information; when given only 8 seconds, they couldn’t mentally integrate the information, probably due to short-term memory limitations.

ters require from 50,000 to 100,000 hours of practice to reach that level of expertise; they rely on a knowledge base containing some 50,000 familiar chess patterns to guide their selection of moves (Chase and Simon, 1973; Simon and Chase, 1973)

e noted that the ability to remember properties of veins and arteries (e.g., that arteries are thicker than veins, more elastic, and carry blood from the heart) is not the same as understanding why they have particular properties. The ability to understand becomes important for transfer problems, such as: “Imagine trying to design an artificial artery. Would it have to be elastic? Why or why not?” Students who only memorize facts have little basis for approaching this kind of problem-solving task (Bransford and Stein, 1993; Bransford et al., 1983). The act of organizing facts about veins and arteries around more general principles such as “how structure is related to function” is consistent with the knowledge organization of experts discussed in Chapter 2.

Knowledge that is overly contextualized can reduce transfer; abstract representations of knowledge can help promote transfer.

Educators hope that students will transfer learning from one problem to another within a course, from one year in school to another, between school and home, and from school to workplace. Assumptions about transfer accompany the belief that it is better to broadly “educate” people than simply “train” them to perform particular tasks (e.g., Broudy, 1977).

Learning is important because no one is born with the ability to function competently as an adult in society. It is especially important to understand the kinds of learning experiences that lead to transfer, defined as the ability to extend what has been learned in one context to new contexts (e.g., Byrnes, 1996:74).

People’s mental models of what it means to be an expert can affect the degree to which they learn throughout their lifetimes. A model that assumes that experts know all the answers is very different from a model of the accomplished novice, who is proud of his or her achievements and yet also realizes that there is much more to learn.

The second cautionary note is that although the study of experts provides important information about learning and instruction, it can be misleading if applied inappropriately. For example, it would be a mistake simply to expose novices to expert models and assume that the novices will learn effectively; what they will learn depends on how much they know already. Discussions in the next chapters (3 and 4) show that effective instruction begins with the knowledge and skills that learners bring to the learning task.

Steven began his unit on Hamlet without ever mentioning the name of the play. To help his students grasp the initial outline of the themes and issues of the play, he asked them to imagine that their parents had recently divorced and that their mothers had taken up with a new man. This new man had replaced their father at work, and “there’s some talk that he had something to do with the ousting of your dad” (Grossman, 1990:24). Steven then asked students to think about the circumstances that might drive them so mad that they would contemplate murdering another human being. Only then, after students had contemplated these issues and done some writing on them, did Steven introduce the play they would be reading.

For example, contrast two types of Japanese sushi experts (Hatano and Inagaki, 1986): one excels at following a fixed recipe; the other has “adaptive expertise” and is able to prepare sushi quite creatively. These appear to be examples of two very different types of expertise, one that is relatively routinized and one that is flexible and more adaptable to external demands: experts have been characterized as being “merely skilled” versus “highly competent” or more colorfully as “artisans” versus “virtuosos” (Miller, 1978). These differences apparently exist across a wide range of jobs.

Expert teachers know the kinds of difficulties that students are likely to face; they know how to tap into students’ existing knowledge in order to make new information meaningful; and they know how to assess their students’ progress. Expert teachers have acquired pedagogical content knowledge as well as content knowledge; see Box 2.4.

Expertise in a particular domain does not guarantee that one is good at helping others learn it.

People’s abilities to retrieve relevant knowledge can vary from being “effortful” to “relatively effortless” (fluent) to “automatic” (Schneider and Shiffrin, 1977). Automatic and fluent retrieval are important characteristics of expertise.

One way to help students learn about conditions of applicability is to assign word problems that require students to use appropriate concepts and formulas (Lesgold, 1984, 1988; Simon, 1980)

They knew that no single document or picture could tell the story of history; hence, they thought very hard about their choices. In contrast, the students generally just looked at the pictures and made a selection without regard or qualification. For students, the process was similar to finding the correct answer on a multiple choice test.

The historians excelled in the elaborateness of understandings they developed in their ability to pose alternative explanations for events and in their use of corroborating evidence. This depth of understanding was as true for the Asian specialists and the medievalists as it was for the Americanists.

There are 26 sheep and 10 goats on a ship. How old is the captain? Most adults have enough expertise to realize that this problem is unsolvable, but many school children didn’t realize this at all. More than three-quarters of the children in one study attempted to provide a numerical answer to the problems. They asked themselves whether to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, rather than whether the problem made sense. As one fifth-grade child explained, after giving the answer of 36: “Well, you need to add or subtract or multiply in problems like this, and this one seemed to work best if I add” (Bransford and Stein, 1993:196).

Pause times

In representing a schema for an incline plane, the novice’s schema contains primarily surface features of the incline plane. In contrast, the expert’s schema immediately connects the notion of an incline plane with the laws of physics and the conditions under which laws are applicable.

Differences in how physics experts and novices approach problems can also be seen when they are asked to sort problems, written on index cards, according to the approach that could be used to solve them (Chi et al., 1981).

Experts usually mentioned the major principle(s) or law(s) that were applicable to the problem, together with a rationale for why those laws applied to the problem and how one could apply them (Chi et al., 1981). In contrast, competent beginners rarely referred to major principles and laws in physics; instead, they typically described which equations they would use and how those equations would be manipulated (Larkin, 1981, 1983).

Expert 6: On the left monitor, the students’ note taking indicates that they have seen sheets like this and have had presentations like this before; it’s fairly efficient at this point because they’re used to the format they are using. Expert 7: I don’t understand why the students can’t be finding out this information on their own rather than listening to someone tell them because if you watch the faces of most of them, they start out for about the first 2 or 3 minutes sort of paying attention to what’s going on and then just drift off. Expert 2: …I haven’t heard a bell, but the students are already at their desks and seem to be doing purposeful activity, and this is about the time that I decide they must be an accelerated group because they came into the room and started something rather than just sitting down and socializing.

the expert teachers had very different understandings of the events they were watching than did the novice teachers; see examples in Box 2.2.

The superior recall ability of experts, illustrated in the example in the box, has been explained in terms of how they “chunk” various elements of a configuration that are related by an underlying function or strategy. Since

DeGroot concluded that the knowledge acquired over tens of thousands of hours of chess playing enabled chess masters to out-play their opponents. Specifically, masters were more likely to recognize meaningful chess configurations and realize the strategic implications of these situations; this recognition allowed them to consider sets of possible moves that were superior to others. The meaningful patterns seemed readily apparent to the masters, leading deGroot (1965:33–34) to note:

Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that they are able to teach others.

3. Formative assessments—ongoing assessments designed to make students’ thinking visible to both teachers and students—are essential. They permit the teacher to grasp the students’ preconcep tions, understand where the students are in the “developmental cor ridor” from informal to formal thinking, and design instruction accordingly. In the assessment-centered classroom environment, for mative assessments help both teachers and students monitor progress.

FIGURE 1.1 With knowledge of how people learn, teachers can choose more purposefully among techniques to accomplish specific goals

Assessment for purposes of accountability (e.g., statewide assessments) must test deep understanding rather than surface knowledge. Assessment tools are often the standard by which teachers are held accountable. A teacher is put in a bind if she or he is asked to teach for deep conceptual understanding, but in doing so produces students who perform more poorly on standardized tests. Unless new assessment tools are aligned with new approaches to teaching, the latter are unlikely to muster support among the schools and their constituent parents. This goal is as important as it is difficult to achieve. The format of standardized tests can encourage measurement of factual knowledge rather than conceptual understanding, but it also facilitates objective scoring. Measuring depth of understanding can pose challenges for objectivity. Much work needs to be done to minimize the trade-off between assessing depth and assessing objectively.

The roles for assessment must be expanded beyond the traditional concept of testing. The use of frequent formative assessment helps make students’ thinking visible to themselves, their peers, and their teacher. This provides feedback that can guide modification and refinement in thinking. Given the goal of learning with understanding, assessments must tap understanding rather than merely the ability to repeat facts or perform isolated skills.

If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are Page 15 Share Cite Suggested Citation:"1 Learning: From Speculation to Science." National Research Council. 2000. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9853. × Save Cancel taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom.

These hypothetical teachers—A, B, and C—are abstract models that of course fit real teachers only partly, and more on some days than others. Nevertheless, they provide important glimpses of connections between goals for learning and teaching practices that can affect students’ abilities to accomplish these goals.

Imagine three teachers whose practices affect whether students learn to take control of their own learning (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1991). Teacher A’s goal is to get the students to produce work; this is accomplished by supervising and overseeing the quantity and quality of the work done by the students. The focus is on activities, which could be anything from old-style workbook activities to the trendiest of space-age projects. Teacher B assumes responsibility for what the students are learning as they carry out their activities. Teacher C does this as well, but with the added objective of continually turning more of the learning process over to the students. Walking into a classroom, you cannot immediately tell these three kinds of teachers apart. One of the things you might see is the students working in groups to produce videos or multimedia presentations. The teacher is likely to be Page 13 Share Cite Suggested Citation:"1 Learning: From Speculation to Science." National Research Council. 2000. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9853. × Save Cancel found going from group to group, checking how things are going and responding to requests.

New developments in the science of learning also emphasize the importance of helping people take control of their own learning

addressed in order for them to change their beliefs (e.g., Confrey, 1990; Mestre, 1994; Minstrell, 1989; Redish, 1996).

Pre-Existing Knowledge

Learning research suggests that there are new ways to introduce students to traditional subjects, such as mathematics, science, history and literature, and that these new approaches make it possible for the majority of individuals to develop a deep understanding of important subject matter.

Work in social psychology, cognitive psychology, and anthropology is making clear that all learning takes place in settings that have particular sets of cultural and social norms and expectations and that these settings influence learning and transfer in powerful ways.

Developmental researchers have shown that young children understand a great deal about basic principles of biology and physical causality, about number, narrative, and personal intent, and that these capabilities make it possible to create innovative curricula that introduce important concepts for advanced reasoning at early ages.

Thirty years ago, educators paid little attention to the work of cognitive scientists, and researchers in the nascent field of cognitive science worked far removed from classrooms. Today, cognitive researchers are spending more time working with teachers, testing and refining their theories in real classrooms where they can see how different settings and classroom interactions influence applications of their theories.

Equally important, the growth of interdisciplinary inquiries and new kinds of scientific collaborations have begun to make the path from basic research to educational practice somewhat more visible, if not yet easy to travel.

As we illustrate, a new theory of learning is coming into focus that leads to very different approaches to the design of curriculum, teaching, and assessment than those often found in schools today.

Today, the world is in the midst of an extraordinary outpouring of scientific work on the mind and brain, on the processes of thinking and learning, on the neural processes that occur during thought and learning, and on the development of competence.