Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning
"People generally learn words in the context of ordinary communication. This process is startlingly fast and successful." (Brown, 1989, p.32)
Situated Cognition is an educational theory which emphasizes that people's learning is linked to the activity, context and and culture in which it was learned. When students learn vocabulary in the real-life context and in a meaningful way, the learning process is more effective. With this knowledge, teachers has then the ability to create an experience by which students can fully grasp the meaning of a concept.
In my Physics class we have a unit where students had to learn measurements and conversion of units. So, to allow them to experience what each measurement is like in real life, we did an experiment on estimation. They used standard measurements as reference and made estimates of length, weight and temperature. We had different fruits and objects around the room. We even have different water sample of different temperatures. After figuring out how 100 g feels like they tested their skills by estimating the mass of onions, oranges. They held the 100g weight in their hands and afterwards they held an onion. In this way their mind was quantifying real life objects. To verify how accurate their estimates were, they have to use measuring instruments to verify. The joy and pride on their faces when their percent of error is very little to none is priceless.
In this article, I also learned about Cognitive Apprenticeship. It talked about how teachers as experts pass on skills and traditions which the students can learn only from the expert. It also also talked about how experts breakdown the lessons into smaller chunks so that students can easily grasp it. This is a reminder to empathize with the students in terms of expectations. Things that we teachers think are easy are not necessarily the same for students. Creating this type of socio-cultural way of learning is a great way to entice students to be experts as well.
In conclusion, I believe that as educators we have the opportunity to create a learning experience that is meaningful to students without having to make an elaborate preparation. Instead we have to be good observers of our day to day life and the students life and be able to carefully use those to craft an authentic learning experience.
I can see how you're connecting the Knowledge Principle to the Teacher Designer Principle: making empathetic decisions about how our students might want to learn and connecting that to authentic activities. The chunking of lessons is one thing we can do to make our lessons realistic for students; authentic doesn't necessarily mean real, as this could lead to unrealistic expectations. As someone who's never taken a physics class, I would love to learn in your classroom!
ReplyDeleteThank you Caitlin. You made a very valid point about chunking of lessons. Sometimes lesson may seem to me already in it's simplified and biteable chunk but for students it may still seem overwhelming.
DeleteAgreed. We always have to have a Plan B, C, D, etc. about how to make input more comprehensible.
DeleteI love that lesson. It reminds me of something we did in home ec when I was in 6th grade. We were learning measurements, and the teacher had us guess what a cup of an ingredient would look like, then measure it out. We were in 6th grade, so of course we thought we were exactly right. Not so much. It was obviously impactful since I remember it all these years later.
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