Throughout its history, psychology has provided vital information for the design of schooling based on theory and research on human nature, learning, and development. Research in psychology relevant to education has been particularly informative during the past decade. Advances in our understanding of thinking, memory, and cognitive and motivational processes can directly contribute to improvements in teaching, learning, and the whole enterprise of schooling. At the same time, educators concerned with the growing problems of school dropouts, low levels of academic achievement, and other indicators of school failure are arguing for more learner-centered models of schooling. Such models attend to the diversity among students and use it to enrich learning and produce results within the context of current school reform.

The following principles, which are consistent with more than a century of research on teaching and learning, are widely shared and implicitly recognized in many excellent programs found in today's schools. They also integrate research and practice in a variety of areas within and outside of psychology, including clinical, developmental, experimental, social, organizational, community, educational and school psychology, as well as education, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. In addition, these principles reflect an integration of both conventional and scientific wisdom: They comprise not only those systematically researched and evolving learner-centered principles that can lead to effective schooling, but also principles that can lead to positive mental health and more effective functioning of our nation's children, their teachers, and the systems that serve them.

Learner-centered psychological principles and a living systems perspective for incorporating them are necessary components of a new design for schooling. The systems perspective must focus on human functions at multiple levels of the educational system (learning, teaching, evaluating, managing). From this perspective, educational practice will improve only when the educational system is redesigned with the primary focus on the learner. Psychologists, in collaboration with the educational community, can help decide how best to apply sound psychological principles in the redesign of America's schools and in preparing teachers for redesigned schools. A new and exciting vision of schooling, and psychology's role in this vision, can then emerge.

Our immediate goal in offering these learner-centered psychological principles is to provide guidelines that can contribute to current educational reform efforts and thus help meet the nation's educational goals. Through dialogue with concerned groups of educators, researchers, and policymakers, these principles can be further evolved to contribute not only to a new design for American schools, but also to a society committed to lifelong learning, healthy human development, and productivity. In developing these principles, psychology--together with other disciplines--can offer a unique contribution to the betterment of America's schools and the enhancement of the nation's vital human resources.

Learner-Centered Psychological Principles

The following 12 psychological principles pertain to the learner and the learning process. They focus on psychological factors that are primarily internal to the learner, while recognizing external environment or contextual factors that interact with these internal factors. These principles also attempt to deal holistically with learners in the context of real-world learning situations. Thus, they must be understood as an organized set of principles and not treated in isolation. The first ten principles subdivide into those referring to metacognitive and cognitive, affective, developmental, and social factors and issues. Two final principles cut across the prior principles and focus on what we know about individual differences. Finally, the principles are intended to apply to all learners, beginning with preschoolers and extending through the postsecondary level.

In considering the application of these principles to teacher education and those preparing to teach, two dimensions need to be taken into account. One dimension is the substantive content of the principles. That is, those preparing to teach need to understand the essence of these principles as they apply to the students in their classrooms. The second dimension refers to the actual learning processes that preservice teachers themselves go through. If we expect those preparing to teach to follow these learner-centered principles, they must experience these principles as learners themselves. This may entail rethinking the way teacher education programs and classes are structured.

Metacognitive and Cognitive Factors

Principle 1: The Nature of the Learning Process.

Learning is a natural process of pursuing personally meaningful goals and it is active, volitional, and both internally and socially mediated; it is a process of discovering and constructing personal and shared meaning from information and experience, filtered through each individual's unique perceptions, thoughts, and feelings- -as well as through negotiations with others..

Students have a natural inclination to learn and pursue personally relevant learning goals. They are capable of assuming personal responsibility for learning--monitoring, checking for understanding, and becoming active, self-directed learners--in an environment that takes past learning into account, ties new learning to personal goals, and actively engages individuals in their own learning process. In meaningful life situations, even very young children naturally engage in self-directed learning activities to pursue personal goals. During the learning process, individuals create and construct their own meanings and interpretations, often in interaction with others, on the basis of previously existing understandings and beliefs.

Principle 2: Goals of the Learning Process.

The learner seeks to create meaningful, coherent representations of knowledge regardless of the quantity and quality of data available.

Learners generate integrated, commonsense representations and explanations for even poorly understood or communicated facts, concepts, principles, or theories. Learning processes operate holistically in the sense that internally consistent understandings emerge that may or may not be valid from an objective, externally-oriented perspective. As learners negotiate understandings with others and internalize values and meanings within a discipline, however, they can refine their conceptions by filling gaps, resolving inconsistencies, and revising prior conceptions.

Principle 3: The Construction of Knowledge.

The learner links new information with existing and future-oriented knowledge in uniquely meaningful ways.

Given that backgrounds and experiences of individual learners can differ dramatically, and given that the mind works to link information meaningfully and holistically, learners interpret and organize information in ways that are uniquely meaningful to them. A goal in formal education is to have all learners create shared understandings and conceptions regarding fundamental knowledge and skills that define and lead to valued learning outcomes. In these situations, teachers can assist learners in acquiring and integrating knowledge (e.g., by creating opportunities for discussion and dialogue and interaction among learners and between learners and adults; by teaching them strategies for constructing meaning, organizing content, accessing prior knowledge, relating new knowledge to general themes or principles, storing or practicing what they have learned, and visualizing future uses for the knowledge).

Principle 4: Higher-Order Thinking.

Higher-order strategies for "thinking about thinking and learning"--for overseeing and monitoring mental operations-- facilitate creative and critical thinking and the development of expertise.

During early to middle childhood, learners become capable of a metacognitive or executive level of thinking about their own thinking that includes self-awareness, self-inquiry or dialogue, self-monitoring, and self-regulation of the processes and contents of thoughts, knowledge structures, and memories. Learners' awareness of their personal agency or control over thinking and learning processes promotes higher levels of commitment, persistence, and involvement in learning. To foster this self-awareness of personal control, learners need settings where their personal interests, values, and goals are respected and accommodated.

Principle 5: Motivational Influences on Learning.

The depth and breadth of understandings constructed, and what and how much is learned and remembered, are influenced by (a) self-awareness and beliefs about personal control, competence, and ability; (b) clarity and saliency of personal and social values, interests, and goals; (c) personal expectations for success or failure; (d) affect, emotion, and general states of mind; and (e) the resulting motivation to learn.

The rich internal world of beliefs, goals, expectations, and feelings can enhance or interfere with learners' quality of thinking and understandings created. The relationship among thoughts, mood, and behavior underlies individuals' psychological health and ability to learn. Learners' interpretations or constructions of reality can facilitate or impede positive motivation, learning, and performance. Positive learning experiences can help reverse negative thoughts and feelings and contribute to positive motivation to learn.

Principle 6: Intrinsic Motivation to Learn.

Individuals are naturally curious and enjoy learning, but intense negative cognitions and emotions (e.g., insecurity, worrying about failure, being self-conscious or shy, fearing punishment or verbal ridiculing or stigmatizing labels) thwart this enthusiasm.

Educators must support and develop learners' natural curiosity or intrinsic motivation to learn, rather than "fixing them" or driving them by fear of punishment. Also, both positive interpersonal support and instruction in self-control strategies can offset factors that interfere with optimal learning--factors such as low self-awareness; negative beliefs; lack of learning goals; negative expectations for success; and anxiety, insecurity, or pressure.

Principle 7: Characteristics of Motivation--Enhancing Learning Tasks.

Curiosity, creativity, and higher-order thinking are stimulated by relevant, authentic learning tasks of optimal difficulty, challenge, and novelty for each learner.

Positive affect, creativity, and flexible and insightful thinking are promoted in contexts that learners perceive as personally relevant and meaningful. For example, leaners need opportunities to make choices in line with their interests and to have the freedom to change the course of learning in light of self-awareness, discovery, or insights. Projects that are comparable to real-world situations in complexity and duration elicit learners' higher-order thinking skills and creativity. In addition, curiosity is enhanced when learners can work on personally relevant learning tasks of optimal difficulty and novelty as well as in interaction with others.

Developmental Factors

Principle 8: Developmental Constraints and Opportunities.

Individuals progress through stages of physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development that are a function of unique genetic and environmental factors.

Individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level and is presented in an enjoyable and interesting way, while challenging their intellectual, emotional, physical, and social development. Beginning at birth, unique environmental factors (e.g., the quality of language interactions between adult and child, parental involvement in the child's schooling, and cultural background) can influence development in each area. The cognitive, emotional, and social development of individual learners and how they interpret life experiences are affected by prior schooling, home, culture, and community factors. An overemphasis on developmental readiness, however, may preclude learners from demonstrating that they are more capable intellectually than schools, teachers, or parents allow them to show. Young children, in particular, need appropriate stimulation to encourage their development. Moreover, indivdiuals can also learn in interaction with others who are at different developmental levels. Awareness and understanding of developmental differences of learners with special emotional, physical or intellectual disabilities as well as special abilities can greatly facilitate efforts to create optimal contexts for learning.

Personal and Social Factors

Principle 9: Social and Cultural Diversity.

Learning is facilitated by social interactions and communication with others in flexible, diverse (in age, culture, family background, etc.), and adaptive instructional settings.

Learning is facilitated when the learner has an opportunity to interact and collaborate with a variety of students representing different cultural and family backgrounds, interests, and values. Learning settings that allow for social interactions and that respect diversity encourage flexible thinking as well as social competence and moral development. In such settings, individuals have an opportunity for perspective taking and reflective thinking, thereby leading to insights and breakthroughs to new knowledge.

Principle 10: Social Acceptance, Self-Esteem, and Learning.

Learning and self-esteem are heightened when individuals are in respectful and caring relationships with others who see their potential, genuinely appreciate their unique talents, and accept them as individuals.

Quality personal relationships give the individual access to higher-order, healthier levels of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Teachers' (or other significant adults') states of mind, stability, trust, and caring are preconditions for establishing a sense of belonging, self-respect, self- acceptance, and positive climate for learning. Healthier levels of thinking are those that are less self-conscious, insecure, irrational, and/or self-deprecating. Self-esteem and learning are mutually reinforcing.

Individual Differences

Principle 11: Individual and Cultural Differences in Learning.

Although basic principles of learning, motivation, and effective instruction may apply to all learners (regardless of ethnicity, race, language, gender, physical ability, religion, or socioeconomic status), learners have different capabilities and preferences for learning mode and strategies. These differences are a function of both environment (what is learned and communicated in different cultures or other social groups) and heredity (what occurs naturally as a function of genes). Learning is most effective when differences in learners' linguistic, cultural, and social backgrounds are taken into account.

The same basic principles of learning, motivation, and effective instruction may apply to all learners. However, individuals are born with and develop unique capabilities and talents and have acquired through learning and social acculturation different preferences for how they like to learn and the pace at which they learn. Also, learner differences and curricular and environmental conditions are key factors that greatly affect learning outcomes. Understanding and valuing cultural differences and the cultural contexts in which learners develop--including language, ethnicity, race, beliefs and socioeconomic status--enhances the possibilities for designing and implementing learning environments that are optimal for all learners.

Principle 12: Cognitive and social filters.

Personal thoughts, beliefs, and understandings resulting from prior learning and interpretations become the individual's basis for constructing reality and interpreting life experiences.

Unique cognitive and social constructions form a basis for beliefs about and attitudes toward others. Individuals then operate out of these "separate realities" as if they were true for everyone, often leading to misunderstandings and conflict. Through interactions with others, learners increase their awareness and understanding of these phenomena and the value of multiple perspectives. Increased understandings allow greater choice in what one believes and more control over the degree to which one's beliefs influence one's actions and enable one to see and take into account others' points of view. The cognitive, emotional, and social development of a child and the way that child interprets life experiences is a product of prior schooling, home, culture, and community factors.

Implications for Teacher Education

The foregoing principles have implications for educational practice in the areas of instruction, curriculum, assessment, instructional management, and teacher education. Some of these implications are listed in the following sections to provide examples that are consistent with the learner-centered principles. They are intended to stimulate further thinking, discussion, and elaboration of ideas toward developing new designs for education in general and for teacher education in particular. Like the principles themselves, the implications of these principles for teacher education function at two levels. First, they suggest implications of the learner-centered principles that teachers and those preparing to teach need to consider in designing and implementing instruction, curriculum, assessment, and instructional management for their students. Second, these examples suggest factors that teacher educators need to consider as they design and implement teacher education programs and courses. With a few exceptions, the examples listed below are applicable to preschool, elementary, and secondary students as well as to preservice and inservice teachers.

Effective Instruction

Involves students in their own learning, with opportunities for teacher and peer interactions that engage students' natural curiosity and opportunities for personal reflection and self-study;

Encourages students to link prior knowledge with new information by providing multiple ways of presenting information (e.g., auditory, visual, kinesthetic);

Attends to the content of curriculum domains and to generalized and domain-specific processes that facilitate the acquisition and integration of knowledge in these domains;

Provides stimulating, guiding questions to help students and groups of students rethink their understandings, come closer to more powerful concepts and ways of thinking;

Includes constructive and informative feedback regarding the learner's instructional approach and products, as well as sufficient opportunities to practice and apply new knowledge and skills to developmentally appropriate levels of mastery;

Offers opportunities for acquiring and practicing various learning strategies in different content domains to help students develop and effectively use their minds while learning;

Encourages problem solving, planning, complex decision-making, debates, group discussions, and other strategies that enhance the development of higher-order thinking and use of metacognitive strategies;

Helps students understand and respect individual differences by learning principles of thinking and psychological functioning and how these operate in building attitudes and belief systems about others;

Enables learners to plan future directions and apply what they learn;

Maintains fair, consistent, and caring policies that respect the individual student by focusing on individual mastery and cooperative teamwork rather than competitive performance goals;

Provides opportunites for learners to construct their own knowledge and shared understandings through groupwork and dialogue with others; and

Ensures that all students have experience with (a) teachers interested in their area of instruction, (b) teachers who respect and value them as individuals, (c) positive role modeling and mentoring, (d) constructive and regular student evaluations, (e) optimistic teacher expectations, and (f) use of questioning skills to actively involve them in the learning process.

Group 8: Barrios, Valdez, Funes, Vazquez and Carballeda.

Group 1: Cecilia Quarleri, Betiana Cavaleri, Romina Ricci and Natalia Antinori.

Early Behaviourism & Classical Conditioning

William James had defined psychology as “the science of mental life.” But in the early 1900s, growing numbers of psychologists voiced criticism of the approach used by scholars to explore conscious and unconscious mental processes. These critics doubted the reliability and usefulness of the method of introspection, in which subjects are asked to describe their own mental processes during various tasks. They were also critical of Freud’s emphasis on unconscious motives. In search of more-scientific methods, psychologists gradually turned away from research on invisible mental processes and began to study only behavior that could be observed directly. This approach, known as behaviorism, ultimately revolutionized psychology and remained the dominant school of thought for nearly 50 years.

It is a theory of animal and human learning which was very dominant in the 1850s and 60s an remains influential today, although “new” theories have gained much ground. This theory focuses on objectively observable behaviours and discounts mental activities. One of the most important aspects of behaviouristic theories is that the learner is viewed as adapting to the environment and learning is seen largely as a passive process in that there is no explicit treatment of mental processes. Learning is defined as nothing more than the acquisition of new behaviour. The learner merely responds to the demands of the environment. Experiments by behaviourists identify conditioning as a universal learning process, and there are two different types of conditioning, each yielding a different behavioural pattern.

One of these is classical conditioning, which occurs when a natural reflex responds to a stimulus. The most popular example is Pavlov’s observation that dogs salivate when they eat or even see food. Essentially, animals an people are biologically “wired”, so that a certain stimulus will produce a specific response.

Among the first to lay the foundation for the new behaviorism was American psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike. In 1898 Thorndike conducted a series of experiments on animal learning. In one study, he put cats into a cage, put food just outside the cage, and timed how long it took the cats to learn how to open an escape door that led to the food. Placing the animals in the same cage again and again, Thorndike found that the cats would repeat behaviors that worked and would escape more and more quickly with successive trials. Thorndike thereafter proposed the law of effect, which states that behaviors that are followed by a positive outcome are repeated, while those followed by a negative outcome or none at all are extinguished.

In 1906 Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936) stumbled onto one of the most important principles of learning and behavior. He was born in a small village in central Russia. His family hoped that he would become a priest, and he went to a theological seminary. After reading Charles Darwin, he found that he cared more for scientific pursuits and left the seminary for the University of St. Petersburg. There he studied chemistry and physiology, and he received his doctorate in 1879. He continued his studies and began doing his own research in topics that interested him most: digestion and blood circulation. His work became well known, and he was appointed professor of physiology at the Imperial Medical Academy.

The work that made Pavlov a household name in psychology actually began as a study in digestion. He was looking at the digestive process in dogs, especially the interaction between salivation and the action of the stomach. He realized they were closely linked by reflexes in the autonomic nervous system. Without salivation, the stomach didn't get the message to start digesting. Pavlov wanted to see if external stimuli could affect this process, so he rang a metronome at the same time he gave the experimental dogs food. After a while, the dogs -- which before only salivated when they saw and ate their food -- would begin to salivate when the metronome sounded, even if no food were present. In 1903 Pavlov published his results calling this a "conditioned reflex," different from an innate reflex, such as yanking a hand back from a flame, in that it had to be learned. Pavlov called this learning process (in which the dog's nervous system comes to associate the sound of the metronome with the food, for example) "conditioning." He also found that the conditioned reflex will be repressed if the stimulus proves "wrong" too often. If the metronome sounds repeatedly and no food appears, eventually the dog stops salivating at the sound.

Pavlov was much more interested in physiology than psychology. He looked upon the young science of psychiatry a little dubiously. But he did think that conditioned reflexes could explain the behavior of psychotic people. For example, he suggested, those who withdrew from the world may associate all stimulus with possible injury or threat. His ideas played a large role in the behaviorist theory of psychology, introduced by John Watson around 1913.

Pavlov was held in extremely high regard in his country -- both as Russia and the Soviet Union -- and around the world. In 1904, he won the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine for his research on digestion. He was outspoken and often at odds with the Soviet government later in his life, but his world renown, and work that his nation was proud of, kept him free from persecution. He worked actively in the lab until his death at age 87.

Although Thorndike and Pavlov set the stage for behaviorism, it was not until 1913 that a psychologist set forward a clear vision for behaviorist psychology. John Watson was born in South Carolina in 1878 and grew up on a farm. His father left the family when John was about 13. Watson claimed to have been unruly and a poor student as a youngster, and by all accounts he seemed destined to follow his father's model of violence and recklessness. But he had ambition, a certain courage, and considerable skill at self-promotion: He entered Furman University at age 16. He received a masters degree after five years and went on to the University of Chicago to pursue a doctorate in psychology and philosophy. Along the way, he dropped the philosophy and received his PhD in psychology in 1903. Five years later, Johns Hopkins University appointed him professor of experimental and comparative psychology.

By then Watson had already formed ideas that would become a whole branch of psychology: behaviorism. He studied the biology, physiology, and behavior of animals, inspired by the recent work of Ivan Pavlov. He began studying the behavior of children, as well, concluding that humans were simply more complicated than animals but operated on the same principles. All animals, he believed, were extremely complex machines that responded to situations according to their "wiring," or nerve pathways that were conditioned by experience. In 1913, he published an article outlining his ideas and essentially establishing a new school of psychology. It was new because Watson disagreed with Freud and found the latter's views on human behavior philosophical to the point of mysticism. He also dismissed heredity as a significant factor in shaping human behavior.

Watson's research on animals and children was interrupted by World War I. He served as a psychologist, but came away with a distaste for the military. He remained at Johns Hopkins until 1920 when his academic career came to an abrupt end. He had an affair with a research associate, he and his wife divorced, and the university asked him to resign. He took his knowledge of psychology and human behavior where it would be used -- the advertising industry. By 1924, he was vice president at J. Walter Thompson, one of the largest ad agencies in the United States

Classical Conditioning:

Classical conditioning is one form of learning, in which a reflexive or automatic response transfers from one stimulus to another. For instance, a person who has had painful experiences at the dentist’s office may become fearful at just the sight of the dentist’s office building. Fear, a natural response to a painful stimulus, has transferred to a different stimulus, the sight of a building. Most psychologists believe that classical conditioning occurs when a person forms a mental association between two stimuli, so that encountering one stimulus makes the person think of the other. People tend to form these mental associations between events or stimuli that occur closely together in space or time.

Principles of Classical Conditioning:

Following his initial discovery, Pavlov spent more than three decades studying the processes underlying classical conditioning. He and his associates identified four main processes: acquisition, extinction, generalization, and discrimination.

The acquisition phase is the initial learning of the conditioned response—for example, the dog learning to salivate at the sound of the bell. Several factors can affect the speed of conditioning during the acquisition phase. The most important factors are the order and timing of the stimuli. Conditioning occurs most quickly when the conditioned stimulus (the bell) precedes the unconditioned stimulus (the food) by about half a second. Conditioning takes longer and the response is weaker when there is a long delay between the presentation of the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus. If the conditioned stimulus follows the unconditioned stimulus—for example, if the dog receives the food before the bell is rung—conditioning seldom occurs.

Once learned, a conditioned response is not necessarily permanent. The term extinction is used to describe the elimination of the conditioned response by repeatedly presenting the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus. If a dog has learned to salivate at the sound of a bell, an experimenter can gradually extinguish the dog’s response by repeatedly ringing the bell without presenting food afterward. Extinction does not mean, however, that the dog has simply unlearned or forgotten the association between the bell and the food. After extinction, if the experimenter lets a few hours pass and then rings the bell again, the dog will usually salivate at the sound of the bell once again. The reappearance of an extinguished response after some time has passed is called spontaneous recovery.

After an animal has learned a conditioned response to one stimulus, it may also respond to similar stimuli without further training. If a child is bitten by a large black dog, the child may fear not only that dog, but other large dogs. This phenomenon is called generalization. Less similar stimuli will usually produce less generalization. For example, the child may show little fear of smaller dogs.

The opposite of generalization is discrimination, in which an individual learns to produce a conditioned response to one stimulus but not to another stimulus that is similar. For example, a child may show a fear response to freely roaming dogs, but may show no fear when a dog is on a leash or confined to a pen.

Applications of classical conditioning

After studying classical conditioning in dogs and other animals, psychologists became interested in how this type of learning might apply to human behavior. In an infamous 1921 experiment, American psychologist John B. Watson and his research assistant Rosalie Rayner conditioned a baby named Albert to fear a small white rat by pairing the sight of the rat with a loud noise. Although their experiment was ethically questionable, it showed for the first time that humans can learn to fear seemingly unimportant stimuli when the stimuli are associated with unpleasant experiences. The experiment also suggested that classical conditioning accounts for some cases of phobias, which are irrational or excessive fears of specific objects or situations. Psychologists now know that classical conditioning explains many emotional responses—such as happiness, excitement, anger, and anxiety—that people have to specific stimuli. For example, a child who experiences excitement on a roller coaster may learn to feel excited just at the sight of a roller coaster. For an adult who finds a letter from a close friend in the mailbox, the mere sight of the return address on the envelope may elicit feelings of joy and warmth.

Psychologists use classical conditioning procedures to treat phobias and other unwanted behaviors, such as alcoholism and addictions. To treat phobias of specific objects, the therapist gradually and repeatedly presents the feared object to the patient while the patient relaxes. Through extinction, the patient loses his or her fear of the object. In one treatment for alcoholism, patients drink an alcoholic beverage and then ingest a drug that produces nausea. Eventually they feel nauseous at the sight or smell of alcohol and stop drinking it. The effectiveness of these therapies varies depending on the individual and on the problem behavior.

Contemporary theories:

Modern theories of classical conditioning depart from Pavlov’s theory in several ways. Whereas Pavlov’s theory stated that the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli should elicit the same type of response, modern theories acknowledge that the conditioned and unconditioned responses frequently differ. In some cases, especially when the unconditioned stimulus is a drug, the conditioned stimulus elicits the opposite response. Modern research has also shown that conditioning does not always require a close pairing of the two stimuli. In taste-aversion learning, people can develop disgust for a specific food if they become sick after eating it, even if the illness begins several hours after eating.

Psychologists today also recognize that classical conditioning does not automatically occur whenever two stimuli are repeatedly paired. For instance, suppose that an experimenter conditions a dog to salivate to a light by repeatedly pairing the light with food. Next, the experimenter repeatedly pairs both the light and a tone with food. When the experimenter presents the tone by itself, the dog will show little or no conditioned response (salivation), because the tone provides no new information. The light already allows the dog to predict that food will be coming. This phenomenon, discovered by American psychologist Leon Kamin in 1968, is called blocking because prior conditioning blocks new conditioning.

Criticisms of Behaviourism

Behaviourism does not account for all kinas of learning, since it disregards the activities of the mind.

Behaviourism does not explain some learning, such as the recognition of new language patterns by young children, for which there is no reinforcement mechanism.

Research has shown that animals adapt their reinforced patterns to new information. For instance, a rat can shift its behaviour to respond to changes in the layout of a maze it had previously mastered through reinforcements.

Group 2 TP: Rossi, Martin, Gutierrez and Fernanda Salas

Skinner was the founder of modern behaviourism. He began with the premise that learning was the result of environmental rather than genetic factors. Skinner extended the possible application principles of conditioning by introducing the notion of operants which refers to the range of behaviours that organisms performed or were capable of performing. He also emphasized the importance of reinforcement which is the key element in Skinner’s theory. A rein forcer is anything that strengthens the desired response. Behaviourist theory thus came to explain learning in terms of operants conditioning. According to this idea, changes in behaviour are the result of an individual responding to events in the environment (stimuli). A response involves some action on the part of the learner. Whatever

The distinctive characteristic of operant conditioning relative to previous classical forms of behaviourism is that the organism can emit responses instead of only eliciting response due to an external stimulus.

In operant conditioning, the process is not trial-and-error learning. It can best be explained with an example. A hungry rat is placed in a semi-soundproof box. For several days bits of food are occasionally delivered into a tray by an automatic dispenser. The rat soon goes to the tray immediately upon hearing the sound of the dispenser. A small horizontal section of a lever protruding from the wall has been resting in its lowest position, but it is now raised slightly so that when the rat touches it, it moves downward. In doing so it closes an electric circuit and operates the food dispenser. Immediately after eating the delivered food the rat begins to press the lever fairly rapidly. The behavior has been strengthened or reinforced by a single consequence. but when food no longer follows pressing the lever, the rat eventually stops pressing. The behavior is said to have been extinguished.

An operant can come under the control of a stimulus. If pressing the lever is reinforced when a light is on but not when it is off, responses continue to be made in the light but seldom, if at all, in the dark. The rat has formed discrimination between light and dark. The lever can be pressed with different amounts of force, and if only strong responses are reinforced, the rat presses more and more forcefully. If only weak responses are reinforced, it eventually responds only very weakly. The process is called differentiation.
Complex responses can be shaped by reinforcing their component parts separately and putting them together in the final form of the operant.

Skinner`s view on teaching.

Skinner among other behaviourists noted shortcomings of the 1950`s traditional classroom as the following:

* Aversive stimulation

* Lapse between response and reinforcement

* Lack of a long series of contingencies for desired behaviours

* Infrequency of reinforcement

To break these habits Skinner suggested that:

* Teachers should make explicitly clear what is to be taught

* Tasks should be broken down into small, sequential steps

* Students should be encouraged to work at their own pace by means of individualized learning programmes

* Learning should be “programmed” by incorporating the above procedures and providing immediate positive reinforcement based as nearly as possible on 100 per cent success

Behaviourism in connection with audiolingualism.

Behaviourist views of learning were a powerful influence on the development of the audiolingualism approach to language teaching. In this theory language is seen as a behaviour to be taught. A small part of the foreign language is presented as a stimulus, to which the learner responds, for example by repetition. This is followed by reinforcement by the teacher. Learning a language is seen as acquiring a set of appropriate mechanical habits, and errors are frowned upon as reinforcing “bad habits”. The role of the teacher is to develop in learners good language habits, which is done mainly by memorization of dialogues or choral repetition. Explanation of rules is generally given when the language item has been well practiced and the appropriate habit acquired.

It can be seen that audiolingualism has a number of limitations. First the role of the learner is a passive one, they only have to respond to stimuli. There is little active engagement in analyzing the language or developing their own strategies to learn more effectively. Second, there is little concern for what goes on inside the learner`s heads. Recent work in the area of learning strategies has shown us that conscious use of strategies can significantly enhace learning. Third, audiolingualism drills can be carried out with little attention to the meaning that the language conveys. Fourth, there is no room for interaction and negotiation of meaning. Fifth, audiolingualism does not allow for learning from mistakes.

A behaviourist view has some positive points:

* the emphasis on the important part played by parents and teachers in setting appropriate learning conditions and ensuring particular kinds of behavioural consequences.

* the notion of reinforcement as a powerful influence in shaping human behaviour does have a great deal to commend it though.

Perhaps the strongest indictment of behaviorism has been that it is only concerned with observable behaviour. Behaviourism denies the importance of a fundamental element in the learning process, the sense that learners themselves seek to make of their worlds.

Group 10: Denise Laspoumaderes, Natalia Zas, Melina Della Monica and Cecilia Nocetti

Application of behaviourist principles to ELT

The behaviourist approach to language teaching

Behaviourism tried to explain all learning in terms of some form of conditioning.

Stimulus > Response > Reinforcement

In the behaviourist view, language is elicited by a stimulus and that stimulus then triggers a response. The response in turn then produces some kind of reinforcement, which, if positive, encourages the repetition of the response in the future or, if negative, its suppression.

Most audio-lingual courses consisted of short dialogues and sets of recorded drills. Method was based on a behaviourist approach, which held that language is acquired by habit formation. Based on assumption that foreign language is basically a mechanical process and it is more effective if spoken form precedes written form. The stress was on oral proficiency and carefully- structured drill sequences (mimicry/memorisation) and the idea that quality and permanence of learning are in direct proportion to amount of practice carried out.

When behaviourism takes place in a language class using the audiolingual approach1 to language teaching, we can notice certain characteristics:

*The learners have a passive role because they are directed to respond to stimulus. For example, students listening to a mini-dialogue and they repeat.

* There is little active engagement in analysing language – “May I go to the toilet?” is not analysed by the student. Students know that they must say that in order to be allowed to go to the toilet-. And there is no room for interaction and negotiation of meaning. As it is based on repetition, speech is standardised and pupils turn into parrots who can reproduce many things but never create anything new or spontaneous.

* There is little concern for what goes on inside the learner’s head. Regardless of the process, the educator is only concern about the ultimate product: for example, the examination result.

* It doesn’t allow for learning from mistakes because its emphasisis is on correct responses. Mistakes are not considered part of the process but a failure.

* The steps involved in the audiolingual approach are: presentation, practice, repetition and drills. For example, a first lesson of French:

Teacher: Je suis Cecile.

St 1: Je suis Marie.

St 2: Je suis Natalie.

Teacher: Comment Ça va? (Bien)

Teacher: Comment Ça va Natalie?

Teacher: Comment Ça va Marie?

A small part of the foreign language is presented as a stimulus, to which the learner responds, for example, by repetition or substitution. This is followed by reinforcement by the teacher.

* According to the response, the reinforcement is negative or positive, that is to say it will be punished (for example, as in “The Simpsons” where Bart is constantly punished by Skinner, the headmaster, by having to write a hundred times a certain phrase “Imust not laugh at the teacher”) or rewarded by the teacher. Example: Very Good!

What’s the role of the teacher and what’s the role of the learner in the behaviourist class?

What are the steps in an audiolingual class?

This model has its flaws. Can you explain which these flaws are?

Williams, Marion and Robert L. Burden. 1997. Psychology for language teachers: A social constructivist approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1

“Audio-lingual Audio-visual method”. Second language acquisition. Available www.aber.ac.uk/education-odl/seclangaqu.html/

“Behaviourism” Available www.sculptsock.ndirect.co.uk

Group 7: Mercedes Kelly, Marina Goldberg and Gabriel Rojo

Principles of Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology is concerned with the way in which the human mind thinks and learns. It is interested in the mental processes that are involved in learning. This includes aspects such as how people build up their memories, how they use their memory, and the ways in which they become involved in the process of learning.
In recent years cognitive psychology has had a considerable influence on language teaching methodology. The study of the brain and intensive work in cognitive psychology have resulted in a significant shift in orientation away from the behaviourist principles that once dominated educational thought and practice. Habit formation and observable outcomes are being replaced by an emphasis on meaningfulness and process. For the behavioural psychologist, the student is considered to be a relatively passive subject, to be manipulated through reinforcement techniques and drill. The cognitive psychologist, in contrast, sees students as active participants in the learning situation, controlling and shaping their own learning processes, using various mental strategies in order to sort out the system of the language to be learned. In the behaviourist classroom the student responds to stimuli and reinforcement, while in a classroom based on cognitive psychology, the student's own internal motiva
rocess.

In your ficha de catedra, page 14, you have a language exercise applying cognitive psychology. In it, learners are required to use their minds to observe, think, categorise and hypothesise, and in this way to gradually work out how the language operates.

Glover and Bruning (1987) have summarised some major principles of cognitive psychology as they relate to instruction:
1. Students are active processors of information.
2. Learning is most likely to occur when information is made meaningful to students (elaborating on the material being learned results in better learning).
3. How students learn may be more important than what they learn.
Examples: new material is learned better when it's organised by the learner, as it requires an interaction between the learner's existing knowledge and the new material.
Practice should be spaced out in time, not done all at once.
The learning environment should have similar characteristics to the performance environment, because the context in which people learn is very important.

4. Cognitive processes become automatic with repeated use.
5. The most enduring motivation for learning is internal motivation.

Foreign language teachers can apply these principles in the classroom as they engage their students in meaningful situations and make them full participants in the communication of the classroom. They can work together with teachers across the curriculum to help children understand what it is they need to learn and how their own learning best takes place- to help children become aware of the process of language acquisition and to enjoy their own progress. At the very beginning of a language sequence, for example, children can learn the importance of paying careful attention to both the language and the context in which it occurs, a first step in the process of understanding their own learning.

Finally, we will say that the ways in which human thought has been investigated have varied considerably. At one extreme are Information Theorists who have drawn the analogy of the brain as a highly complex computer and who seek to explain its workings in terms of rules and models of how different aspects of learning take place. At the other extreme is the Constructivist movement, growing mainly out of the work of Jean Piaget. Psychologists taking this approach have been mainly concerned with ways in which individuals come to make their own sense of the world. (These different approaches will be described in greater detail by other groups).

Sources:
"Language and Children: Making the match" by Curtain, Helena and Carol Ann Pesola (1994)
"Psychology for language teachers: a social constructivist approach" by Wiliams, Marion and Robert L. Burden (1997)
"Principles from cognitive psychology for improving asynchronous learning"
By Stephen Balfour (Phd) College of Liberal Arts, Texas, A y M university
http://clla.tamu.edu/effectiveteaching/eightprinciples/index_files/frame.htm

Group 4: Piemonte, Cicala, Penacca, Anaya and Perez.

Information Processing

What is information?

“Information” is a pattern or form that can depend on matter or energy. Patterns can be saved in different media; they can be transformed into new patterns and then restored; they can interact with other patterns to produce new patterns; they can be changed and they can be simplified. Seeing something is identifying a pattern of light. Listening to a sentence is responding to a pattern of sound. Reading a sentence is responding to a pattern of marks organized into a pattern of letters and words. In these cases, the intensity of the energy that carries the pattern is not informative of the pattern itself.

“Information processing” is the study of the flow of information from one location to another and how it gets transformed, reconstituted, or interfered with.

The idea about studying mental activity and the mind has been round for a lot longer, about 100 years. If this is the case, an interesting question is why did it take so long for cognitive psychology as a discipline to develop? It is probably true to say that conditions or methods for studying the mind were not refined enough. Introspection was one such method and was used so that researchers could get an idea of how a person thought they were performing a task. However, it soon became clear that there are many problems with this method, for example:

· mental activity is only available to person doing it so it can’t be checked or verified

· there were the inevitable different accounts of same event

· it may be that we alter what we’re doing when we introspecting, for example look at the pictures below. If I ask you to introspect on the effortless process of looking at a face it is possible that the normal smooth pattern of eye movements would be disrupted by you thinking about how you look at the picture.

· It also assumes that all important mental activities are conscious processes and are open to introspection. Of course we now know that this is not true.

These sorts of criticisms of the method led to the development of behaviourism. Behaviourism was against studying human behaviour with methods like introspection. Behaviourism dominated psychology for around 50 years. After the second world war its influence became less strong. There were a number of reasons for this. Psychologists became more and more interested in the internal factors that were involved in controlling behaviour. With the second world war the types of problems that people were interested in start to change, there was an interest in studying human performance and perception in complex situations and environments i.e. straight from war situations. Suddenly, new concepts like attention and skill became interesting again.

During the 1950s information theory was popular in mathematics. The theory was taken and used by psychologists to explain how people could act as information transmission devices. Information Theory itself declined but some basic ideas remained:

• people are processors of information and meaning.
• cognitive processes rely on feedback and control.

This left a framework used by psychologists today called the Information Processing Approach

“Attention” can be defined as an internal cognitive process by which one actively selects environmental information (ie. sensation) or actively processes information from internal sources (ie. visceral cues or other thought processes). In more general terms, attention can be defined as an ability to focus and maintain interest in a given task or idea, including managing distractions.

William James, a 19th century psychologist, explains attention as follows: "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought...It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others...”

Attention is often considered a core cognitive process, a basis on which to study other cognitive processes; most importantly learning. Research by developmental psychologists has shown that children’s ability to focus their attention improves with age. However, it is also clear that different kinds of stimuli will be more effective in gaining attention and keeping it. DeGangi and Porges (1990) illustrate only "when a person is actively engaged in voluntary attention, functional purposeful activity and learning can occur." Poor attention is often a key symptom of behaviour disorders such as learning disorders. So if learners have considerable difficulty in paying attention to their work, this will have a negative effect on their learning.

Information Processing Theory (G. Miller)

The first concept in Miller’s theory is "chunking" and the capacity of short term memory. Miller (1956) presented the idea that short-term memory could only hold 5-9 chunks of information. A chunk could refer to digits, words, chess positions, or people's faces.

The second concept is TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit). Miller suggested that TOTE should replace the stimulus-response as the basic unit of behavior. In a TOTE unit, a goal is tested to see if it has been achieved and if not an operation is performed to achieve the goal; this cycle of test-operate is repeated until the goal is eventually achieved or abandoned.

The classic example of chunks is the ability to remember long sequences of binary numbers. For example, the sequence 0010 1000 1001 1100 1101 1010 could easily be remembered as 2 8 9 C D A. Of course, this would only work for someone who can convert binary to hexadecimal numbers (i.e., the chunks are "meaningful").

The classic example of a TOTE is a plan for hammering a nail. The Exit Test is whether the nail is flush with the surface. If the nail sticks up, then the hammer is tested to see if it is up (otherwise it is raised) and the hammer is allowed to hit the nail.

1. Short term memory (or attention span) is limited to seven chunks of information.

2. Planning (in the form of TOTE units) is a fundamental cognitive process.

3. Behavior is hierarchically organized (e.g., chunks, TOTE units).

The basic idea of Information Processing can be seen in the diagram. The process starts with a stimulus being presented, this can be an environmental event such as a problem or task. Certain internal cognitive processes then occur on the stimulus. These processes then produce the required response or answer.

The information processing approach assumes two things.

1. Bottom-up processing
The first assumption of the information processing approach was that stimulus was being presented to an inactive and unprepared organism i.e. that although processing occurred on the stimuli, it was directly affected by the stimulus input.

Read out loud the phrase in the triangle.

What did you say? If you said “Paris in the spring” look more carefully. What it actually says is “Paris in the the spring”.

How did you make that mistake? Well, expectations that it is well-known phrase (top-down processes) overrides information actually available to you (bottom-up processes).

• bottom-up processing is driven by incoming data/stimuli
• top-down processing is driven by prior knowledge

Although the processing is affected by the nature of the stimuli, it is also crucially affected by the individual’s own past experience, expectations, beliefs etc. It is now widely accepted that most cognition involves a mixture of both top-down and bottom-up processing

2. Serial processing
The second assumption of the information processing approach is to do with serial and parallel processing. Serial processing is the notion that one process is completed before the next one starts. This was the assumption of the early information processing approach. There is however, a different possibility, that of parallel processing which is where all of the processes that are involved when we complete a cognitive task occur at the same time. The brain has a large processing ability so it is therefore likely that when we are doing something like solving a problem or reasoning, parallel processing is being used.

So, some processes can occur together but others must wait until the completion of other processes.

Today, these ideas of parallel processing and top-down processes are accepted and incorporated into information processing models. So the modern information processing approach is essentially a symbol system. When doing a task the mind turns problems into symbols, then processes act on these symbols

Information Processing Model:

A perspective in which the human mind is likened to a computer

As the definition states, information processing is a perspective (approach) to the study of cognition and cognitive development in which the mind is likened to a computer. However, rather than focusing on mere input and output, psychologists who adhere to this approach place specific emphasis on the processes of cognitive development. Specific attention is given to the concepts of information processing as they relate to the study of cognitition.
Information enters the system via the receptors and then is transformed and operated on by the processors, some intervening outputs are temporarily stored and others are more permanently stored in memory.

Information processing systems:

All information processing systems seem to have these general components.
receptors--senses
processors--transform, interpret, integrate, select--attention, set, automatic and controlled processes.
memories--long term, short term
effectors--muscles, glands

Summary:
Cognitive psychology makes a number of assumptions:

humans are seen as active information processors

mental processes exist

these processes are linked to observable behaviours - eg. how long people take to do things, what sort of mistakes people make

What does Information Processing consider more important, “what” we learn or “how” we learn?

Which are the focus of work of information processing theorists?

(attention, perception and memory)

How did Cognitive Psychology emerge? Why not before?

Which are the first two concepts in Miller’s Information Processing Theory?

Why is attention so important for the work of information processing theorists?

· Bigio, Lidia, Psicología General, Módulo de Teóricos Nro 2, El Sujeto como Arquitectura Funcional Sub-personal y Sub-paradigma del Procesamiento de Información

http://www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/Areas/Developmental/InfoProcessView/

http://www.educationau.edu.au/archives/cp/04h.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/informationprocessing

Group 5: Cecilia Bernoi, Verónica Besteiro, Sabrina De Domenico, María Julia Ferrari, Lilian Gitto and Bridget Moravec

The Role of Memory and Intelligence

Memory is another area studied inside the information-processing theory.

In 1968 Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed a model of human memory which posited two distinct memory stores: short-term memory, and long-term memory. Later a third memory store was added: sensory memory.

Information enters the human information processing system via a variety of channels associated with the different senses. But because of a limited processing ability at the higher levels, most incoming information cannot be immediately dealt with. However, this information is held briefly in a very temporary “buffer” memory, making it possible to attend to some of it a bit later, as when you can still hear someone asking you a question even though you weren't really listening when they asked it. This buffer memory is called sensory memory.

Sensory memory is really many sensory memory systems, one associated with each sense. For example, there is a sensory memory for vision, called iconic memory, and one for audition (hearing), called echoic memory. Here are some characteristics of these two sensory memory systems:

Capacity: Essentially that of the visual system (Sperling)

Duration: About 0.5 to 1.0 seconds (Sperling)

Processing: None additional beyond raw perceptual processing

Duration: About 4 to 5 seconds

Processing: None additional beyond raw perceptual processing

Short-term Memory (STM) or "Working Memory"

Information that is attended to arrives in another temporary store called short-term or working memory. In general information in working memory is information you are conscious of and can work with. Some characteristics of STM are:

Capacity: About 7 plus or minus 2 "chunks" of information (Miller, 1956)

Duration: About 18 to 20 seconds (Peterson & Peterson, 1959)

Processing: To hold information in STM, it is often encoded verbally, although other strategies may also be used such as visualisation. These strategies make it possible to "rehearse" the information.

George Miller defined a "chunk" as an independent item of information. Random letters such as "GJK" would each be considered a chunk, but letters that form a recognisable larger whole, such as "CAR" would not.

Information that enters STM fades away, or decays as soon as it is no longer attended to. Because of the small capacity of working memory, it can be compared to a bucket with holes in it, through which events pass without being recorded.

Long-term Memory (LTM)

Long-term memory is the relatively permanent memory store in which you hold information even when you are no longer attending to it. Storing information in LTM is equivalent to a computer writing information out to its hard drive, or to a tape recorder writing patterns of magnetisation onto tape to record music. The recording process is called storage and the "playback" process, retrieval. Here are some properties of LTM:

Capacity: Virtually unlimited

Duration: Up to a lifetime

Processing: Information is organised according to meaning and is associatively linked.

Capacity is unlimited in the sense that nobody seems to run out of the capacity to store new information, even if they live beyond 100 years. If they did, then either they would stop learning entirely or new learning could only take place by first erasing something already stored in LTM. This does not appear to happen, when storage/retrieval capability is lost it is due to deterioration of brain systems rather than to systems exceeding their holding capacity.

Memory and Education

Memory is particularly important in learning. One of the main problems language learners face is memorising vocabulary. The most common way of doing so is by rehearsal, which may take the form of simple repetition or association of meaning to what is to be remembered.

Repetition or rote rehearsal is a technique we all use to try to “learn” something. However, in order to be effective this must be done after forgetting begins. Researchers advise that the learner should not repeat immediately the content, but wait a few minutes and then repeat. For the most part, simply memorising something does not lead to learning. We all have anecdotal evidence that we can remember something we memorised (a poem for example), but just think about all the material we tried to learn this way and the little we are able to remember after six months or a year.

An intriguing and apparently successful application of memory research to foreign language learning is the use of the Linkword method. This technique involves linking words in both the first and the second language to construct a picture in the mind.

Another helpful strategy is what the cognitive psychologist David Ausubel calls Advance Organisers. By this he means some kind of topical introduction to a lesson that orientates learners to the subject matter and relates new learning to what the learner already knows. Such introduction is of course more general and abstract than the material that is to be learned.

Therefore, the principal function of advance organisers is to act as a bridge between what learners already know and what they need to know.

Most people assume that intelligence is fixed at birth and has no change after about the age of five. It is also believed that intelligence predicts success or failure in school.

This concept leads to the segregation of some children into special schools and it was taken up by pshychometricians who looked for ways to measure ‘g’ factor. The belief in the unchanging nature of intelligence has also led to the development of intelligence tests (I.Q.). These views dominated the development in the 1950s, when learning ability was measured. Language learning ability and I.Q. tests may be critised in the sense that they assume aptitude or intelligence to be fixed, thus placing limitations on the way we view learners and consequently the way we treat them.

In his book ‘Frame of Mind’, Howard Gardner argues that there are different kinds of intelligence in children and adults. These are:

He also claims that there are individual differences between children from the moment they start using the language and that different languages require different kinds of brain functioning. For instance, the phonologically based writing system of Western countries requires auditory processing to develop literacy skills. In the Orient, visual processing is more important because written language is based on pictograms. Gardner also states that there are different kinds of linguistic intelligence depending on people’s different cultural backgrounds.

Another definition refers to the ability to adapt effectively to the environment, either by making a change in oneself or by changing the environment or finding a new one.Much of the excitement among investigators in the field of intelligence derives from their trying to determine exactly what intelligence is. Different investigators have emphasized different aspects of intelligence. For example, Lewis Terman emphasized the ability to think abstractly, while Edward Thorndike emphasized learning and the ability to give good responses to questions. However, psychologists generally agreed on the importance of adaptation to the environment as the key to understanding both what intelligence is and what it does. Such adaptation may occur in a variety of environmental situations. For example, a student in school learns the material that is required to pass or do well in a course; a physician treating a patient with an unfamiliar disease adapts by learning about the disease. For the most part, adapting involves making a change in oneself in order to cope more effectively, but sometimes effective adaptation involves either changing the environment or finding a new environment altogether. Effective adaptation draws upon a number of cognitive processes, such as perception, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. The main trend in defining intelligence, then, is that it is not itself a cognitive or mental process, but rather a selective combination of these processes purposively directed toward effective adaptation to the environment.

Philip Vernon agrees that intelligence is not a unitary concept. His proposal consists of thinking of Intelligence A, B and C.

Intelligence A represents our innate intelligence, which varies from one individual to another, except in the case of identical twins. This kind of intelligence cannot be measured. Intelligence B is the one involved in our daily life and it changes continually. It can be measured by the appropriateness of a person’s behaviour in different situations. Intelligence C is measured by I.Q. tests and it’s dependent upon the validity of the particular I.Q. test employed.

Beginning in the 1960's, Vernon became increasingly involved in studying the contributions of environmental and genetic factors to intellectual development. In Intelligence: Heriditary and Environment (1979), (Vernon's self-proclaimed culmination of fifty years of work) Vernon continued to analyze the effects of genes and the environment on both individual and group differences in intelligence. He concludes that individual differences in intelligence are approximately 60 percent attributable to genetic factors, and that there is some evidence implicating genes in racial groiup differences in average levels of mental ability.

It would be wrong to refer to Vernon as a hereditarian, however. He recognized the importance of both genetic and environmental factors, and went to great lengths to clarify that the nature-nurture debate should more properly consider the interaction between the two. The London Times, stated in its obituary:

Vernon was probably the most critical member of the (London) school, and the least partisan; his integrity, honesty and impartiality were universally recognized.... Always critical but always fair, he seemed the embodiment of the ideal scientist.

The triarchic theory is a general theory of human intelligence. Much of Sternberg's early research focused on analogies and syllogistic reasoning. Sternberg has used the theory to explain exceptional intelligence (gifted and retardation) in children and also to critique existing intelligence tests. Sternberg (1983) outlines the implications of the theory for skill training. Later work examines topics such as learning styles (Sternberg, 1997) and creativity (Sternberg, 1999).

Sternberg (1985) describes the results of various analogy experiments that support the triarchic theory. For example, in a study that involved adults and children solving simple analogies, he found that the youngest children solved the problems differently and theorized that this was because they had not yet developed the ability to discern higher order relations. In another study of analogies with children at a Jewish school, he discovered a systematic bias towards selection of the first two answers on the right and suggested that this could be accounted for by the right-to-left reading pattern of Hebrew.

According to Sternberg intelligence has three aspects. These are not multiple intelligences, as in Gardener’s scheme. Where Gardner viewed the various intelligences as separate and independent, Sternberg posited three integrated and dependent aspects of intelligence. These aspects relate intelligence to what goes on internally within a person (analytical intelligence), to what goes on in the external world (practical intelligence), and to experience, which connects the internal and external worlds (creative intelligence).

The first aspect consists of the cognitive processes involved in planning and decision making.

The second aspect consists of the cognitive skills involved in real life problem solving. The theory holds that more intelligent persons are not those who can execute many cognitive processes quickly or well but those who know what their strengths and weaknesses are and capitalizing upon their strengths while compensating for their weaknesses.

The third aspect consists of the cognitive processes involved in dealing with novel stimuli and situations. For example, in the case of a person for whom an automobile is of critical importance, intelligence may be measured according to the way that person functions when the car is unavailable. Another facet of experience that is important in evaluating intelligence is the automatization of cognitive processing. The more a person is able to automatize the tasks of daily life, the more mental resources there are left to cope with novelty.

If we, as teachers, hold this view of intelligence, we then believe that we can help our students to become better at language learning.

“Educational Psychology Interactive: The Information Processing Approach.” Educational Psychology Interactive. Online. Internet. 7 Apr. 2004. Available http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/infoproc.html

“Human Memory: Atkinson-Shiffrin Model.” Users.ipfw. Online. Internet. 7 Apr. 2004. Available http://users.ipfw.edu/abbott/120/AtkinsonShifrin.html

Williams, Marion and Burden, Robert L. Psychology for Language Teachers: A Social Constructivist Approach 1997. Chapter 1: 16-20

“Perverse Access Memory: Education Isn’t Intelligence.” Whiterose. Online. Internet. 7 Apr. 2004. Available http://www.whiterose.org/pam/archives/004195.html

Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 – CD-ROM

“Intelligentintelligencetesting” http://www.apa/org/monitor/feb03/inteligent.html

Accessed 10 Apr. 2004

Armstrong, Thomas. Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1994 http://www.ThomasArmstrong.com/multiple intelligences

Accessed 10 Apr. 2004

“Human Intelligence: Philip E. Vernon” http://www.indiana.edu intell vernon.shtml.

Accessed 11 Apr.2004

http://tip.psychology.org/stern.html

Group 3: Letto, Isaurralde, Fernandez, Porro, Del Val

Jerome Bruner was born in 1915 in New York. He was educated at Duke University, and he got a PhD in Psychology at Harvard. During the 2nd World War he worked as a Social Psychology helping the US Army.

His main contribution to Psychology was to the appreciation of the process of education, the development of the "Curriculum Theory" (how the theacher organized the curriculum or "body of knowledge" to be grasped by the learner) and he was concerned with the practice of lifelong learning.

Jerome was one of the key figure in the "cognitive revolution", specially in the field of the education. The cognitive revolution speaks about 'how' do children learn instead of 'what' do children learn.

His main concepts are:

Representation: The ways learner represents the knowledge

Spiral Curriculum: How to organize the curriculum

Discovery Learning: Obtain Knowledge by themselves

There are three ways to represent knowledge, which emerge in a developmental sequence:

Enactive representation- At the earliest ages, children represent objects in terms of their immediate sensation of them. It represented in the muscles and involves motor responses, or ways to manipulate the environment (i.e. riding a bicycle and tying a knot).

Iconic representation- This involves the use of mental images that stand for certain objects or evens. Iconic representation allows one to recognize objects when they are changed in minor ways (e.g. mountains with and without snow at the top).

Symbolic representation-This uses symbol system to encode knowledge. Prominent symbol systems are language and mathematical notation.

Bruner emphasized teaching as a means of enhancing cognitive development.

Instruction: should be watched to children’s cognitive capabilities.

Instructor (teacher) has to transform the information to make it appropriate to the the learner’s current level of understanding.

Curriculum should be organized in a spiral way so that the learners continually builds upon what they have already learnt.

Teachers must revisit the curriculum by teaching the same contents but in different ways depending on the learner’s level of development.

Abstract to concrete movement.

Simpler to more complex information.

Discovering Learning

Learning is seen as an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their past knowledge. The learner is the one who selects and transforms information, construct hypothesis and make decisions. They go beyond the information given.

Bruner believed that learning becomes more meaningful when students explore their learning environment rather than listen passively to teachers. The role of the teacher is to encourage students to discover principles by themselves.

Group 6: Paz, Haberkorn and Marcela Perez

George Kelly began his career as an engineer, before becoming a clinical psychologist - which may explain his concern for precision. His work dates back to the 1930's and is based mainly on personality.

Kelly’s theory of personality is predicated on one axiom: that, as he put it, Man is a Scientist. In other words, from the dawn of consciousness each of us tries to make sense of the world as we experience it, and we do this by constantly forming and testing hypotheses about the world. By the time we are adults, we will have developed a very complex model of the world and our place m it: this model is, according to Kelly, our personality. Kelly’s theory of personal constructs develops this principle further - for example, by considering whether and how we modify our constructs when faced with contradictory information, what are our 'core constructs' — that is, the deeply-held values and principles which are unlikely to change, etc.

What is a construct?

The term construct is particularly well chosen, because it reflects the concept's dual role. On the one hand, your constructs represent the view you have constructed about the world as you experienced it. On the other hand your constructs indicate how you are likely to construe the world as you continue to experience it. Your construct system is your history and your predisposition to perceive.

For example, I’ve recently had a conversation with a friend who has the happy choice of at least four countries in which to spend her retirement. Talking about the criteria that would influence her choice, she said that one important criterion was the standard of care for the elderly and infirm. This was one of her constructs, and a very important one. It came as a complete surprise to me, because it had never been part of my construct system. When we talked about it, she said that several of her friends and relations had had long terminal illnesses and very different standards of care: and for the first time I realised that all the deaths I had known had been quick, and no-one had lingered in care. She had formed her construct on the basis of her experience, and that construct is one that she uses when thinking about countries to retire to. I didn't have that construct, because my experience was different from hers; and so I would not have used it when thinking about countries to retire to - at least, not until the conversation gave me the opportunity to modify my construct system.

Kelly’s full theory of personal constructs is very detailed but its main points are:

Our construct systems make our world more predictable

We use our construct systems to make the world easier to find our way around. Because we know that countries closer to the Equator are hotter than those at the Poles, we can make a better job of packing what to take to a journey to Mexico. Because we know that cars built in the 1970's were not built with economy in mind, we know better than to make fuel consumption the deciding criterion when looking to buy an old banger. If we know that when our partner behaves in a particular way it usually means that they’re feeling preoccupied, or loving, or harassed, then we adjust our expectations and our behaviour accordingly. Our construct systems reflect our constant efforts to make sense of our world, just as scientists make sense of their subject-matter: we observe, we draw conclusions about patterns of cause and effect and we behave according to those conclusions.

Our construct systems can grow and change

Our construct systems are not static. They are confirmed or challenged every moment we are conscious. If we believe that Arctic Airlines offers the best service in the world, and then we have a dreadful trip where everything goes wrong, we do one of two things: we either adapt our construct system, altering our feelings about them in the light of our experience; or we immunise our construct system, with thoughts like They must have been having a really bad day, or Yes, but the airport was so overcrowded they didn’t stand a chance. Whether we adapt or immunise depends on a number of things: how open we are to new information, how much it matters to us to maintain our belief in the superiority of Arctic Airlines, how important it is to us to have a lot of information about airlines anyway.

Our construct systems influence our expectations and perceptions

Also, if we're expecting Arctic Airlines to treat us well, we probably get on the plane in a better mood than we would on an airline that gave us poor treatment last time. If our experience is that Arctic's cabin staffs always smile when they meet us, we probably board the plane with a smile ourselves. We might not notice when Arctic's service fails to live up to standard, but pay attention when it happens with the other airline. Because our construct systems reflect our past experience, they also influence our expectations and behaviour.

Some constructs, and some aspects of our construct systems, are more important than others

The airline example repeats in every area of our experience. We feel, think, and behave according to our construct system, we adapt our constructs, immunise them, or have them confirmed. Some of our constructs - those which represent our core values and concern our key relationships - are complex, quite firmly fixed, wide-ranging, and difficult to change; others, about things which don't matter so much, or about which we haven't much experience are simpler, narrower and carry less personal commitment.

Your construct system is your truth as you understand and experience it - nobody else's

A person’s construct system represents the truth as they understand it. Construct systems cannot be judged in terms of their objective truth - whatever 'objective' means in the world of personal feelings and choices. When we meet someone whose construct system is different from our own - especially if we don't like it, or think it's wrong - we sometimes use words like prejudice or stereotype to convey our disagreement. We might try confronting them with opposing opinions or evidence, and get frustrated if we see them immunising their constructs instead of adapting them. But we have to accept that their system has worked, more or less, for them so far, and that if it is different from ours then that is a reflection of the fact that they've had different experiences, different reactions, and see different things as important.

Construct systems are not always internally consistent

People can and do live with a degree of internal inconsistency within their construct systems. At the simplest level, many of us encounter this as small children when we hear an adult say 'This hurts me more than it hurts you,' and wonder why, under those circumstances, they don't stop doing it. At the more complex level, we observe this when we encounter someone whose self-perception seems to be at odds with reality, who seems to present different faces in different circumstances. Most people live with a certain level of inconsistency that does them no harm; but when the distortions of judgement become too costly or inappropriate the person (and/or those around them) is likely to suffer some form of personal distress.

The extent to which one person can understand another's construct system is a measure of that person's empathy

You do not have to have the same construct system as another person in order to understand them: but you do have to be able to infer the other person's construct system The simple example is when one mate says to another 'After a day like you've just had, I thought you'd like chicken soup.' and is rewarded with a grateful smile. Most of the advice on how to get on with other people, for whatever purpose, is reducible to the prayer to the Blessed Spirit to grant that I might not condemn my neighbour until I have walked a mile in his moccasins - or, as Kelly might have put it, his construct system.

IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION

Kelly wrote very little about education, but his ideas have been taken up by a small group of
educational psychologists (Pope and Keen, Thomas & Harri - Augstein and Salmon), who have set out clearly some important implications of taking personal construct approach to teaching and learning.
First, a clear distinction is made between meaningful and meaningless learning activities. Worthwhile learning does not entail the reception of ready-made facts, must involve the building of new personal meanings and understandings. Only by developing our own understanding of the world is it possible for us to change and develop. To translate this into language learning, language is not learned by the mere memorization of discrete items of grammar, discourse, function or other aspects of language. Rather, learners are involved in an active process of making sense, of creating their own understanding of the world of language that surrounds them. A meaningful activity in Kelly’s sense is one that encourages this process of making sense, of fitting or mapping the new onto the old to create a new understanding.

Second, as Salmon points out, though each of us inhabits a unique experiential world, if it is to be a social world, we must find ways of reaching a common understanding together with others. The human enterprise depends on a shared reality. Teachers and learners are just as much involved in learning about each other and trying to achieve some kind of shared understanding of what is happening in their classrooms. Moreover, 'the teaching-learning encounter is essentially a meeting between the personal constructions, the subjective realities of teacher and pupil. This means that we cannot understand school learning without acknowledging both sorts of reality'.

Third, it is also important for teachers to realise that although a syllabus or curriculum may be set down precisely for them, it inevitably becomes shaped by them into something personal which reflects their own belief systems, their thoughts and feelings about both the content of their lessons and their learners_, and their view of the world in general,. In addition to this, the curriculum that they actual deliver becomes itself interpreted in different ways by their learners, so that the whole learning experience becomes a shared enterprise. Emotions must, therefore, be considered as an integral part of learning, as also must the particular life contexts of those who are involved in the teaching-learning process.

	Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"):
	Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
	Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
	Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
	Musical intelligence ("music smart")
	Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
	Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
	Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")