Aligning Instructional Practice

	RECALL KNOWLEDGE	APPLICATION KNOWLEGE	PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE
Subject Matter
Lesson Objectives
Assessment
Instruction

Aligning instructional practice with cognitive psychology is accomplished by having subject matter, lesson objectives and assessment categorized in terms of the empirically-based instructional strategies for categories derived from theory and research in cognitive psychology. Abundant research has identified instructional strategies that are very effective for teaching subject matter categorized as Recall Knowledge. It is the same for the categories of Application Knowledge and Procedural Knowledge.

Unfortunately the term instructional alignment has too often been defined narrowly as a fit between lesson objectives and the testing used in assessing student mastery of those objectives [1]. One would assume that a book published in 2001, entitled, Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing [2], would provide explicit specifications for designing and carrying out teaching that is intended to help students learn. It actually provides fairly specific guidelines for assessment and only very broad descriptions of instructional procedures. The authors justify their lack of specificity about instructional procedures by their stated belief that researchers have failed to identify effective, empirically-based instructional strategies in the last four decades, and probably never will. That is a very pessimistic view of the possibilities of using cognitive science to improve the effectiveness of instructional practice. But with the way they designed their taxonomy that might well be true. By contrast, the proposed paradigm is designed to provide explicit specifications for empirically-based instructional strategies by its intentional alignment with cognitive psychology and its theory and immense body of relevant research.

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1 (For example). Cohen, S.A. (1987). Instructional alignment: Searching for the magic bullet. Educational Researcher, 16(8), 16-20.

2. Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.M., Pintrich, R.P., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing. New York: Longman.

Three Categories of Instructional Practice

The paradigm contains three categories of instructional practice: Recall Knowledge, Application Knowledge and Procedural Knowledge. The three categories have a hierarchical relationship. The lowest-order cognitive process of Recall Knowledge is involved in learning the higher-order process of Application Knowledge, and Recall and Application Knowledge are involved in learning the highest-order process of Procedural Knowledge. There is a wide range of complexity within each category.

Recall Knowledge refers to retrieving information encoded in long-term memory in much the same way it was presented as a sensory input.

Application Knowledge refers to recognizing whether novel objects and actions are examples of a generalization (or principle, or theorem, or schema, etc.). It involves transfer from previously encoded information to novel information that is presented. Novelty refers to examples and non-examples of a generalization the student has not seen before, ones not previously associated with the generalization. For instance, novel examples and non-examples of the generalization photosynthesis might be pictures of various animals and plants that the student has not previously been told are examples or not of photosynthesis, and is asked to identify whether each is an example or not, and to justify each choice. Research indicates that much science instruction intended for Application Knowledge amounts to nothing more than memorizing facts (which is Recall Knowledge), and that students do not believe those memorized rules apply to the real novel world [1].

Procedural Knowledge refers to enacting the action steps that are appropriate for solving a novel problem. It involves transfer from previously encoded information to novel information presented as a problem to be solved. A novel problem is a version of a problem students have not been asked to solve before. It might be as simple as a problem for two-place addition in columns containing numbers that are different from the numbers in the problems students have been asked to solve before. The teacher does not name the type of problem it is. Students must be able to recognize the kind of problem it is, otherwise it would not be a novel problem. Procedural Knowledge ranges from conscious and labored, step-by-step enactment to unconscious, automatic enactment of action steps. Inadequate instruction for Procedural Knowledge is seen in the evidence that graduates from college engineering programs are frequently unable to apply much of the knowledge they presumably learned when they are asked to solve actual engineering problems they encounter outside of school [2], which are novel problems for them.

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1 Songer, N.B. & Linn, M.C. (1991). How do students’ views of science influence knowledge integration? Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Vol. 28, 761-784.

2 Polson, P.G. & Jeffries, R. (1985). Instruction in general problem solving skills: An analysis of four approaches. In J.W. Segal, S.F. Chipman, & R. Glaaser (Eds). Thinking and learning skills, (1). (pp. 417-455). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

New Paradigm of Instructional Practice

A paradigm is a basic way of viewing a phenomenon, and a paradigm shift is a change in that view. Copernicus in 1543 published the heliocentric theory of the universe that identified the sun as the center, with the Earth moving around it. It eventually replaced the geocentric view that the Earth was at the center, which had been proposed by Ptolemy about 150 A.D. The two paradigms accounted for the same components, the Earth, sun and planets, but viewed their relationship differently. The instructional paradigm proposed here has the same components as a traditional instructional paradigm—subject matter content, objectives, assessment and instructional strategies. But it views those components from the perspective of theory and research in cognitive psychology rather than from the traditional perspective of the methods and processes of the discipline being studied. Designs of the components of instruction are guided by a research-based cognitive theory of how productive instructional strategies work [1].

Cognitive psychology is concerned with the manner in which our cognitive structures are organized and operate [2]. Sensory input information is received and held for fractions of a second in working memory, and then elements of that inputted information are related to other information and encoded into long-term memory. Later that information is retrieved and utilized in some way. If none of the information is encoded in long-term memory, no learning has occurred [3]. A student might listen to an hour of entertaining explanation about some topic, but if he or she has not encoded the information being presented in long-term memory then no learning has occurred. Learning is capturing and cataloguing information not previously encoded in a way that it can be retrieved later. It is retrieved as declarative knowledge or procedural knowledge.

The proposed paradigm aligns the components of instructional practice--subject matter, objectives, assessment and instruction--with cognitive psychology by identifying three cognitive categories, two kinds for declarative knowledge and one for procedural knowledge. The three cognitive categories are Recall Knowledge and Application Knowledge--for declarative knowledge--and Procedural Knowledge. The subject matter to be taught, the objective for that subject matter, and the appropriate assessment for that objective are categorized in terms of the empirically-based instructional strategies teachers will use in helping students acquire the knowledge identified in the subject matter and objective. For example, here are sample objectives: Recall Knowledge of the three parts of leaves; Application Knowledge of electromagnetic induction; and, Procedural Knowledge of solving problems involving simple electric circuits wired in parallel. The assessment task for the application knowledge objective would be appropriate for both the content to be learned and application knowledge assessment tasks. Instruction would be appropriate for the subject matter, the assessment task, and empirically-based instructional strategies for application knowledge.

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1 Clark, R.E., and Mayer, R.E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

2 Anderson, J.R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

3 Kirschner, P.A., Sweller, J. and Clark, R.E.(2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experimental, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86.

Unproductive Instructional Reform

We homo sapiens (Latin: wise man) are truly unique creatures with our large, highly developed brains, capable of learning whatever is necessary to flourish in any complex society into which we are born. From time immemorial older and wiser humans have taught us largely by explanation. There is a strong intuitive logic behind it, using language to impart information. Not surprisingly, the most common instructional method used by teachers at all levels of schooling today is explanation [1]. Research shows the relative ineffectiveness of instructional explanations, particularly when they are not tailored to each individual student’s prior knowledge, do not require the active task participation of each student, and do not provide each student with guidance that is appropriate for his or her task performance [2].

Even though educational reforms are being actively pursued, they have involved mostly tinkering with institutional arrangements that have little impact on instruction and learning in the classroom, such as: publicly supported vouchers and charter schools; generous state income tax credits for individual and corporate contributions to public, private and religious schools; home schooling; decentralizing school systems so principals control budgets, set incentives and hire and fire teachers; computer-based online schools; college graduates who majored in academic subjects, and with virtually no training, are teaching school; and, high stakes assessment like the federal No Child Left Behind program that tests students’ minimal achievement, while ignoring average and above-average students who can pass the tests pretty much without instructional assistance—with one expected result being that American schools spend 10 times as much on educating the mentally retarded as educating the gifted [3].

Instructional productivity in schools has not dramatically increased since the dim and distant past for much the same reason medicine’s productivity did not increase much from the time of Hippocrates into the 19^th century. Typical medical treatments during that long period consisted of inducing vomiting or diarrhea, and bleeding. There was an intuitive logic behind that; they seemed to be ridding the body of its ills. Medicine’s productivity improved dramatically when its treatments began to be based on science [4]. A similar dramatic increase in instructional productivity can be expected when educators figure out how to base instruction on one of its most basic sciences, cognitive psychology—which can provide an abundance of relevant theory and research. In this blog I will suggest a paradigm that aligns cognitive psychology with the subject matter content and process to be taught, lesson objectives, assessment, and teaching.

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1 Goodlad, J. (1984). A place called school: Prospects for the future. New York: McGraw-Hill.

2. Wittwer, J., and Renkl, A. (2008). Why instructional explanations often do not work: A framework for understanding the effectiveness of instructional explanations. Educational Psychology, 43, (1), pp. 49-64.

3 Cloud, J. (2007). Failing our geniuses. Time, August 27, pp. 41-46.

4. Leonhardt, D. (2009). Dr James will make it better. The New York Times Magazine., November 8,pp. 30-37

Need for Real Instructional Reform

In spite of the United States spending over 6.7 percent of its GDP on education, elementary through university, the most spent by any of the other Group of Eight nations, students in the U.S. performed in the middle to lower middle of students in other G-8 countries on international tests of reading, mathematics and science. Moreover the U.S. awarded the lowest number of first university degrees in science, mathematics and engineering-related fields, and the highest number of first degrees in arts and humanities [1]. The G-8 countries are among the world’s most economically developed countries, our leading global economic partners and competitors.

On international science achievement tests of fourth and eighth grade students in 46 countries, U.S. students ranked from 4^th to 22^nd [2]. The U.S. increased its per-pupil spending over ten times from 1921 to 1996 in constant 1982-1984 dollars, from $399 in 1921 to $4,090 in 1966—the last years for which figures were given [3]. Testing by the National Assessment of Educational Progress of fourth, eighth and twelfth-grade students from all over the U.S. found virtually no improvement in achievement between 1966 and 2005 in science, mathematics, reading and writing [4]

The relatively dismal achievement of students in spite of increased spending is not a unique problem of the United States. Reports by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--rich countries representing 87 percent of the world economy--show they have also been pouring money and political energy into education [5]. Average spending rose by almost two-fifths in real terms between 1995 and 2004. But the latest report by the International Student Assessment shows the average achievement of over 400,000 students in reading, mathematics and science has remained largely flat. While comparable achievement data are not available for training programs in business and industry, there is no reason to expect them to be any more effective than those in education for which we have abundant data.

The instructional reforms that have been tried through out the developed world over the last half century have not been effective in dramatically increasing student achievement. In order to do so, we must take the road yet un-traveled. That is the purpose of this blog

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1 Miller, D.C., Sen, A., Malley, L.B., and Burns, S.D. (2009). (NCES 2009-039). Comparative indicators of education in the United States and other G-8 countries: 2009. National Center for Educational Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, Department of Education. Washington, D.C.

2 Martin, M.O., Mullis, I.V.S., Gonzalez, S.J., and Chrostowski, S.J. (2003). TIMSS & PRILS. International Study Center, Boston College.

3 Carter, S.B. (Ed.). (2006) Historical statistics of the United States. Cambridge University Press.

4 National Assessment of Educational Progress. (2009). U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Educational Sciences.

5 The race is not always to the richest. The Economist, (2007, December 8), pp. 69-70.