Psychology of Children's Education - Case Study Example

1. The offered scenario should be carefully analyzed in terms of: participants' ages, relationship, motivation and willingness to interact, and domain of knowledge. Robbie is at the age of eight when children's interest and curiosity are at the highest level. He shows genuine intrinsic interest and motivation for knowledge acquisition. Children at this age have very little life experience and thus prior knowledge is insufficient for the building of deeply logical concepts. Therefore, what Robbie did was both motivated by his age and his affection to his baby-brother. From his words it seems that he had understood very well the gist of the conversation and its message that letting babies sleep with their milk bottles can cause ear infection. Of course his prior knowledge in the matter is very scarce or none but by initially assimilating the idea and then verbalizing it to his mother, who takes the role of the authoritative, knowledgeable person in his life, Robbie activates this passive knowledge by constructing a logical connection based on his prior knowledge of how usually milk drips into one's ear from the perspective of a child and prior experience, perhaps, that is from the mouth through the cheek to the ear, turning it into a statement of explicit knowledge. The mother, who does know the issue quite well, that is she is an expert in the specific domain of knowledge, treats Robbie's statement as a nave concept and tries to reconstruct his knowledge by direct correction of the misconcepted idea. Robbie experiences a concept conflict, which, instead of leading to a process of new knowledge constructing, due to the mothers' attitude and approach, ends in a kind of defensive position demonstrated in his determination not to give up his beliefs, resembling the kind of assimilative peer interaction known as 'stonewalling' (Chan et al., 1997). However, the strategy Robbie applies to comprehend the new information is not only assimilation, that is direct adding of new concepts, but also metacognition, because he managed to reflect on his own learning and put conscious efforts in accommodating the novel information within his personal system of knowledge.. The mother's behavior causes a concept crisis and tension arises between them. Not only her attitude, but also the use of "the Eustachian tube", a new piece of information for Robbie, which was just dropped without any further elaboration or clarification, leads to their argument. The expression must have gone beyond the ultimate level of comprehension of Robbie. Judging by his strong reaction he must have felt quite uncomfortable. Thus he does something quite typical of young learners - rejection. But later on when he spoke to his father, surprisingly enough, we see him with changed opinion and already assimilated new concept. What did actually happen How come this young boy fully comprehended such a complex issue I presume that by using the strategy of knowledge-building and self-reflection he replaced the contents of his schemas. But the final result of it led to surface structuring of his knowledge due to the application of imitation and copying practices by virtue of the little prior knowledge and caused by the more authoritative and expert individuals taking part into the learning event. We cannot say for sure that Robbie asked his father in order to validate his comprehension and reject his mother's, and only after he received a suggestive, friendly answer, he did accept the new concept; or that he had assimilated his mother's comprehension and just looked for validation from his father as the next authoritative figure in the family. For either suggestion I think Robbie failed to comprehend fully the new concept, because none of his parents did provide him with the needed details on the new issue and did facilitate his learning. 2. (1) In "Knowledge building as a mediator" (Chan et al., 1997), the authors identify two approaches of concept comprehension in unfamiliar domain applied by learners: direct assimilation and knowledge building: Direct assimilation involves fitting new information directly into existing knowledge, whereas knowledge building involves learners treating new concepts as something problematic that they need to explain (Chan et al., 1997, p. 37) In the afore-analyzed scenario Robbie applied both approaches. When he heard the two adult's conversation he directly added (direct assimilation) the new concept of "ear infection" to his background knowledge. When his mother mentioned "the Eustachian tube" to him, he reflected on the new concept and viewed it as problematic since it conflicted with his prior knowledge (knowledge-building activity). As a result he rejected it as possible because none of the adults had mentioned something like that in their conversation. This is again to prove that Robbie assimilated directly the new concept as absolutely valid and built his own interpretation of the situation with the only possible way in his opinion - outer leakage. After having his mother's explanation, which he refused to take for valid, and after interacting his father, he seemed to have reflected on it, restructured his knowledge and accepted the new concept in his 'mental lexicon', which is again a knowledge building approach: The role of knowledge-building activity in fostering science learning also seems consistent with current theories on conceptual change as involving knowledge restructuring (Chi et al., 1997, p.3) I would like to recommend to his mother to use strategies of prior knowledge activation. Instead of objecting, she should have asked Robbie why he thought so and to try to imply rather than state explicitly that there are other, more acceptable, interpretations of the concept. She could have also been more patient and guiding instead of imposing her own opinion. Another good advice would be to try to explain the new concept in scientific terms. For instance, after listening to his understanding, she could have provided the scientific explanation of the Eustachian tube by drawing it on a sheet of paper or finding a suitable picture of the organ in a 'showing concern and friendly, helping attitude'. In that way she could have evaded the crash of ideas between them and could have made the external problem solving into an internal one for her child, encouraging him to expand his prior knowledge and create funny knowledge-building activities for him like pictures, games and other supportive materials. Instead, the mother's behavior evoked confrontation, which produced "external competition" (p.32). (2) According to Alexander & Murphy (1998), Robbie can be described and profiled as a "learning-oriented" individual (p. 438). According to them, the main aspects of the learning-oriented individual are "strong interest in the content and strategic effort" (p. 439), as well as "good prior knowledge and willingness to engage in" (p. 436), which during the learning process increases essentially due to the potentials of this type of learners. It is obvious that Robbie's domain of knowledge is sensitively smaller than his opponent's in the face of his parents but his willingness to engage and interact is bigger to the extent that he willingly performs conceptual change in result of applying knowledge-building strategy. Another important factor for knowledge acquisition is motivation, which seems to be intrinsic with the case of Robbie. I would recommend to the mother to be more empathetic with her child and give him more opportunities for engagement into interactive conversations, in which he would be given the floor to experiment and build his own understanding under the guidance of an authoritative figure like her. The very fact that Robbie acts as a learning-oriented individual shows that if he receives the needed help and tutorship on time he would develop into more confident and self-assured learner. (3) According to Guthrie et al. (2004), motivation and strategy instructions (SI - cognitive; TI - traditional) shouldn't be applied separately because the learning process efficiency is reduced. The two concepts are interrelated and their combined application in the process of knowledge building (method name CORI) would lead to bigger results and greater success in motivating students and activating their background knowledge. Robbie acts like an engaged, active learner who uses social interaction and applies SI (metacognition) in order to learn. From the start Robbie proved to have good monitoring skills when observing and listening to the conversation of the adults. The information he gathered he later combined with his prior knowledge and by using the cognitive strategy of metacognition he built explicit knowledge. During the interaction with his parents he proved to be cognitively engaged and applying strategies of active learning by trying to solve the problem arisen by the incongruity of concepts. In my opinion, what would have added to the interaction and the learning process would have been improvement in the learning environment and in particular, the application of "reciprocal teaching" (p. 405), which "integrates the four strategies of predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing." But instead of creating supportive learning environment, Robbie's mother tried to correct him (TI) and thus suppressed his cognitive impulse and encouraged copying tactics instead of helping him accommodate new information into the already built schema by Robbie. Reference list: Alexander, P. A., & Murphy. P. K. (1998). Profiling the differences in students' knowledge, interest, and strategic processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 435-447. Chan, C., Burtis, J., & Bereiter, C. (1997). Knowledge building as a mediator of conflict in conceptual change. Cognition and Instruction, 15, 1-40. Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., Barbosa, P., Perencevich, K. C., Taboada, A., Davis, M., Scafiddi, N. T., & Tonks, S. (2004). Increasing reading comprehension and engagement through Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 403-423. Read More