Description
Remembering and recalling
information is an active process that must be powered by the individual’s
desire to learn the information. One of
the teacher’s responsibilities is triggering this desire in his students.
Analysis
The process of learning
is a complicated web of interactions inside our brains. Our brains are flooded with information every
moment of the day but we do not remember it all. What is stored and what is discarded is determined
by the interests, background knowledge, and goals of the individual. The movement along the pathway of sensory
input, to working memory, to long term memory is called the “executive process”
(Slavin, 2015, pp.125). The “executive
process” is a willful process by the individual to decide what information he
will keep and which information he will not keep (Slavin, 2015, pp.124).
Our sensory registers are
constantly gathering information from the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells we
are bombarded with on a daily basis. The
brain must filter a vast majority of this out because it is simply too much
information for the brain to store in a meaningful way. An individual is the owner of their attention
and they must give it to something at every moment (Slavin, 2015, pp.126).
Once sensory information
is filtered, the remaining inputs are sent to working memory where it can be
held for a matter of seconds (Slavin, 2015, pp.127). This is the stage in which we are actively
engaged in thinking and analyzing the inputs.
It is the meeting place of sensory inputs and information stored in long
term memory. In the working memory
space, we analyze the sensory inputs based on past knowledge and
experience. By using previous information,
we are able to judge the sensory inputs.
Perception of the sensory inputs is crucial because it helps us
determine what the sensation means (Slavin, 2015, pp.126). A punch in the arm from a teammate in the
locker room is perceived as a sign of friendship and comradely, while a punch
in the arm of your girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend is perceived as hostile. Information must move from working memory to
long term memory if it is to be stored and recalled for later use.
Slavin (2015) described
three sections of long term memory: episodic, semantic, and procedural
(pp.129). Episodic is where
life-experiences are stored, almost like movies; semantic is for facts and
generalized information that are stored in interconnected networks; and
procedural is for processes which are aligned in stimulus-response pairings
(Slavin, 2015, pp.129-130). Jean Piaget
described the arrangement of ideas into groupings, called “schemes.” Our schemes help us think about the world we
interact with and when new information is presented, we either assimilate it
into our previously existing schemes or we accommodate and change our schemes
in light of this new information (Slavin, 2015, pp.31-32).
Reflection
As teachers, we must
understand that a student has to perceive the information if they are to remember
it and this perception takes time due to the amount of information available to
a student at any given moment. Because students
are owners of their attentions, the teacher must draw their attention to the
important information in the lesson, they can not force the attention to be given.
Students need an emotional connection to the material if it is to move
from sensory inputs through working memory onto long term memory. Piaget (1950) noted that, “The
individual only acts if he experiences a need, i.e., if the equilibrium between
the environment and the organism is momentarily upset, and action tends to
re-establish the equilibrium” (p.4). He coined a term for this event, “disequilibrium”, or “an
imbalance between what is understood and what is encountered” (Slavin, 2015,
pp. 32). Teachers can cause this disequilibrium
by introducing the students to real-world problems that would appeal to
them. Rather than simply taking notes on
supply and demand, have the students engage in a real-world simulation of the
principles by trying to market and sell their own items. The students would encounter a disparity in
what they wanted to sell the items for and what others were willing to pay for
them, thereby forcing them to compromise and meet at a price. By having a vested interesting in the action,
the students will be more likely to retain the lessons learned.
Once we have students’
attention, the sensory inputs must be moved from working memory to long term
memory for storage and recall. Teachers
need to guide students in their processing of the information by pointing out
what information is important (Slavin, 2015, pp.126). An important component in students retaining
new information is the amount of related previous information they have. Rehearsal, or repetition of the information
in one’s mind, has been shown to increase retention in students (Slavin, 2015,
pp.127). The supply and demand example
above would force the students to rehearse the fundamentals of economics as
they are working out the activity, thereby, reinforcing and storing the information
into their long term memory.
Piaget,
J. (1950). The Psychology of Intelligence. New York: Harcourt, Brace,
and Company, Inc.
Slavin,
R.E. (2015). Educational Psychology:
Theory and Practice. (11th ed.). Boston, MA. Pearson Education.
Kindle Edition.
Comments
Post a Comment