COGNITIVISM
What's going on in the brain during learning
TEACHING & LEARNING CONNECTIONS
The Educator's Role
Cognitivism examines what is going on in the brain during knowledge with special attention paid to memory and attention. A Cognitivist believes knowledge is a process, not a product.
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Original thoughts, or knowledge, occurs through the though process. When adding social interactions, behavior is learned from the environment through observational learning.
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The educator's role is narrate and give context to the process of knowledge within a given learning objective. By limiting distraction and considering attention and memory, the educator maximizes successful learning.
PERSONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Learning How to Counsel
Professionally, I remember ‘learning how to counsel,’ someone. In school and my first few roles, we would shadow each other and give feedback. We continued to meet and discuss clients throughout my career. We learned by doing, reflecting, and gathering feedback. We learned this to help us meet our client’s needs the best way possible. This included our own active listening and counseling techniques, but also equally importantly, familiarizing ourselves with applicable and current resources for them.
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This was definitely a learning process rooted in Cognitivism- because we were constantly using our past experience and experiences of our classmates to think about how we approach counseling clients. We were constructing our own knowledge by actively reasoning, reflecting, and justifying how we would approach a client.
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Our professor served as our More Knowledgeable Other and sat behind a two-way mirror to offer us feedback. As an expert counselor, he could nudge us further out of our Zone of Proximal Development each session by probing why we asked what we did and offering suggestions for how we might be able to better guide our clients.
REFERENCES
Jerome Bruner and the process of education. (2013, April 04). Retrieved from http://infed.org/mobi/jerome-bruner-and-the-process-of-education/
Mcleod, S. (1970, January 01). Bruner. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/bruner.html
Work, D. H. (2016, April 17). Cognitive Load Theory, How Do I Apply It? Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stJ-MkTgRFs