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Learn: what…why…how…you and…

Comparison of Individual Differences Models

Individual Differences “Characteristics” Across Models

 

Individual Differences Frameworks Focused on Cognitive and Affective^ “Characteristics” ^In Red

 

 

Developmental Popular Single Factor Models Habits of Mind “IQ”/Cognitive Tests Differentiated Instruction/CAST CARENOTES
Piaget

Sensory Motor

Preoperational

Concrete Operational

Formal Operational

GRIT Persistence WISC-V Concrete/Abstract D Conceptualization
Growth Mindset Managing Impulsivity Verbal

Digit Span

Information

Similarities

Vocabulary

Comprehension

Arithmetic

Simple/Complex D Abstraction
Mindfulness Taking Respnbl Risks Representation
Agency*/Self-Direction Finding Humor Smaller Leaps to Greater Leaps D Engagement
Vygotsky

Zone of PD

Level of analysis

Problem solving

Organizing info…mental schema

Interaction w partners

Cultural influences

Number (Working Memory
Listening  with understanding and

empathy

Performance

Pix Completion

Coding

Pic Arrangement

Block Design

Object Assembly

Symbol Search

Mazes

Few Facets to Multi Facets D Other(s)
Thinking interpedently More Structured to More Open D Tentativeness
Personalized Learning

Agency

Voice

Choice

http://wanttolearn.

edublogs.org/

2016/04/05/

learning-frameworks-focused-on-individuals-as-learners-6/

 

Thinking & Communicating with Clarity and Precision

————————

Striving for Accuracy

——————————-

Creating, Imagining and Innovating

—————————–

Responding with wonderment and awe

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Creating, imagining and innovating

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Woodcock J-IV

COG Standard Battery

Oral Vocabulary

Number Series

Verbal Attention

Letter pattern matching

Phonological Matching

Story Recall

Visualization

General Information

Concept Formation

Number Reversed

Concept Formation

Number Reversal

Recruiting Interest C

 

Sustained Interest and Persistence C

—————————

Self-Regulation C

Executive Function C

 

 

The Process of Understanding a Learner’s Strengths and Challenges

 

 

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Growing and Learning: Language, Literacy, and Learning Wiki

My current focus is on developing my Grow and Learn Wiki.

Take a look at the latest posting on:

https://classroomdiscourse.wordpress.com/

or go directly

to: http://growandlearn.pbworks.com/w/page/112457719/FrontPage

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Habits of Mind Website

Direct “quotes”

http://www.habitsofmindinstitute.org/about-us/

Our Mission:

To transform schools into learning communities where thinking and Habits of Mind are taught, practiced, valued and infused into the culture.

Our Vision:

To create a more thoughtful, cooperative, compassionate generation of people who skillfully work to resolve social, environmental, economic and political problems.  Founders and Co-Directors: Art Costa and Bena Kallick

 

What is the Institute for Habits of Mind?:

The Habits of Mind are dispositions that empower creative and critical thinking.  Habits of Mind International has an outreach around the world.  We have a growing team of affiliates, each representing the power of the habits in classrooms, schools, and communities.  We have certified Habits of Mind Learning Communities of Excellence each committed to the Habits of Mind as central to a thoughtful learning environment.  Our Institute offers professional development through virtual media, workshops, consultations, and conferences.

More Information about Habits of Mind:

 

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Making Choices about Programs/Approaches to Learning

Personalized Learning categories

Continuum of Choice by Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on work at bit.ly/continuumchoice

Providing choice can be confusing. If learners are choosing from a set of pre-planned choices from a computer program or a list of options from the teacher, then the teacher is ultimately the one responsible for the learning not the learner. As learners increase responsibility around voice, teachers can also provide a process that builds ownership as learners move toward agency with choice.


Participant 

The teacher or a computer program provides a menu of options for learners. These options are choices for learners to learn content through images, videos, text-based resources, audio, hands-on activities, or interactions with peers. These options allow learners to access information, engage with content, and express what they know and understand. The choices offered provide learners opportunities to showcase what they know from writing a paper to creating a performance.

Co-Designer

The teacher provides learning possibilities and then gets out of the way for learners to go on their own journey (via Jackie Gerstein). They invite input from learners to add to options of choices on how they would prefer or need to access information, engage with content, and express what they know. The teacher collaborates with the learner to brainstorm ideas for lesson design, assessment strategies and types of tools and resources to use with activities. Teachers and learners review and collaborate how to give more choice as they learn and demonstrate evidence of learning.

 

Designer 

The learner chooses topics and direction for what they plan to design based on personal interests. They research topics based on questions generated individually or with peers. The learner acquires the skills they need to choose the appropriate tools and resources for developing and creating their design. Learners, individually or with peers, brainstorm and choose ideas using the design thinking process to create change or design new products:

  1. Empathizeis where they talk to people and reflect on what they see.
  2. Defineis where learners become aware of needs and how to make changes to meet needs.
  3. Ideateis where learners brainstorm ideas and questions around changes.
  4. Prototypecan be a sketch or model that conveys the product or idea for change.
  5. Testis to determine what works, what doesn’t work and then modifies the prototype.

The learner can be part of a pathways program that guides the design of their learning. They find an advisor or mentor who can guide them as they explore their interests, talents and passions to discover their purpose. They can choose extended learning opportunities such as internships or apprenticeship to take their aspirations to another level.


Advocate

The learner chooses a challenge or problem that they are passionate about. This is where the learner wants to make a difference and perseveres to choose what will be their purpose of learning. When they identify the challenge or problem they then own an authentic voice with a clear purpose for the choices they will make to advocate for what they believe. They employ strategies and build a network of others who want to solve the challenge or problem to advocate for change. The group works strategically to develop an action plan to shape the change. When the learner has the experiences of advocacy working toward something they believe in, they are using the power of democracy and understand their part in the system.


Entrepreneur

The learner self-regulates, adjusts, and determines learning based on what they want to do with their lives. They take their ideas and passion to pursue an idea and possibly to create a business. Even young learners may invent or come up with an idea that improves a product or invent something that has never been done before. This is the driving force that becomes their purpose. They take the lead by driving the design process and advocating for what they believe is an important product or idea. They build a support system as their personal learning network (PLN) that helps guide them on their journey to learn, build, design, create, develop, and promote an idea or product. The learner understands the importance of being connected, branding who they are and pursuing their purpose for learning.

NO program I am aware of is without criticism.  Educators must investigate and make choices.  I recommend a  Google Search to get a complete picture of any Program/Model of Individualized Instruction or Describing Individual Differences.

 

 

 

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A Plan for Understanding How Children Learn to be Learners

A sequence of posts.

Exploring Learning Models of that are related to Executive Function,

*SocioCultural/Vygotsky (August 30, 2018)

*Behavioral (September 5, 2018)

*Concept-Based Learning (September 19, 2018)

*More than Content: Concepts Plus Process (October 3, 2018)

*Information Processing from a Developmental Point of View/Sternberg and Flavell (October 31 2018)

* * * * *

*Begin with a Plan to Understand and Collaborate with Individual Children About Their Learning (This is our next series of posts.)

                                                            * * * * *

Translating the most promising model for your situation into Context-Based Instruction

 

*Choose Instructional Principles

*Sequence Goals and Objectives

*Engage in Diagnostic Teaching

*Monitor Progress and Make Necessary Changes

*Work toward Generalization

*Apply to A Domain and then Across Domains

*Continue to Grow By Following the Literature

 

 

 

 

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Information Processing: From a Developmental Perspective

Below are a few short excerpts from the last “model of learning” in this series.  These excerpts highlight the work of John Flavell and Robert Sternberg.  Their ideas address a range of learners:  those who succeed easily and those who are challenged.

I chose to focus on these two authors because of their emphasis on how learners process and manage information:  their attention, short term memory, working memory, long term memory, and problem solving skills.

“Educators are very interested in the study of how humans learn. This is because how one learns, acquires new information, and retains previous information guides selection of long-term learning objectives and methods of effective instruction. To this end, cognition as a psychological area of study goes far beyond simply the taking in and retrieving information. It is a broad field dedicated to the study of the mind holistically. Neisser (1967), one of the most influential researchers in cognition, defined it as the study of how people encode, structure, store, retrieve, use or otherwise learn knowledge. Cognitive psychologists hypothesize an intervening variable or set of variables between environment and behavior—which contrasts it with behavioral theories.”

http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/papers/infoproc.pdf

 Information Processing and Memory

“One of the primary areas of cognition studied by researches is memory. There are many hypotheses and suggestions as to how this integration occurs, and many new theories have built upon established beliefs in this area. Currently, there is widespread consensus on several aspects of information processing; however, there are many dissentions in reference to specifics on how the brain actually codes or manipulates information as it is stored in memory.”

……..

The implications of this research are clear. If learning—relatively permanently change—is to take place, new information must be transferred into long-term memory. Therefore, repetition and maintenance rehearsal are not sufficient to produce a lasting effect. This has great relevance to instruction and teaching, for if the aim of education is learning, information must be presented in such a way that it can be incorporated into the memory structure.”

Development of Memory and Information Processing

As previously stated, cognition is the encoding, structuring, storing, retrieving, using, or otherwise learning knowledge (Neisser, 1967). There are important developmental aspects for INFORMATION PROCESSING

According to Flavell et al. (2002), from an information processing perspective some of the most important are:

 

  1. Brain changes brought about by biological maturation or experience;
  2. Increased processing capacity, speed, and efficiency as a result of both maturation and knowledge development;
  3. Modifications of connections in a neural network;
  4. New emergent concepts arising from repeated self-organization as a result of adapting to the demands of a changing environment; and
  5. Increased capacity for problem-solving and metacognition

 

“Another theorist firmly grounded in the information processing approach is Sternberg (1988). Sternberg’s theory suggests that development is skills-based and continuous rather than staged and discontinuous as stage theorists believe, and his focus is on intelligence. This focus on intelligence separates his ideas from stage theorists because it rejects the idea of incremental stages, but rather suggests that development occurs in the same way throughout life differentiated only by the expertise of the learner to process new information….First, and very importantly, Sternberg’s model does not differentiate between child and adult learning….. Cognitive development is viewed as a novice to expert progression; as one becomes better at interaction and learning, one is able to learn more and at higher levels. Development changes as a result of feedback, self-monitoring, and automatization. In this theory, intelligence is comprised of three kinds of information processing components: metacomponents, performance components, and knowledge-acquisition components.”

 

“In Sternberg’s (1988) model, each of these three components works together to facilitate learning and cognitive development. Metacomponents are executive in nature. They guide the planning and decision making in reference to problem solving situations; they serve to identify the problem and connect it with experiences from the past….”

 

 “In summary, there are many different theories of information processing that focus on different aspects of perceiving, remembering, and reasoning. One of the most important agreements is that elaboration is a key to permanently storing information in a way that facilitates its quick retrieval when it is needed. Bloom et al (1956) and Anderson and Krathwohl (2000) provide some excellent suggestions as to how we can encourage increased elaboration among our students. However, as proposed by Hummel and Huitt (1994) if students are not required to demonstrate the results of elaboration on meaningful tasks such as examinations or projects, they are not likely to adequately develop the skills required for higher-level thinking. It is, therefore, imperative that educators and parents require the development and use of these skills as a normal process of students’ lives. If we do that, the amounts and types of student knowledge will increase dramatically and students will be better prepared for life as adults in the information age.”

 

 

                                                              

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Conceptual Learning by David Perkins

From Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World 2014

From the jacket….

“In Future Wise….David Perkins…offer “a toolkit for thinking through “what’s worth learning?”.  …

Through this vital resource, Perkins explores the key concepts, curriculum criteria, and techniques for prioritizing content so teachers can guide students toward the big understanding that matter”…

My takeaways:

From page 52: Big Understanding

“Big Understandings tend to be big in four ways:

Big in insight: The understandings help to reveal how our physical, social, artistic, and other worlds work.

Big in action:  The understanding empowers us to take effective action professionally, socially, politically, or in other ways.

Big in ethics: The understanding urges us toward more ethical, humane, caring mind-sets and conduct.

Big in opportunity: The understanding is likely to come up in significant ways in varied circumstances…

From page 74:

“Big questions address particular themes about humanity, our world, and our universe.  There are also very general questions that find significance in almost any context…..Later well see how such questions fall nicely into bundles that support inquiry and problem solving….”

“So what makes big questions big?  Like big understandings, big questions are big in offering

insight, action, ethics, and opportunity….

“…Questions are content too, with their own life-worthy flavor.  To know a big question, keep it alive in your mind, and develop skill in asking it is to have a certain kind of passion and power toward navigating the world….”

From page 97-

Lifeready Learning: Making what’s Worth Learning Ready for Life

Questions A:  What does a big understanding (or big questioning) need to be like to be lifeready?

Question B: What kinds of teaching and learning make it lifeready?

Building Understanding through Thinking, Applying, Noticing, and Caring

Details to follow with examples in the next posting.

Bolding of print mine

 

 

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More than Content: Concepts Plus Process

From an earlier post about Erickson’s Concept-Based Curriculum by By Anna Murphy, Rubicon International

https://www.rubicon.com/concept-based-learning-curriculum/

Concept-based curriculum (CBC) is an approach to curriculum design that moves away from subject-specific content and instead emphasizes “big ideas” that span multiple subject areas or disciplines. For example, in a CBC classroom, students may study the big idea of “change” in a variety of areas, from patterns in mathematics, to civilizations in social studies, to life cycles in science.”…

” “Conceptual thinking requires the ability to critically examine factual information; relate to prior knowledge; see patterns and connections; draw out significant understandings at the conceptual level; evaluate the truth of the understandings across time or situations; and, often, use the conceptual understanding to creatively solve a problem or create a new product, process, or idea.”…….  , CBC is a 3-dimensional approach that melds what students will KNOW, DO, and UNDERSTAND.”…

********

In a more recent text in 2014, H. Lynn Erickson collaborated with Lois A. Lanning:  Transitioning to Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction:  How to Bring Content and Process Together.

In the Foreword by Malcolm Nicolson, Head of Diploma Programme Development International Baccalaurate, He says:

…..”They have helped me to see how we can help students to “get it” to be engaged in their learning and to understand how to transfer and apply their knowledge, understanding and skills in meeting complex global challenges.”…

 

“Erickson and Lanning write: “The purpose of this book is to present the case for needed changes in the traditional model of curriculum and instruction—a content coverage model that has critical flaws:….”

“The Introduction: Chapter Overview. Chapter 2 contrasts the traditional two-dimensional curriculum mode….with the three dimensional, concept-based model, which focuses on deeper-conceptual understanding supported by related facts and skills.  This chapter also brings together Erickson’s Structure of Knowledge  with Lois Lanning’s Structure of Process, so that educators now have the complementary models for both content-driven and process-driven subjects.” (Bold print mine)

 

Chapter 2, pages 24-27 describes the Structure of Process in more detail.  The authors describe the interplay of process and knowledge, saying:

“Knowledge by itself is quite inert and of little use until it is put into action through a process that includes strategies and skills.  And processes like reading, writing, thinking, analyzing, producing or creating cannot operate meaningfully without content.”

 Here are 2 examples:         

1…”if I am working on the topic of “Climate Change,” I may choose to apply any of the following processes, strategies or skills when learning about the topic.”

^Analyze scientific data using multiple sources of text including verbal, visual, and electronic.

^Create mathematical models to represent statistical data.

^Develop economic predictions based on the analysis of statistical data.

^Write a position paper for a specific audience that addresses a problem and supports a position with personal argument.” (page 26)

2…”Traditionally mathematics has been viewed as a distinct set of procedures to be memorized and carried out.  However, most ideas in mathematics that can be solved procedurally, also lend themselves to exploration, reasoning and pattern seeking.  In fact, the US. Common Core Sate Standards for Mathematics highlight the importance of connecting content standard with the Standards for Mathematically Practice (CCSS Initiative, 2010b, which includes:

1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

….

7 Look for and make use of structure.

8 Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. (page 27)

 

 

 

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Do Parents Know What Their Child’s Teachers Believe About Learning? Does It Matter?

Knowledge Matters by Ruth Wattenberg  Sept 2016

“Knowledge Matters” is a Model related to  Content/Concept/Knowledge learning that is somewhat different from the other two related models I have/will address:  Erickson’s Concept-Based Curriculum (and Instruction), 2014 and Perkins’ Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World, 2014.

http://knowledgematterscampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Wattenberg.pdf

Inside the Common Core Reading Tests: Why the Best Prep Is a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum By Ruth Wattenberg    Short excerpts:

“Who hasn’t experienced something like this? I just received in the mail yet another “explanation” from my health insurance company, which had denied several claims. I called to find out why, since the form in the mail was—to me at least—incomprehensible”…

“There was vocabulary that I didn’t understand, reasoning that made no sense, details I couldn’t absorb, unstated premises I couldn’t intuit. My frustration was total. And I realized:

This is exactly the frustration, the total mental confusion and, ultimately, paralysis and lost motivation that is experienced by students who can “read” but don’t have the content, the knowledge, the background, to make sense of what they’re reading. In general, I can follow logic and grasp details. But I knew too little about health care and insurance rules to make sense of either the written or verbal responses to my inquiries. This is the opposite of the joy of learning, yet it’s what too many students face in school day after day. “….

“Skills-based competencies are those that allow students to master the mechanics of reading. They are highly susceptible to instruction, are learned in the primary grades by the average student, and for the great majority of students are not a lasting source of difficulty…. These skills relate mostly to the “mechanics” of reading—the ability to map the letters onto their respective sounds in combinations, and thus read words”….

“Knowledge-based competencies, by contrast, must be developed over many years and are key sources of lasting individual differences in reading ability…. At a minimum, to make meaning from text, the reader needs relevant background knowledge related to the text’s vocabulary, topic, and structure”…

“Researchers have identified many ways in which background knowledge aids comprehension. Here are four important ones: First, vocabulary tends to grow along with knowledge, but when just 2% of the words in a passage are not known, comprehension begins to drop.4 Second, the ability to process multiple details in a reading passage is severely restricted when readers aren’t familiar with the topic(s) in the passage; cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham says that without adequate background knowledge, “chains of logic more than two or three steps long” can’t be well comprehended.5 Third, when we know a little about a topic (e.g., that Alaska is freezing cold), we use that bit to generate a picture in our mind that helps us make sense of a related passage (e.g. that animals without heavy coats or other means of staying warm will struggle to survive in Alaska). Fourth, when we already know much of what’s in a passage, we don’t have to focus on its basics, and we can think critically: Does this passage make sense? Do I agree with its argument? How do the different items and ideas in this or several passages relate to each other?” ….

“But to understand the reading passage sufficiently to answer the questions, students at every grade need command of substantial subject-matter knowledge. Specifically, to do well on the third-grade items that I reviewed, students need familiarity with a wide range of content, including:…….

 

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Continuing with Models of Learning: Concept-Based Learning

I am working on the two remaining Models of Learning that have significantly influenced my thinking on learning in general and Executive Function in particular.

Concept-Based Learning:

Concept-Based Learning is one of those models and is reflected in the work of H. Lynn Erickson’s book Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction for the Thinking Classroom.  Below is an excerpt from By Anna Murphy, Rubicon International

https://www.rubicon.com/concept-based-learning-curriculum/

Here are a few short excerpts from Murphy’s article:

Concept-based curriculum (CBC) is an approach to curriculum design that moves away from subject-specific content and instead emphasizes “big ideas” that span multiple subject areas or disciplines. For example, in a CBC classroom, students may study the big idea of “change” in a variety of areas, from patterns in mathematics, to civilizations in social studies, to life cycles in science.”…

” “Conceptual thinking requires the ability to critically examine factual information; relate to prior knowledge; see patterns and connections; draw out significant understandings at the conceptual level; evaluate the truth of the understandings across time or situations; and, often, use the conceptual understanding to creatively solve a problem or create a new product, process, or idea.”…

“CBC contrasts more traditional approaches to teaching and learning, which can be more surface level, with stronger emphasis on rote memorization of facts and concepts rather than their application. In a more traditional classroom, a teacher may teach a specific war by focusing on key facts and individuals, and require students to write a paper and take a test to demonstrate understanding. Conversely, CBC is a 3-dimensional approach that melds what students will KNOW, DO, and UNDERSTAND.”…

“Erickson offers an example of how the CBC structure of knowledge works in tandem with Bloom’s Taxonomy:”

 

 

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