Meaningful learning
Requirements for meaningful learning Three specific components Methods and strategies that support the three components
Three components of meaningful learning Meaningful purpose Conceptual engagement Conceptual development
Meaningful purpose Meaningful learning does not occur without a purpose or intention to accomplish a meaningful task. The most meaningful task that requires and engages meaningful learning is problem solving.
Conceptual engagement People that intend to accomplish a task think about the components of the task and how they are interrelated. Learning to solve problems is conceptually engaging (cognitive engaging).
Conceptual development (Part 1) This is the result of conceptual engagement directed at a meaningful task. Through experience and reflection learners add conceptual complexity as they learn. Occurs when learners change their understanding of the concepts they use and the conceptual frameworks in which they are embedded. Is the mechanism underlying meaningful learning. Goal of learning should be conceptual change and development. Conceptual change and development Conceptual change is one of the most common conceptions of meaningful learning because it treats learning as an intentional process, a dynamic process and a constructive process. Is rooted in the theories of constructivism.
Conceptual development (Part 2) Predicated on the belief that humans are theory builders. Humans build simplified and intuitive personal theories to explain the external worlds that they live in. Human reorganize and add conceptual complexity to their theories through experience and reflection.
Methods and strategies that support the three components Most powerful strategy is learners constructing models of what they are learning. Mindtools support meaningful learning through model building. If learners cannot build a model of what they think they know, they don’t really know it. Model building is among the most powerful strategies for: Engaging in conceptual change Supporting conceptual change Assessing conceptual change
General definition of thinking To think is to analyze, examine and sort out information and form in the mind ideas or opinions, to perform any mental operation, to reason, to bring to mind or recollect, to determine, resolve and to work things out. Thinking is to conceive thoughts and ideas by reasoning, to form an opinion, to judge, to consider, to employ and to bring one's intellectual faculties to work, to concentrate one's thoughts on any given subject. Thinking is the act of reasoning from factual knowledge and or evidence. Thinking is to use the mind for processing imagination and information, to arrive at logical conclusions, from premises known and or assumed to be true for making imaginative decisions. To think is to judge or regard, look upon. To think is to learn of, or from, by analyzing what one could learn by thinking about the newly acquired knowledge, thought, suggestion and or idea, in order to learn and accept as truth. http://www.venusproject.com/ecs/to_think.html
Problem solving
Problem solving
Problem solving
Models and modelling (1) A model is a simplified abstract view of the complex reality. In the most general sense, a model is anything used in any way to represent anything else. Some models are physical objects, for instance, a toy model which may be assembled, and may even be made to work like the object it represents. However a conceptual model, may only be drawn on paper, described in words, or imagined in the mind. They are used to help us know and understand the subject matter they represent. Modelling is the process of generating abstract, conceptual, graphical and/or mathematical models. A mathematical model uses mathematical language to describe a system.
Models and modelling (2) Physical models Conceptual models Mathematical models Graphical models