Cognitive learning is being aware of and thinking about learning. Is this something we teach in school? If you’re a teacher in the United States, living with high stakes testing, probably not. It isn’t something you’ll find on the test.
Yet, if students can understand how they best learn, then they can have efficacy in their own learning process. In turn, they’ll grow as joyful learners, rather than just as robot learners, spewing out the regurgitated answers required of the Test.
I attended a workshop two days ago about cognitive learning, and later, at home, I read an article on the same topic in the current Educational Leadership magazine. It must be a hot topic these days. I discovered that I’m one of those educators that does take the time to teach the students how to think about their learning.
For instance, one area of cognitive development set forth by Piaget is the principle of conservation. It is expected that by the age of 7 or 8, students will be able to understand that the amount of material doesn’t change if it’s placed in a different shaped container or is molded into a different shape. For instance, if you pour a quart of water into a vase, then pour that same quart of water into a bucket, even though it may look smaller in the bucket, you still have a quart of water. Today’s student’s often don’t understand this concept, even by the time they are 11 or 12. I don’t know what’s causing this deficiency, and many researchers have postulated their theories.
Yet the fact remains that the students don’t get it. So this means in math, students aren’t going to be able to understand that 2 is also the same as 1 4/4, or 1 3/3, or that 5/6 is the same as 25/30. They can’t evaluate 25+a = 13×2, because the numbers and processes on either side of the equal sign are different.
To battle this problem, much of my math is hands on. When learning fractions, I bring in the measuring cups from my kitchen, and we measure popcorn or water to see that the same amount can be presented in different ways. When we learn about diameter and circumference, we measure every circle we can find in school with beans or yarn or jump ropes. When we’re learning algebra, we set up models with students. Students play the part of different pieces of the equation. When we graph lines, we do it with people and string, then we do it on paper. We always look for patterns and designs in our math. Everything is taught in a hands on and active manner. Once they understand how it works, then we move to the pencil and paper. In closure, I ask them why this is important. They begin to think about how what they are learning affects themselves.
In the end, the students walk away from my class understanding why numbers work the way they do. They learn to play with numbers. They learn to manipulate and change the forms of numbers without changing the value. In the end, they realize they are the mathemagicians, and they are the ones in control of their own learning. In turn, they feel powerful. That’s exactly what we want tomorrow’s leaders to feel.
