What do you think of when you hear the word “reflection”? Introspection? Done in the moment or retroactively? Something done by yourself or with others? Reflection, as a pedagogical strategy, is utilized widely in education. It is a critical component of many educational theories, especially Transformational Learning.
One of the challenges to studying the effects of prior knowledge on learning is that it is difficult to control in an experiment … This highlights one of the trade-offs that happen when we conduct research on complex topics. Prior knowledge takes a long time to develop, and our development of that knowledge is based on many factors. This makes it difficult to manipulate! … I was therefore really interested to see a recent study that attempted to do just that - manipulate prior knowledge in order to examine its effects on learning.
For today’s VLOG post, Cindy interviewed Jessica Jackson, Director of Professional Learning for the Learner Variability Project @DigitalPromise. In this video, Jessica talks about the concept of learner variability and walks through all the fun tools available through the Learner Variability Project.
Every student comes into class with some type of prior knowledge which influences how well they will learn material. The more prior-knowledge they have, the more they will be able to learn. A recent paper by Witherby and Carpenter (2021) neatly summarized this effect in a set of experiments.
A few weeks ago, Megan wrote about the benefits of spaced retrieval practice on long-term learning and transfer of course material. The researchers have again shown the benefits of spaced retrieval practice, but this set up was a little different
As assessment specialists in a large public school district, our jobs involve working with teachers to develop useful classroom assessments and use assessment data to help students learn. Along the way, we’ve found two bodies of literature to be useful during conversations with teachers: cognitive psychology literature related to memory models, and assessment literature related to effective feedback…
