Learning from Latinos: Contexts, families, and child development in motion.

Two generations ago, Latino children and families were often defined as disadvantaged, even “culturally deprived,” by psychologists, social scientists, and pediatric researchers. Since then, empirical work from several disciplines has yielded remarkable discoveries regarding the strengths of Latino families and resulting benefits for children. Theoretical advances illuminate how variation in the child's culturally bounded context or developmental niche reproduces differing socialization practices, forms of cognition, and motivated learning within everyday activities. This review sketches advances in 4 areas: detailing variation in children's local contexts and households among Latino subgroups, moving beyond Latino–White comparisons; identifying how parenting goals and practices in less acculturated, more traditional families act to reinforce social cohesion and support for children; identifying, in turn, how pressures on children and adolescents to assimilate to novel behavioral norms offer developmental risks, not only new opportunities; and seeing children's learning and motivation as situated within communities that exercise cognitive demands and social expectations, advancing particular forms of cognitive growth that are embedded within social participation and the motivated desire to become a competent member. This review places the articles that follow within such contemporary lines of work. Together they yield theoretical advances for understanding the growth of all children and adolescents, who necessarily learn and develop within bounded cultural or social-class groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implementing Sustainable Development through Problem-Based Learning: Pedagogy and Practice

This paper presents an approach for implementing sustainability within a university environment, and for helping students become more effective problem solvers and professionals. In a “Sustainable Urban Development” course, taught by the writer, students develop projects to make their campus and community more sustainable. In the process, students learn how to analyze sustainability, work with decision makers, and put classroom knowledge into practice. Further, through this course’s emphasis on problem-based learning, students acquire critical cognitive skills and professional skills as they tackle complex, interdisciplinary, and real-world problems. Systematic evaluations of the course offer useful lessons. One is how to create synergies. For instance, while students benefited from hands-on experience with sustainability, the university benefited from students’ work. Another is how to demonstrate and quantify benefits from sustainability, which is vital to gaining support. Yet another is how to enable students to learn from both successful and unsuccessful attempts to implement ideas. Courses such as this can create important bridges between theory and application, and between education and professional practice.     

Adapting instruction to the cognitive demands of learning to program.

This study investigated how instructional practices influence what students learn in Pascal programming classes. The study contrasted 8 introductory and 8 Advanced Placement (AP) level courses because goals of teachers, classroom activities, and assigned tasks differ. Introductory students primarily learn syntax and AP students learn to plan and debug complex problems. These differing cognitive demands would seem to require different instructional practices. In order to establish instructional practices, students reported teaching strategies, course structure, and classroom resources. To demonstrate programming proficiency, students modified and analyzed a computer program. Programming proficiency varied as a function of instructional practices and class level. Introductory students benefited from direct instruction, and AP students performed better with less direct guidance and more opportunities for autonomy. Characteristics of effective programming instruction vary depending on the cognitive demands of courses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How goals and beliefs lead people into and out of depression.

There is evidence that beliefs (cognitive vulnerabilities) and goals (to prove self-worth) contribute to depression but little consideration of how they work in tandem. Synthesizing research on beliefs and goals leads us to four propositions: (a) People with cognitive vulnerabilities often adopt self-worth goals (seeking to prove self-worth and to avoid proof of worthlessness). People with the opposite beliefs often adopt learning goals. (b) Stressors trigger depression largely because they lead people with self-worth goals to focus narrowly on goals to avoid proof of worthlessness. The same stressors do not lead people with learning goals to become depressed. (c) People with goals to avoid proof of worthlessness adopt defensive self-handicapping behaviors (e.g., effort withdrawal, rumination) when dealing with stressors, because those behaviors serve their goals. The same stressors lead people with learning goals to adopt constructive, problem-solving strategies. (d) A key to alleviating depression is fostering a shift from self-worth goals to learning goals and from the beliefs underlying self-worth goals to the opposite beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A qualitative study of six medical students in a problem-based curriculum: Toward a situated model of self-regulation.

The authors followed 6 first-year medical students through their first semester in a problem-based learning curriculum to understand how they self-regulated their learning. The study, using a situated research strategy, resulted in a grounded theory built around the central phenomenon of stance. In short, learners illustrated different types of stances-proactive, reactive, retroactive, interactive, and transactive-that served to govern their perceptions of themselves and the environment, their selection of goals, and their adoption of learning strategies. Furthermore, recursive patterns of stances were longitudinally described as either evolving or shifting. Findings indicated that more successful students demonstrate an evolving, interactive-transactive stance that affected the ways they participated in the learning environment and the professional identities they were beginning to develop. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Schema training in analogical reasoning.

In 3 experiments, college students learned how to solve 20 verbal analogy problems and took transfer and memory tests. Ss learned from worked-out examples that emphasized relational terms such as "part-to-whole" or under 3 other instructional conditions that required responding to examples or that excluded mention of relational terms. The former Ss were more accurate and faster then other Ss on solving new problems involving the same relations but less accurate in recognizing words from previous problems. This pattern is inconsistent with active responding theory, which predicts students learn best by generating answers and receiving feedback to problems, and is consistent with active learning theory, which predicts that students learn best by inducing schemas for particular problem types. Results indicate that schema induction is maximized when the schemas are made salient and the cognitive system is not overloaded. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The shame of American education.

Recent analyses of American schools and proposals for school reform have missed an essential point: Most current problems could be solved if students learned twice as much in the same time and with the same effort. It has been shown that they can do so (a) when the goals of education are clarified; (b) when each student is permitted to advance at his or her own pace; and (c) when the problem of motivation is solved with programmed instructional materials, so designed that students are very often right and learn at once that they are. The theories of human behavior most often taught in schools of education—particularly cognitive psychology—stand in the way of this solution to the problem of American education, but the proposal that schools of education simply be disbanded is a step in the wrong direction. Teachers need to be taught how to teach, and a technology is now available that will permit them to teach much more effectively. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Students' help seeking during problem solving: Influences of personal and contextual achievement goals.

The author investigated how different types of achievement goals influence elementary school students' help seeking. Fourth and 5th graders were asked to solve math problems and were given the opportunity to request help from an adult. Goals were conceptualized on 2 nested dimensions: (a) locus of the goal (i.e., personal goals that students held at the beginning of the study vs. contextual goals that characterized the task situation) and (b) emphasis of the goal (i.e., the relative importance of learning vs. performance). Personal learning goals had a positive influence and personal performance goals had a negative influence on the frequency of confirmation requests and on actual problem solving. For students who had strong personal performance goals, a contextual learning goal resulted in more process-related help seeking than did a contextual performance goal. Both types of help seeking (i.e., confirmation and process-related requests) had a positive influence on problem solving. Interactions among goals are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of generic advance instructions on learning a classification task.

Investigated whether giving students generic advance instructions about how to learn a classification task would be effective in facilitating learning of a specific classification task. The effect of instructions was compared with the effects of adjunct postquestions, simply reading the materials (control group), and both instructions and adjunct postquestions. The experimental task involved learning to classify instances of several different categories. Ss were 72 US Navy enlisted personnel. It was hypothesized that advance instructions to Ss regarding how and what to learn would facilitate learning of classification material. Results show that the instruction group and adjunct questions group did equally well on classifying new and old instances of US Navy call signs. All groups did better than control groups. Results suggest that students can learn a general strategy for processing classification material and that providing students with generic information about how and what to learn is an effective instructional strategy. A text of the instructions used to teach Ss how to learn a classification task is appended. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring Differences in Students' Copy-and-Paste Decision Making and Processing: A Mixed-Methods Study.

This mixed-methods study examined cognitive correlates and learning outcomes related to the use of copy and paste (CP). Quantitative results indicated that college students whose CP capability was restricted to a small amount of text as they entered information into a matrix-like tool recalled more facts, recognized more concepts, and inferred more relationships among information from text than students for whom copying and pasting into the matrix was unrestricted. Then, 24 interviews revealed depth of processing and decision-making differences that may account for the discrepancies in learning between the restricted and unrestricted groups. This study suggests that both individuals' differing habits and experimentally induced variations in CP note-taking approaches may have significant differential consequences for cognitive processes and for learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Critique of Sampson.

Evaluates E. E. Sampson's recommendation (see record 1982-04617-001) that cognitive psychologists become more aware of their value bias and develop a new line of work, one that is designed to change society and increase human welfare and freedom. The author suggests that human welfare and freedom are not harmonious goals, and one may be obtained only at the expense of the other. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The science of learning disabilities.

Reviews the book, The science of learning disabilities, by K. A. Kavale and S. R. Forness (1985). Kavale and Forness assert that the field of learning disabilities has become a pseudoscience. They state that the purpose of their book is to demonstrate how the field of learning disabilities strayed from its scientific course and suggest how it can regain its scientific status. To accomplish their goals, the authors emphasize the importance of scientific inquiry, the history of the learning disabilities field, and possible solutions to the problems they depict as currently being characteristic of the field. The field of learning disabilities, they assert, strayed from the scientific method by emphasizing empirical associations per se without the proper formulation of theories regarding learning disabilities. The authors fulfill their stated goals of describing how many in the learning disabilities field drifted away from the scientific method and by outlining how the field can regain its scientific status. The review of the history of the learning disabilities field is comprehensive and informative. This book is written in a scholarly, unemotional style. Although its exploration of the scientific method, that forms the basis of the authors' arguments, is simple and consistent with that provided in most introductory texts in the sciences, the authors' discussions of research findings are, at times, complex. Readers who are not familiar with meta-analytical techniques are encouraged to obtain some familiarity with these before reading this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit Spatial Contextual Learning in Healthy Aging.

Three experiments investigated the aging of implicit spatial and spatiotemporal context learning in 2 tasks. In contextual cuing, people learn to use repeated spatial configurations to facilitate search for a target, whereas in higher order serial learning, they learn to use subtle sequence regularities to respond more quickly and accurately to a series of events. Results reveal a dissociation; overall contextual cuing is spared in healthy aging, whereas higher order sequence learning is impaired in the same individuals. This finding suggests that these 2 forms of implicit learning rely on different neural substrates that age differently; the results are also consistent with recent evidence that fronto-striatal circuits are particularly susceptible to decline in health aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family status and self-reported health in West Germany

This paper describes an active learning-based education tool which enables dental students to learn preventive techniques relevant to patient dental health behaviour. 2 studies were conducted involving 33, 2nd year (study 1) and 9, 3rd year (study 2) undergraduate dental students. In study 1, snacking behaviour and its antecedents were analysed from detailed 3-day diet diaries completed by the students. Study 2 entailed the students changing one aspect of their sugar/diet behaviour using self-management techniques. It is concluded that dental students can successfully (a) identify antecedents to sugar snacking behaviours on several levels, i.e., cognitive, emotional and situational, (b) set goals and use behaviour change techniques to modify these behaviours, and (c) appreciate that this experience is relevant to similar preventive techniques that they will use in clinical practice. Training in the application of these skills to their own maladaptive behaviours provides a strong educational tool based on psycho-educational theories.     

Clarifying Achievement Goals and Their Impact.

The study of achievement goals has illuminated basic motivational processes, though controversy surrounds their nature and impact. In 5 studies, including a longitudinal study in a difficult premed course, the authors show that the impact of learning and performance goals depends on how they are operationalized. Active learning goals predicted active coping, sustained motivation, and higher achievement in the face of challenge. Among performance goals, ability-linked goals predicted withdrawal and ment poorer performance in the face of challenge (but provided a "boost" to performance when students met with success); normative goals did not predict decrements in motivation or performance; and outcome goals (wanting a good grade) were in fact equally related to learning goals and ability goals. Ways in which the findings address discrepancies in the literature are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive self-control strategies with the anxious student.

Discusses the differences in anxiety problems of university students from classic phobias in the variety of antecedent stimuli and the nature and prevalence of cognitive activity. Due to such differences and to the value students place on self-control, cognitive strategies are useful in anxiety management training. The importance of determining the variety of situations that produce anxiety and the extent to which ruminations are involved is stressed. The goals of cognitive anxiety management training are for the client to learn to identify early signals of anxiety, to analyze his/her own cognitive activity, and to refocus attention away from anxiety-producing thoughts. Roleplaying, covert rehearsal, and homework assignments involving the techniques are cited as potential aids in reshaping cognitive responses to uncomfortable situations. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Students' goal orientations and cognitive engagement in classroom activities.

We used structural equation analysis to test the validity of a goal mediational model for conceptualizing the influence of individual and situational variables on students' cognitive engagement in science activities. Fifth- and sixth-grade students (N?=?275) from 10 classrooms completed a set of questionnaires designed to assess their goal orientations and their use of high-level or effort-minimizing learning strategies while completing six different science activities. Results indicate that students who placed greater emphasis on task-mastery goals reported more active cognitive engagement. In contrast, students oriented toward gaining social recognition, pleasing the teacher, or avoiding work reported a lower level of cognitive engagement. The relative strength of these goals was related to differences in students' intrinsic motivation and attitudes toward science. Our analyses also suggested that these variables exerted a greater influence in small-group than in whole-class activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concept mapping. Navigating the learning process

Critical thinking, meaningful learning, and concept synthesis are key phrases pervading nursing literature as educators strive to promote optimal learning and improve clinical instruction and problem solving across levels of nursing education. Concept mapping offers a state-of-the-art metacognitive approach to achievement of these important goals. The author explores concept mapping from the perspective of cognitive theory, analyzes its strengths and drawbacks, presents examples of various concept maps and graphic organizers, and suggests pragmatic applications to nursing clinical, classroom, curriculum, and research situations.     

Cognitive styles in the context of modern psychology: Toward an integrated framework of cognitive style.

The goals of this article are to elucidate trends and perspectives in the field of cognitive style research and to propose an integrated framework to guide future research. This is accomplished by means of a comprehensive literature review of the major advances and the theoretical and experimental problems that have accumulated over the years and by a discussion of the promising theoretical models that can be further developed, in part, with modern neuroscience techniques and with research from different psychological fields. On the basis of the research reviewed in this article, the author suggests that cognitive styles represent heuristics that individuals use to process information about their environment. These heuristics can be identified at multiple levels of information processing, from perceptual to metacognitive, and they can be grouped according to the type of regulatory function they exert on processes ranging from automatic data encoding to conscious executive allocation of cognitive resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Should There Be a Three-Strikes Rule Against Pure Discovery Learning?

The author's thesis is that there is sufficient research evidence to make any reasonable person skeptical about the benefits of discovery learning--practiced under the guise of cognitive constructivism or social constructivism--as a preferred instructional method. The author reviews research on discovery of problem-solving rules culminating in the 1960s, discovery of conservation strategies culminating in the 1970s, and discovery of LOGO programming strategies culminating in the 1980s. In each case, guided discovery was more effective than pure discovery in helping students learn and transfer. Overall, the constructivist view of learning may be best supported by methods of instruction that involve cognitive activity rather than behavioral activity, instructional guidance rather than pure discovery, and curricular focus rather than unstructured exploration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)