The importance of pre-existing knowledge, in my opinion, is that everyone from infants to adults has a prior knowledge base that must be understood in order for proper teaching to take place. In the book, they use the example of they book “Fish is Fish” which I found to be a great analogy for what actually takes places. We all bring our experiences of the world around us or pre-conceived notions (knowledge) with us where ever we go. This may pose great obstacles to the understanding and transfer of knowledge of the curricula being presented to students if we don’t understand this basic principle. We as teachers must pay close attention to naïve knowledge, false beliefs and the incomplete knowledge or misperceptions students will bring with them to the classroom. If we don’t address this issue, we can not adjust accordingly to each students needs and provide a good starting point for new instruction in this particular area of learning. In turn, we may not be able to impart new knowledge or understanding in place of the old beliefs.
Active learning is important for students to gain an ability to not only understand or memorize material but be able to participate more and more in their own learning. This is important with the skill of meta-cognition to be discussed later. However, the students in active learning environments help develop student knowledge further by making it not merely a product or process based task but end up striving towards a more knowledge based learning experience. This leads to students who have a deeper knowledge of the material and can then transfer this knowledge to other applications in the subject or other areas of their lives in the future. I feel this type of learning builds a sense of self-efficacy that is important down their path of education that gives them confidence in taking on material without fear because they know they can find the answers or understanding they will need.
Summary of the 3 major key findings:
1. Students come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom.
This basically is referring to the whole notion of pre-existing knowledge as described above. Being said, I can add that some of the preconceptions can be quite strong depending on many factors such as age, culture and prior exposure to similar material to name a few. If the teacher doesn’t properly draw these out and address them through prior or ongoing assessment the consequences can be damaging to the student. Teachers need to start thinking about the fact they are handing either well prepared or ill-informed students to another teacher and level in a short period of time. Rooting out preconceptions, misinformation or having students’ not grasping material because of not identifying this information about their students could have a detrimental snowball effect in the future of that student.
2. To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: (a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application.
This is one of my favorite key findings. In my mind it sums up what is necessary for a teacher to impart into the student before he or she moves on to their next year or next class. Having a deep factual knowledge goes beyond the superficial world of rote memorization and regurgitation into an area where actual knowledge transfer can take place. We must know the necessary facts in the subject matter to provide us with working knowledge and conceptual basis to move deeper in expertise of the material instead of mere novices. Finally, this all leads to critical thinking skills, as I like to call them, in any particular subject or area of expertise. To be able not only memorize material and actual being able to apply it are two completely different things. This means knowing what you know, knowing what you don’t know but need to know, how to find the answers or sift through the abundance of data out there and come to the proper conclusion or answer you are looking for. AKA “transfer”. Yes, that was a bit of laymen’s terms but it’s my summary:)
3. A “metacognitive” approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them.
This approach to teaching is to inform or educate the student on how to internalize information and be able to look at yourself (an internal dialog if you will) and know certain things about where you are with a particular subject, class or lesson. Things such as am I doing enough in my class, transfer of knowledge from other areas, problem solving, keeping up on how well I am doing, time management and many more internalized thought processes. This is a hard thing to teach and has to be done, in my opinion, of the life time of learning. It should be thought of in while designing lessons and integrated into curricula to facilitate development of cognitive skills in learners. This is one of many areas I feel is really lacking in education today.
Metacognition refers to people’s abilities to predict their performances on various tasks (e.g., how well they will be able to remember various stimuli) and to monitor their current levels of mastery and understanding (e.g., Brown, 1975; Flavell, 1973). Metacognition to me is to someone who has reached a point of critical thinking and self-efficacy in which they can use there mind to assess where they are at. How much more they need to learn to become proficient in the subject matter and keep track of their skill level or achievement in that area of knowledge. This is when you have reached a certain level of individual expertise and self reflecting ability and don’t need a teacher to assess where you are, what you need to be doing and how much you really know. The implications for one to be able to do this, especially to be successful in higher education or a field of study coupled with the amount of information available to mankind is almost absolute.
Assessments are vital in the classroom for many reasons and I’ve talked of one earlier. Pre-assessments to get out of students any preconception or pre-existing knowledge from the start in order to know what foundation needs to be laid is a key to a successful semester or year. Ongoing informal assessments, such as, project assessments, quiz assessments and observational assessments are vital for differentiating lesson plans and staying flexible for each individual student as well as the class as a whole. Last, but not least, formal assessment (taking tests) is a necessary evil or tool, in most classes. We are far from reaching some of the new waves in education and students must be exposed to these forms of assessment they will be seeing in other classes and on standardized tests.
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