Complete thesis - Murdoch University

• problem-solving practice• correspondence with the learner’s intuitive model of the phenomenon (White and Frederiksen,1986) (and all that implies about previous experience, belief systems etc.)• ease of transfer (with its focus on strategic thinking and metacognitive skills) (Larkin,1989)• facility with multiple representations – translation between different models facilitatesthe understanding of concepts, whilst the models themselves support differing insights,reasoning and problem-solving (Wood, 1999)occurring within a social and cultural context (and all that implies about dialogue, selfexplanationand shared meaning (Vygotsky, 1978; Chi and Bassock, 1989; Laurillard, 1993;Jonassen et al, 1995)) where certain activities are seen as authentic (Mayes, 1992).These theories are, in turn, influenced by cognitive theories of• knowledge representation◦ an assumption that schemata can be effectively built and activated in contextsthat do not match closely the environment in which they were constructed◦ information mapping as a means of imposing structure on knowledge◦ the impact of external knowledge representations (eg diagrams, text, numbers andabstract systems of symbols) on the processes of learning, discovery and reasoning(Winn and Snyder, 1996).• knowledge construction◦ knowledge and meaning is organised by modifying mental representations basedon previous experience, either through accommodation, assimilation or discontinuity(Vygotsky, 1978; Piaget, 1980; White and Frederiksen, 1986). Reciprocalrelationship exist between learning and memory (what we learn is affected by itsmeaningfulness, that meaning is determined by what is remembered, and thatmemory affected by what we learn (Winn and Snyder, 1996)) and between knowledgeand environment◦ the focus is deep understanding rather than skill as the goal of instruction, withstages the result of the necessary re organisation of knowledge rather than theresult of maturation100