Complete thesis - Murdoch University

• the importance of socialisation: the discursive processes, such as negotiating, interpreting,explaining and evaluating need to be unlimited so as to not restrict the learner’sconstruction of conceptual understanding. Conversation, both internal and external,provides an essential part of the glue that binds otherwise fragmented understanding -the role for discourse in learning and understanding is vital.There is no doubt that the amount of information to acquire increases substantially wheremultiple representations are used to enhance learning. This heavier learning toll, a ‘criticalmass’ required to be useful and the potential that usefulness may occur only in the longterm, are issues considered by models which apply these theories. In addition, realising thatit is possible and useful to translate across two or more representations is not automaticallyguaranteed by exposure to their use in problem solving (Wood, 1999): the connection betweenthem must be explicit.This learning brings together both a knowledge of the external tools that are being used toreason with and, perhaps implicitly, a sense of how the use of those tools fits the constraints ofboth situations and one’s own cognition (Wood, 1999) – gaining flexibility with reasoning andproblem solving with more than one system of signs and their systematic representation goeshand in hand with enhanced self regulation and a ‘sharper’ metacognitive understanding.In summary:Declaration 9 flexibility with multiple representations enhances conceptual and metacognitiveunderstanding and models expert behaviour. One source for gainingmultiple representations is through the multiple perspectives provided insocial interaction. However, a heavier learning toll is implicit and the connectionbetween the representations must be made explicit for the learningto be enhanced.3.2.1 Learning as transferOne of the fundamental concepts in learning is transfer – the ability to apply somethinglearned in one situation to another setting (Kearsley, 2000). Almost all theories of learningaddress transfer: cognitivists discuss it in terms of the restructuring of knowledge, schemataand mental models, social constructivists, in terms of modelling or imitation. A criticalaspect of transfer is whether learning can be applied across many settings, or whether it isalways context-specific. Despite an acknowledgement of its importance in the educationalliterature, the underlying processes and basic theoretical background are little understood130