Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Memory and Educational Psychology 593
As the premodern era gave way to the modern one, a paradigm shift occurred in how knowledge,
learning, and cognition were constructed and studied. A more pronounced emphasis was placed
on the sciences to explain any phenomena. The world and human beings were believed to mimic
machines and the object was to focus on the discrete parts of the larger operating system. This
was the age of reason, and cognition would be the source of scientific and industrial progress.
Learning became mechanical, a process of rote memorization, recall, and skills. In fact the
brain was often likened to a computer as it processes data, particularly the ways it encodes,
stores, and retrieves information. Much attention has been given in educational psychology to
the ways in which the brain sorts input, creating schemes to categorize unfamiliar information
and therefore make it familiar and accessible. Piaget has discussed this through his concept of
accommodation. Using the computer as an analogy for the way our memory works positions the
learning process as a linear venture of give and take, of replication with limits and parameters.
It subsequently assumes information remains intact through the input and output process. The
more we mechanize this process, the higher the probability to assume control over it. Even when
memory defies common retrieval strategies, experts are convinced the information can be accessed
through hypnosis, medication, or drill practices. As a culture we have a difficult time accepting
loss, or understanding that information as we knew it may not exist in the exact original form.
Seldom does this mechanical approach to memory deal with understanding and application or
transfer of skills from learned knowledge. The main concern is minimizing difference, increasing
likeness, and restating what is known, not producing knowledge, learning, or insight, and much
less focusing on the transformative potential of knowledge and how one knows it.
Human memory is a subjective entity and process. Memory cannot adequately be explained
solely through the mechanics of a positivist paradigm. Another paradigm shift occurred, one
that took us into the postmodern era, where subjectivity and multiple realities take precedence.
This does not necessarily mean we have shifted our use of memory entirely, but rather we have
come to recognize how past paradigms and inherent epistemologies produce a deskilling and
deterioration of memory. As a result of the scientific and postmodern age many technological
advances are widely accessible, from the proliferation of devices that will record and document
important information, to the Internet, making all sorts of information available at one’s fingertips,
and finally the colossal increase of written texts. The largest task of memory in contemporary
times is not to encapsulate cultural, individual, or collective history, but to remember where
you wrote or typed the information. Memory is perhaps more heavily used to retrieve existing
information whether it is our personal data or not. Intelligence (through a modern lens) is not
about knowing the information, but where to get it, how to access it. This is yet another example of
how the shifts in thinking overlap one another as time progresses. Even though chronologically
we move forward in time, society and specifically institutions of learning use both static and
dynamic/holistic approaches to cognitive studies. The postmodern shift allows for the rethinking
of memory as it makes culture, place, location, and identity essential factors in how we process
knowledge, emotions, and experiences. Educators can capitalize on this in order to bridge student
lived experiences and school knowledge. Cognition is not a separate entity from emotion; on the
contrary logic and emotion together forge the significance of what we perceive and experience.
Understanding logic and emotion as integral to one another helps us process information for
easier recall and application. In educational settings in particular, if we are able to relate students’
meaning making process with how they feel and think about different disciplines and concepts
we increase the quality of the learning experience. Postmodernism expands how we are able to
see/perceive/internalize information to increase what and how it is possible to learn. The larger
objective to rethinking educational psychology and, in particular, memory construction is to
enrich the ways we learn, to learn more, and restructure who has access to learning in creative
and meaningful ways. Understanding the complex process through which we remember, store,