Age-Related Changes in Knowledge and Reasoning
An individual’s learning benefits from a consistent, long-term increase in the accumulation of world knowledge.
Two Cognitive Functions:
Accumulated Knowledge and Reasoning Ability
Tend to be correlated: people who have a comparatively higher reasoning capacity are likely to acquire correspondingly more knowledge over their lifespan than their peers.
Trajectory of reasoning and knowledge acquisition are different across lifespan.
There are general trajectories of age-related changes in ability
Consistent trend: development of knowledge remains steady as reasoning capacity “drops off.”
Growth or decline can be expected to vary between individuals and within the same person over time.
Accumulation of World Knowledge
Makes it easier for older adults to:
Retrieve vocabulary and facts about the world
Acquire new information in domains related to their expertise
Facilitates new learning of information when the information is aligned with existing domain knowledge (ex: the individual’s chosen environments for education, work, and hobbies)
Reasoning Ability
Major determinant of learning throughout life
Through reasoning, people develop knowledge throughout their lifespan.
Implication for Secondary Teaching Practices
Consider regularly incorporating problem solving activities to strengthen lifelong reasoning skills. Students should work both individually and collaboratively.
Ex: short problem solving activity Warm-up
Create hands-on meaningful experiences in the classroom for students to directly learn new information from.
Ex: engage students in active learning environments
Foster curiosity and motivation and incorporate the novelty of choice. Learning is a long-term process, and students are generally more motivated when learning about a topic that interests them.
With teacher guidance, allow students to choose the topics of research, book reports, and other projects