Cognitivism

Cognitivism is more complex than behaviorism, and it took me more time to understand all the terminologies learned in class. But I think that cognitivism is the most developed learning theory and supported the development of contemporary instructional design and development theories most fundamentally.

Rather than solely focusing on observable activities, cognitivism centers on how learners process, store, and retrieve information, inspiring instructors to design ways (e.g., advance organizers) to help learners to organize and present content based on memory’s natural features. The learner-centered tendency also influences the overall instructional settings until now, encouraging instructional designers to prioritize learners’ cognitive capabilities and background knowledge.

Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky’s conflicting ideas also fascinate me. In the discussion in class, I gave a brief statement on their opinions: Jean thinks that “learners must be capable to study”, and Lev thinks that “learners must study to be capable”. Actually, I think that the two opinions could pair a great integration in the design of instruction: we must focus on the learner’s cognitive development stage, make sure that the complexity of the tasks is not over-exceed their cognitive abilities, and provide scaffolding along the learning curve to help learners engage in tasks that they could not complete independently and not impossible to complete.

The most inspiring teaching method I gained from this chapter is scaffolding. I especially love the example provided by Ormrod (2016) that as elementary students move through the grades, they gradually adapt to writing with less guidance, moving from larger writing spaces to a single line (p.329). Ormrod used this example to indicate that too much scaffolding could lead to unnecessary burden on learner’s working memory, which could lead to a distraction (van Merriënboer & Sweller, 2005). This makes me reflect on whether I might have “helped” my students too much – in trying to lighten up their load, might I have forgotten that the burden and challenges are essential parts of the learning?

So, in general, I believe that the cognitivism-related learning theories and cognitivism-inspired instructional theories are easy to apply to the modern teaching process. They provide an objective and learner-focused approach to evaluate the design of curriculum, support the entire instructional design process with better-established methodologies such as Gagné’s “Nine Events of Instruction”. I think I’ll talk about cognitivism more in the final thought paper.