Created by Kym Buchanan | http://KymBuchanan.org | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Response to Greeno, Collins, & Resnick (1996)
Teachers work in the unseen: the hearts and minds of their students. Researchers define and understand this ephemeral yet important work using behaviorist, cognitive, and situative perspectives. These three perspectives have unique assumptions about knowing, learning, and development. Each perspective's assumptions and subsequent prescriptions yield particular benefits and risks, both to researchers and to classroom teachers. We use these assumptions to understand and influence learners, through explanation and prediction. I am particularly interested in teaching using computer games. For me, a perspective's utility depends on its potency for discovering and elucidating best practices for creating and using computer games in education.
The cognitive and behaviorist perspectives depend on different assumptions about knowing and learning. Under behaviorism, human beings are creatures of impulse. From the cognitive perspective, we are creatures of contemplation.
As creatures of impulse, human beings are conditioned to respond to stimuli. We are conditioned by our environment and experiences, and our actions and reactions are reflexive. We may believe that we use judgment and reflection to make choices, but we're actually predetermined to respond in specific ways. The traditional conception of free will is an illusion. Of course, the sophistication and variety of our environment and experiences makes this a very complex illusion. A single action may be the result of an individual's childhood, formal education, physiological health, distractions, sexual impulses, and more, as well as the ostensible stimulus that triggered the chain reaction of competing conditioned responses. To educate students, a behaviorist seeks to condition a near-perfect response to a stimuli. For example, a teacher may use rewards like praise to condition students to respond "Lansing" when asked, "What is the capital of Michigan?" If the students consistently responds correctly, the teacher's original methods of instruction are effective. If the students don't consistently respond correctly, then the methods may need re-application or modification. Thus, students learn by accumulating stimulus-response associations, both for content (e.g. capitals) and skills (e.g. study habits). (p 16)
Behaviorism is sometimes referred to as empiricism. As the Lansing example illustrates, a behaviorist evaluates the effectiveness of a teaching method through observable behavior. A behaviorist wouldn't be satisfied if the students merely claimed to know the correct answer. Behaviorists base their explanations and predictions on objective observations, much like physical scientists. (p 16) A scientist studies chemistry by predicting the product of a reaction, mixing the chemicals, and comparing the outcome to the hypothesis. (Under behaviorism, the learner and stimulus are the chemicals, and the conditioned response is the product.) Such experimentation is not unique to behaviorism, but this perspective is distinguished by its almost-absolute focus on the outcome. Observable behavior is the touchstone for behaviorist theory and methodology. Thus, a behaviorist doesn't try to explain or predict the unseen workings of the mind, beyond what objective measures can discern (e.g. electroencephalographs and other physiological instrumentation).
In contrast, the cognitive perspective confronts the complexity of the mind. Human beings are seen as creatures of contemplation, with free will and "organized patterns in cognitive activities." (p 16) We act and react using judgment and reflection, and we depend on elaborate mental models of ideas. Our mental models have varying degrees of accuracy, organization, and accessibility. Teaching means helping students develop the "cognitive abilities" to store, connect, and recall ideas effectively. For example, to teach students the state capitals, a teacher might use guided visualization to improve retention and recall. "People need organizing schemata in order to understand and use new information." (p19) Continuing the Lansing example from above, a student may be encouraged to imagine a knight riding in a car with Michelin tires, wielding a lance. The novel, vivid image of the knight might help the student make more connections to "Lance-ing."
The cognitive perspective is sometimes referred to as rationalism. While we may depend on mental models, we can't objectively observe them. Instead, cognitive psychologists try to tell coherent stories about mental activity, based on what can be observed. Compared to behaviorism, this perspective more clearly explains synthesis and creativity, since humans can combine and expand their mental models (e.g. using symbolic thinking to make generalizations). Such generative activity is difficult to explain with behaviorism, which seems to undervalue our intuitively- or experiential-based beliefs in free will, reason, and imagination. Rather, behaviorism doesn't devalue these beliefs, but demands that researchers and teachers depend on observable behaviors to prove theories and teach students.
Behaviorism puts the burden on teachers to find the most effective methods to condition students. In contrast, the cognitive perspective puts the burden on students to shepherd their mental models. "The most successful learners elaborate... and construct explanations for themselves." (p 19) Thus, cognitive psychologists value broad innovation over stepwise habit. Behaviorists assess habits, perhaps with written tests based on deconstructing a unit of study. The cognitive perspective prefers assessing applied thinking, perhaps with a project that unites the major elements of a unit of study.
For me, the value of either perspective depends on its utility in creating and using computer games in education. The behaviorist perspective can be very useful in designing interfaces and gameplay. Actions in a game have consequences, and these consequences should be apparent through clear feedback. (e.g. The character capriciously opens a mysterious treasure chest, and a hidden trap damages the character and destroys the contents of the chest.) If the player responds appropriately to this feedback, he should be rewarded. (When he finds another chest, the character carefully inspects it first. A similar trap is discovered and disarmed, so the character gets the undamaged treasure inside and moves on unharmed.) This chain of conditioning is illustrates the value of interactive gaming, and can be far more sophisticated with more meaningful learning. (Here, "more meaningful" means "more real-world" since few of people regularly disarm traps.) Behaviorism reminds designers to use rewards or punishments, frequently, and to make them proximal in time and nature to the desired or undesired behavior. This is especially true for in-game tutorials, which can greatly effect how quickly a player is engaged and motivated by a game. More globally, students are already conditioned to respond to games with enthusiasm and curiosity, so educators can use the same stimulus for a new response (i.e. more meaningful learning).
The cognitive perspective is useful in designing story, themes, and advanced problem solving. Players build mental models to master a game, so an educational game should nurture meaningful mental models for use outside the game. Sophisticated games have complex problems with multiple solutions, often as part of game-long quests. It's difficult to explain or prescribe holistic or nonlinear thinking with behaviorism, yet such thinking is essential in the design and mastery of sophisticated games. While behaviorism is focused on observable outcomes (e.g. finishing a game or passing a test), the cognitive perspective accommodates and values the experience of playing the game. The act of playing avoids "'inert knowledge" (p 35), since knowledge must always be used in a context (i.e. the game). The player must think like the character, which I intuitively believe is a powerful learning experience, despite the absence of immediately observable outcomes.
While behaviorism explains single conditioned responses, its elemental nature makes it somewhat ill-suited to explain the sophistication of human development. As an infant matures into an adult, learning can be described as countless conditioning experiences, imposed accidentally in the environment, and deliberately by the individual and others. But a less piece-mail and more comprehensive model is desirable. Both the cognitive and situative perspectives offer more sophisticated explanations for learning and development. The cognitive perspective focuses on the individual, as described above, while the situative perspective encompasses groups of individuals.
Humans are social creatures. They may be driven by impulse or contemplation, but social interaction is the over-arching paradigm, according to situative psychologists. An individual's learning is shaped by the group. In a classroom, this group includes the teacher and other students. From the cognitive perspective, each individual builds unique, personal mental models of ideas. In contrast, the situative perspective assumes that knowledge is "distributed among people and their environments." (p 17) Proficiency is partially external, in our relationships and tools. This perspective supports the cliche that "you are who you know" and Samuel Johnson's famous assertion: "Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." Not only is knowing distributed, but the nature of any learning is influenced by the social context. Thus, thinking is always "situated in a particular context of intentions, social partners, and tools." (p 20) Learning is participation in compelling social experiences, including the mundane experience of pleasing a teacher.
From the situative perspective, teachers should be more mindful of social context. Students need to develop "practices and participatory abilities" to acquire and apply learning in social contexts. (p 23) Appropriate instructional strategies include group activities (e.g. JIGSAW) and group assessments (e.g. group projects). For example, to teach the state capitals, a teacher might have students work in groups. Each group could create their own suggestions for memorizing the content, then share their suggestions as a class. The students' suggestions may be more effective than what the teacher could imagine (e.g. associating capitals with celebrities only familiar to the students) and the social experience may improve motivation and retention. The situative perspective emphasizes making and preserving meaning together.
The situative perspective supports my intuitive and experiential belief that deliberate attention to a classroom-as-community is good teaching. (p 26) Under the cognitive perspective, students can be motivated to learn if they want to improve their mental models. Under the situative perspective, students may have mental models (or stimulus-response habits), but the most compelling motivation is a desire for social belonging. This could mean developing an identity of competence and loyalty, or one of independence and defiance. For this and other reasons, teaching group dynamics and valuing diversity are both supported by the situative perspective. I intuitively and experientially believe that teaching such social skills or "emotional intelligence" is worthwhile.
The situative perspective is a powerful paradigm for creating and using computer games in education. The most sophisticated games are role-playing games, which serve and are served by situative pedagogy. Players take on fictional identities to interact with each other, requiring them to imagine backgrounds, motivations, and goals. Players can experience remarkably similar and different identities, including new experiences and ideas. An in-game character may be more athletic, academic, or charismatic than the "real" player. Role playing games are often open-ended and endless, without definite victory conditions. Players must set their own priorities, like maximizing their characters' numerical statistics, or building relationships with other characters. The situative perspective encourages and guides such awareness, ownership, and experimentation of identity. In the situative perspective, the best way to learn something is to practice being someone who already knows it. Games, especially role-playing games, support such learning.
The behaviorist, cognitive, and situative perspectives offer unique and compelling assumptions and paradigms for education. Learning, knowing, and development are complex, and each perspective has unique advantages and limits. No single cognitive perspective is universally superior. Each contributes useful ideas and methods. Each is valuable in guiding research and prescriptions for teaching, particularly using computer games in education. I concur with the authors that we should use these perspectives "pluralistically in considering educational problems." (p 16)
Created by Kym Buchanan | http://KymBuchanan.org | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.