Two modes of thought: logico-scientific & narrative

Bruner, J.S. (1986) Two modes of thought. In Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

According to Bruner, humans have two modes of thought:

• One mode, the paradigmatic or logico-scientific one, attempts to fulfill the ideal of a formal, mathematical system of description and explanation
• The other is the narrative mode which leads to good stories, gripping drama, believable (though not necessarily "true") historical accounts.

Key ideas:

• human mental activity depends for its full expression upon being linked to a cultural tool kit - a set of prosthetic devices, so to speak
• narrative deals with the vicissitudes of human intentions.
• Kenneth Burke argues that "'story stuff" involves characters in action with intentions or goals in settings using particular means, that drama is generated when there is an imbalance in the ratio of these constituents
• Propp's argument is that in the folktale, character is a function of a highly constrained plot, the chief role of a character being to play out a plot role as hero, false hero, helper, villain, and so on.
• Narrative speech acts must depend upon forms of discourse that recruit the reader's imagination-that enlist him in the "performance of meaning under the guidance of the text."
• To be in the subjunctive mode is, then, to be trafficking in human possibilities rather than in settled certainties.
• Todorov proposes that there are six simple transformations that transform the action of the verb from being a fait accompli to being psychologically in process, and as such contingent or subjunctive in our sense.
• These transformations, simple or complex, " permits discourse to acquire a meaning without this meaning becoming pure information."
• Iser remarks in The Art of Reading that readers have both a strategy and a repertoire that they bring to bear on a text.
• As our readers read, as they begin to construct a virtual text of their own, it is as if they were embarking on a journey without maps -- and yet, they possess a srock of maps that might give hints, and besides, they know a lot about journeys and about mapmaking.
• Bruner says that the great writer's gift to a reader is to make him a better writer

Modern Metaphors of the Developing Child

Nelson, Katherine (2007). Young minds in social worlds, Chapter 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Competing Metaphors and Conceptions of the Developing Child
1. Piaget - "epistemic child":the child seeking knowl edge of how the world is structured and, in the process, constructing the structure of his own mind.
2. Vygotsky - "cultural historical child": this child, unlike the epistemic child, is thoroughly social, situated in a specific historical context and within a culture that might or might not nurture the mind through facilitative processes of interpersonal scaffolding.
3. The very young are "little scientists" or "child as theorists": children are said to be born with theories that guide their knowledge gathering but that the theories are subject to revision in light of new data

Problems with these models:
1. they do not account for biology or culture
2. doesn't acknowledge outside influences
3. children are not machines nor do they think like adults

Learning is viewed as ways in which the child comes to be conscious of more and more sources of meaning and to discriminate among them. Eventually, children accept things as meaningful that they would not have at an earlier point in development.

Memory is the conservation, organization and transformation of meaning. Children learn how conserve, organize and transform experiences that have meaning and significant in increasingly complex ways.

We are driven by two major motivations: to make sense and to make relationships. Gathering meaning from experience helps us with these two goals.

What we find as meaningful is affected by many things including our surroundings, culture, past experiences.

Nelson proposes a hybrid mind framework of different levels of consciousness. It differs from Piaget's stage theory in that all levels, once achieved, coexist. In stage theory, one doesn't revert to earlier levels once later levels are achieved.

One nice thing about Nelson's hybrid mind theory is that it easily incorporates other theories as mechanisms or process to explain what is going on at any given level.

The cultural basis of human cognition

Tomasello, M. (1999) The cultural basis of human cognition (chapter 1). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Summary:
Humans have mastered several modes of cultural transmission of knowledge, practices, ideas, etc., which enables cumulative cultural evolution.
It supports creative invention and progress by allowing humans to build upon the work of others, and faithful social transmission so that useful, helpful, or beautiful ideas are preserved.

There are 3 types of social learning:
1. imitative
2. instructed
3. collaborative

Key Points or Ideas:

1. Social learning enables faithful social transmission. It also enables multiple individuals ro create something together that no one individual could have created alone.
2. Tomasello believes the human ability to understand (or imagine) what other humans beings are thinking, feeling, seeing, etc., enables social learning.
3. Tomasello see the creation of material, symbolic and institutional artifacts with accumulated histories as unique features of human cognition.
4. Tomasello asserts that the evidence that human beings have species-unique modes of cultural transmission is overwhelming
5. Human beings are able to pool their cognitive resources in ways that other animal species are not
6. Cumulative cultural evolution is the best explanation for many of human beings' most impressive cognitive achievements
7. Tomasello's central argument in this chapter and the book is that it is these processes of cultural transmission, not any specialized biological adaptations directly, that have done the actual work in creating many, if not all, of the most distinctive and important cognitive products and processes of the species Homo sapiens.

What’s all the fuss about metacognition?

Schoenfeld, A. (1987). What’s all the fuss about metacognition? In A. Schoenfeld (Ed.), Cognitive Science and Mathematics Education, pages 189-215. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

It's about how teaching metacognitive skills can increase students'
understanding and help them become better problem solvers. I liked that this
article discusses strategies and examples of how to teach metacognitive skills.

What is it?
1. How accurate are you at describing your own thinking?
2. Control or self-regulation
3. Beliefs and intuitions

Why is it important?
1. Students need good study skills, using what you know efficiently, managing time
2. Students with metacognitive skills will learn more, have greater & deeper conceptual understanding, are generally better problem solvers, and will likely enjoy learning more.

What to do about? How do you teach metacognitive skills?
1. Use video tapes
2. Teacher as role model for metacognitive behavior
3. Whole class discussions of problems with teacher serving as "control"
4. Problem solving in small groups

Questions that he used to prompt student thinking and metacognition:
What exactly are you doing?
Why are you doing it?
How does it help you?
Is this likely to be productive?