The Meta Lesson Plan ( continued )
ARTICLES
The Meta Lesson Plan ( continued )
DISCUSSION
The factor attributed with the causal role of generating the effects observed in response to the meta lesson plan is talk . Clark ( 2008 , p . 44 ) describes talk as a “ form of mind-transforming cognitive scaffolding … whose critical role in promoting thought and reason ( i . e . learning ) remains surprisingly ill understood .” It is talk , which is wide ranging and not necessarily directly related to the topic at hand , that gives voice to and develops the cognitive processes of the minds of students . In this manner , teenage socialness , talk and attention engage with the mind of the teacher to create shared experiences of life . It is the accumulation of these snapshots of shared experience between the teacher and student minds that act as the ‘ mind-transforming cognitive scaffolding ’ upon which the student mind organises itself .
The significant role for talk in the classroom identified in this research is explained by two lines of thought . Foremost is James ’ ( 1890 ) weighty finger of subjective interest . James notes that if something has subjective interest , the remembered experience of that interest ( though far removed from the topic at hand ) has far more power to shape thought than more relevant experiences in which one has less interest . It is to this interesting experience that the student mind agrees to pay attention and cognitively process the information to construct an ‘ intelligible perspective ’ on the meaning of that experience . In talking about this experience with the teacher and peers in the classroom , the student mind is more directly guided in the cognitive processing and construction of the meaning of that experience . Evolving from such open talk is the willingness of students to voluntarily cooperate and cultivate a classroom learning environment in which the thoughts of all students are given equal time for discussion . With the accumulation of this experience , familiarity with one ’ s own meaning-making process facilitates students ’ cognitive processing skills such that they become self-sufficient learners .
A scientific view on how talk acts as a cognitive scaffold is provided by Ulm ( 2013 ). This review describes the brain ’ s processing of language that occurs when two people talk to each other . Simply , as talk is shared between the teacher and student ( s ), the brain regions active in processing this exchange become synchronised in both parties , i . e . cognitive processes become neurocoupled . With more frequent talk , the neurocoupling becomes more tightly bound such that both parties become able to predict the nature of the upcoming exchange . This occurs via simultaneous bottom-up and top-down processing : The sounds of talk are built up ( through the phonological loop of working memory ) to phonologically construct and give meaning to the sound of the talk while the high level cognitive process of literacy is constructed in advance of these lower level cognitive process . This allows the formation of a common perceptual filter in the minds of the teacher and students ( s ) that facilitates more efficient extraction / prediction of the meaning of talk and therefore , more effective cognitive processing for learning .
Was and Woltz ’ s ( 2007 ) examination of the contribution of available long term memory to working memory provides a scientific mechanism by which subjective interest and the neurocoupling of talk may converge in the classroom to have the observed effects . They reported that available long term memory mediated the relationship of both working memory and prior knowledge to listening comprehension . In their work , different types of verbal cues ( questions ) were used to activate long term memory to investigate how its availability impacted upon working memory . The cues appear to represent a cognitive trajectory through which teacher ’ s progress as they move through the material to be learned by students . In ascending order of cognitive demand , these questions included , ‘ Were there more words meaning …’, ‘ Were there more examples of …’ and ‘ Were there more attributes of …’
It is the latter question which is associated with the most effective cueing of long term memory . Such questions require students to think more broadly and comparatively in order to generate a response . This offers more opportunity for sustained dialogue with students and thus ongoing dialogical negotiation on how to formulate an acceptable answer . Thus , open-ended questions lead to more open-ended questions and consequently , the availability of more long term memory for use in working memory . Alternatively , the remaining two types of questions descend in their comparative requirements , requiring less comparative thinking and lending themselves to the student mind generating a simple reflex response that terminates ongoing dialogue in negotiating acceptable answers .
On the whole , Was and Woltz ( 2007 ) proposed that the ability of working memory to predict language comprehension is due in part to the increased availability of long term memory for attention-driven process that occur in working memory . Hence , when the teacher ’ s primary learning resource is dialogue , LTM is more likely to be sequestered into working memory where it was subjected to cognitive processing .
Regarding the conventional perception of talk as being a distractor to attention , the uncoupling of talk from its social function ( giving voice to cognitive differences as the mechanism to establish self-esteem ) has a demonstrable consequence upon cognitive processes . The conventional lesson plan aims to inhibit talk about subjective experiences in favour of objective engagement with the learning resource at hand , i . e . the worksheet , ICT activity , video etc . Though the resource may be well positioned within the ZPD of students , the student mind does not voluntarily pay attention to the resource because it has little
32 SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 1