Question:
Pick an environment (e.g., classroom (college), museum, store, or other setting) and
propose ways in which you could improve learning in this environment through
motivation. How would you redesign the environment to be motivationally effective?
This URL is talk about self-determination theory concept.
URL:
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/community-health/patient-care/self-determinationtheory.aspx
The purpose of this paper is to give you an opportunity to apply the ideas you are
learning about to real education settings.
Requirement:
1, An explanation of the environment
2, A discussion of what changes you would make to the environment using this
motivational concept: self-determination theory concept and include an explanation
of the self-determination theory concept.
3, You need to cite Pink’s (2009), Drive, to explain self-determination theory concept.
4, Please try to use the materials provided in class. (See the PDF document)
5, Please provide 2 examples of your own
6, Use MLA format
7, Paper length should be 1300 words (excluding the reference page)
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How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
HOW EXPERTS DIFFER FROM NOVICES
2
How Experts Differ from Novices
People who have developed expertise in particular areas are, by definition, able to think effectively about problems in those areas. Understanding
expertise is important because it provides insights into the nature of thinking
and problem solving. Research shows that it is not simply general abilities,
such as memory or intelligence, nor the use of general strategies that differentiate experts from novices. Instead, experts have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, and
interpret information in their environment. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, and solve problems.
This chapter illustrates key scientific findings that have come from the
study of people who have developed expertise in areas such as chess, physics, mathematics, electronics, and history. We discuss these examples not
because all school children are expected to become experts in these or any
other areas, but because the study of expertise shows what the results of
successful learning look like. In later chapters we explore what is known
about processes of learning that can eventually lead to the development of
expertise.
We consider several key principles of experts+nowledge and their potential implications for learning and instruction:
1. Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that
are not noticed by novices.
2. Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is
organized in ways that reflect a deep understanding of their subject matter.
3. Experts+nowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or
propositions but, instead, reflects contexts of applicability: that is, the knowledge is ïnditionalized/n a set of circumstances.
4. Experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little attentional effort.
5. Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not
guarantee that they are able to teach others.
6. Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approach to new
situations.
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
32
HOW PEOPLE LEARN, EXPANDED EDITION
MEANINGFUL PATTERNS OF INFORMATION
One of the earliest studies of expertise demonstrated that the same stimulus is perceived and understood differently, depending on the knowledge
that a person brings to the situation. DeGroot (1965) was interested in
understanding how world-class chess masters are consistently able to outthink their opponents. Chess masters and less experienced but still extremely good players were shown examples of chess games and asked to
think aloud as they decided on the move they would make if they were one
of the players; see Box 2.1. DeGrootàhypothesis was that the chess masters
would be more likely than the nonmasters to (a) think through all the possibilities before making a move (greater breadth of search) and (b) think
through all the possible countermoves of the opponent for every move considered (greater depth of search). In this pioneering research, the chess
masters did exhibit considerable breadth and depth to their searches, but so
did the lesser ranked chess players. And none of them conducted searches
that covered all the possibilities. Somehow, the chess masters considered
possibilities for moves that were of higher quality than those considered by
the lesser experienced players. Something other than differences in general
strategies seemed to be responsible for differences in expertise.
DeGroot concluded that the knowledge acquired over tens of thousands of hours of chess playing enabled chess masters to out-play their
opponents. Specifically, masters were more likely to recognize meaningful
chess configurations and realize the strategic implications of these situations; this recognition allowed them to consider sets of possible moves that
were superior to others. The meaningful patterns seemed readily apparent
to the masters, leading deGroot (1965:33-34) to note:
We know that increasing experience and knowledge in a specific field
(chess, for instance) has the effect that things (properties, etc.) which, at
earlier stages, had to be abstracted, or even inferred are apt to be immediately perceived at later stages. To a rather large extent, abstraction is replaced by perception, but we do not know much about how this works,
nor where the borderline lies. As an effect of this replacement, a so-called
éven0roblem situation is not really given since it is seen differently by an
expert than it is perceived by an inexperienced person. . . .
DeGrootàthink-aloud method provided for a very careful analysis of
the conditions of specialized learning and the kinds of conclusions one can
draw from them (see Ericsson and Simon, 1993). Hypotheses generated
from think-aloud protocols are usually cross-validated through the use of
other methodologies.
The superior recall ability of experts, illustrated in the example in the
box, has been explained in terms of how they èunk6arious elements of
a configuration that are related by an underlying function or strategy. Since
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
HOW EXPERTS DIFFER FROM NOVICES
there are limits on the amount of information that people can hold in shortterm memory, short-term memory is enhanced when people are able to
chunk information into familiar patterns (Miller, 1956). Chess masters perceive chunks of meaningful information, which affects their memory for
what they see. Chess masters are able to chunk together several chess
pieces in a configuration that is governed by some strategic component of
the game. Lacking a hierarchical, highly organized structure for the domain,
novices cannot use this chunking strategy. It is noteworthy that people do
not have to be world-class experts to benefit from their abilities to encode
meaningful chunks of information: 10- and 11-year-olds who are experienced in chess are able to remember more chess pieces than college students who are not chess players. In contrast, when the college students
were presented with other stimuli, such as strings of numbers, they were
able to remember more (Chi, 1978; Schneider et al., 1993); see Figure 2.3.
Skills similar to those of master chess players have been demonstrated
for experts in other domains, including electronic circuitry (Egan and Schwartz,
1979), radiology (Lesgold, 1988), and computer programming (Ehrlich and
Soloway, 1984). In each case, expertise in a domain helps people develop
a sensitivity to patterns of meaningful information that are not available to
novices. For example, electronics technicians were able to reproduce large
portions of complex circuit diagrams after only a few seconds of viewing;
novices could not. The expert circuit technicians chunked several individual circuit elements (e.g., resistors and capacitors) that performed the
function of an amplifier. By remembering the structure and function of a
typical amplifier, experts were able to recall the arrangement of many of the
individual circuit elements comprising the mplifier chunk.athematics experts are also able to quickly recognize patterns of information, such as particular problem types that involve specific classes of
mathematical solutions (Hinsley et al., 1977; Robinson and Hayes, 1978).
For example, physicists recognize problems of river currents and problems
of headwinds and tailwinds in airplanes as involving similar mathematical
principles, such as relative velocities. The expert knowledge that underlies
the ability to recognize problem types has been characterized as involving
the development of organized conceptual structures, or schemas, that guide
how problems are represented and understood (e.g., Glaser and Chi, 1988).
Expert teachers, too, have been shown to have schemas similar to those
found in chess and mathematics. Expert and novice teachers were shown a
videotaped classroom lesson (Sabers et al., 1991). The experimental set-up
involved three screens that showed simultaneous events occurring throughout the classroom (the left, center, and right). During part of the session, the
expert and novice teachers were asked to talk aloud about what they were
seeing. Later, they were asked questions about classroom events. Overall,
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
33
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
34
HOW PEOPLE LEARN, EXPANDED EDITION
BOX 2.1
What Experts See
FIGURE 2.1 Chess board
positions used in memory
experiments. SOURCE:
Adapted from Chase and
Simon (1973).
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
HOW EXPERTS DIFFER FROM NOVICES
Pieces correctly recalled
In one study, a chess master, a Class A player (good but not a master), and
a novice were given 5 seconds to view a chess board position from the
middle of a chess game; see Figure 2.1. After 5 seconds the board was
covered, and each participant attempted to reconstruct the board position
on another board. This procedure was repeated for multiple trials until
everyone received a perfect score. On the first trial, the master player
correctly placed many more pieces than the Class A player, who in turn
placed more than the novice: 16, 8, and 4, respectively.
However, these results occurred only when the chess pieces were
arranged in configurations that conformed to meaningful games of chess.
When chess pieces were randomized and presented for 5 seconds, the
recall of the chess master and Class A player were the same as the novice(ey placed from 2 to 3 positions correctly. Data over trials for valid
and random middle games are shown in Figure 2.2.
25
20
15
Master
Class A player
Beginner
10
5
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Trial
FIGURE 2.2 Recall by chess
players by level of expertise.
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
7
35
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
HOW PEOPLE LEARN, EXPANDED EDITION
Children with chess
experiences
Adults without chess
experiences
10
Items recalled (Number)
36
5
0
Random
numbers
Chess
pieces
FIGURE 2.3 Recall for numbers and
chess pieces. SOURCE: Adapted
from Chi (1978).
the expert teachers had very different understandings of the events they
were watching than did the novice teachers; see examples in Box 2.2.
The idea that experts recognize features and patterns that are not noticed by novices is potentially important for improving instruction. When
viewing instructional texts, slides, and videotapes, for example, the information noticed by novices can be quite different from what is noticed by experts (e.g., Sabers et al., 1991; Bransford et al., 1988). One dimension of
acquiring greater competence appears to be the increased ability to segment
the perceptual field (learning how to see). Research on expertise suggests
the importance of providing students with learning experiences that specifically enhance their abilities to recognize meaningful patterns of information
(e.g., Simon, 1980; Bransford et al., 1989).
ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE
We turn now to the question of how experts+nowledge is organized
and how this affects their abilities to understand and represent problems.
Their knowledge is not simply a list of facts and formulas that are relevant to
their domain; instead, their knowledge is organized around core concepts or
©g ideas4hat guide their thinking about their domains.
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
HOW EXPERTS DIFFER FROM NOVICES
BOX 2.2
What Expert and Novice Teachers Notice
Expert and novice teachers notice very different things when viewing a videotape of
a classroom lesson.
Expert 6: On the left monitor, the
students.ote taking indicates that they
have seen sheets like this and have had
presentations like this before; itàfairly
efficient at this point because they¥
used to the format they are using.
Expert 7: I don understand why
the students can be finding out this information on their own rather than listening to someone tell them because if
you watch the faces of most of them,
they start out for about the first 2 or 3
minutes sort of paying attention to
whatàgoing on and then just drift off.
Expert 2: . . . I haven heard a bell,
but the students are already at their
desks and seem to be doing purposeful
activity, and this is about the time that I
decide they must be an accelerated
group because they came into the room
and started something rather than just
sitting down and socializing.
Novice 1: . . . I can tell what they
are doing. They¥ getting ready for class,
but I can tell what they¥ doing.
Novice 3: Sheàtrying to communicate with them here about something,
but I sure couldn tell what it was.
Another novice: Itàa lot to watch.
In an example from physics, experts and competent beginners (college
students) were asked to describe verbally the approach they would use to
solve physics problems. Experts usually mentioned the major principle(s) or
law(s) that were applicable to the problem, together with a rationale for why
those laws applied to the problem and how one could apply them (Chi et
al., 1981). In contrast, competent beginners rarely referred to major principles and laws in physics; instead, they typically described which equations
they would use and how those equations would be manipulated (Larkin,
1981, 1983).
Experts4hinking seems to be organized around big ideas in physics,
such as Newtonàsecond law and how it would apply, while novices tend to
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
37
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
38
HOW PEOPLE LEARN, EXPANDED EDITION
perceive problem solving in physics as memorizing, recalling, and manipulating equations to get answers. When solving problems, experts in physics
often pause to draw a simple qualitative diagram(ey do not simply attempt to plug numbers into a formula. The diagram is often elaborated as
the expert seeks to find a workable solution path (e.g., see Larkin et al.,
1980; Larkin and Simon, 1987; Simon and Simon, 1978).
Differences in how physics experts and novices approach problems can
also be seen when they are asked to sort problems, written on index cards,
according to the approach that could be used to solve them (Chi et al.,
1981). Experts0roblem piles are arranged on the basis of the principles
that can be applied to solve the problems; novices0iles are arranged on the
basis of the problems3urface attributes. For example, in the physics subfield of mechanics, an expertàpile might consist of problems that can be
solved by conservation of energy, while a noviceàpile might consist of
problems that contain inclined planes; see Figure 2.4. Responding to the
surface characteristics of problems is not very useful, since two problems
that share the same objects and look very similar may actually be solved by
entirely different approaches.
Some studies of experts and novices in physics have explored the organization of the knowledge structures that are available to these different
groups of individuals (Chi et al., 1982); see Figure 2.5. In representing a
schema for an incline plane, the noviceàschema contains primarily surface
features of the incline plane. In contrast, the expertàschema immediately
connects the notion of an incline plane with the laws of physics and the
conditions under which laws are applicable.
Pause times have also been used to infer the structure of expert knowledge in domains such as chess and physics. Physics experts appear to
evoke sets of related equations, with the recall of one equation activating
related equations that are retrieved rapidly (Larkin, 1979). Novices, in contrast, retrieve equations more equally spaced in time, suggesting a sequential search in memory. Experts appear to possess an efficient organization of
knowledge with meaningful relations among related elements clustered into
related units that are governed by underlying concepts and principles; see
Box 2.3. Within this picture of expertise, îowing more-eans having
more conceptual chunks in memory, more relations or features defining
each chunk, more interrelations among the chunks, and efficient methods
for retrieving related chunks and procedures for applying these informational units in problem-solving contexts (Chi et al., 1981).
Differences between how experts and nonexperts organize knowledge
has also been demonstrated in such fields as history (Wineburg, 1991). A
group of history experts and a group of gifted, high-achieving high school
seniors enrolled in an advanced placement course in history were first given
a test of facts about the American Revolution. The historians with back-
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
HOW EXPERTS DIFFER FROM NOVICES
Novices%xplanation for their grouping of two problems
Explanations
ec
ft/s
2 lb.
=4
Vo
gth
len
µ=2
M
t
2 f 30roblem 7 (23)
30roblem 7 (35)
Novice 1: These deal with
blocks on an incline plane.
Novice 5: Incline plane
problems, coefficient of friction.
Novice 6: Blocks on inclined
planes with angles.
Experts%xplanation for their grouping of two problems
Explanations
K=200 nt/m
6m
15m
equilibrium
Problem 6 (21)
th
ng
le

30roblem 7 (35)
Expert 2: Conservation of
energy.
Expert 3: Work-theory theorem.
They are all straight-forward
problems.
Expert 4: These can be done
from energy considerations.
Either you should know the
principle of conservation of
energy, or work is lost
somewhere.
FIGURE 2.4 An example of sortings of physics problems made by novices and experts. Each picture above
represents a diagram that can be drawn from the storyline of a physics problem taken from an introductory
physics textbook. The novices and experts in this study were asked to categorize many such problems
based on similarity of solution. The two pairs show a marked contrast in the experts!nd novices£ategorization schemes. Novices tend to categorize physics problems as being solved similarly if they
/ok the same(that is, share the same surface features), whereas experts categorize according to the
major principle that could be applied to solve the problems.
SOURCE: Adapted from Chi et al. (1981).
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
39
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
HOW EXPERTS DIFFER FROM NOVICES
BOX 2.3
Understanding and Problem Solving
In mathematics, experts are more likely than novices to first try to understand problems, rather than simply attempt to plug numbers into formulas. Experts and students in one study (Paige and Simon, 1966) were asked to solve algebra word problems, such as:
A board was sawed into two pieces. One piece was two-thirds as long as
the whole board and was exceeded in length by the second piece by four
feet. How long was the board before it was cut?
The experts quickly realize that the problem as stated is logically impossible. Although some students also come to this realization, others simply apply equations,
which results in the answer of a negative length.
A similar example comes from a study of adults and children (Reusser, 1993),
who were asked:
There are 26 sheep and 10 goats on a ship. How old is the captain?
Most adults have enough expertise to realize that this problem is unsolvable,
but many school children didn realize this at all. More than three-quarters of the
children in one study attempted to provide a numerical answer to the problems.
They asked themselves whether to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, rather than
whether the problem made sense. As one fifth-grade child explained, after giving
the answer of 36: åll, you need to add or subtract or multiply in problems like
this, and this one seemed to work best if I add(Bransford and Stein, 1993:196).
grounds in American history knew most of the items. However, many of the
historians had specialties that lay elsewhere and they knew only one-third of
the facts on the tests. Several of the students outscored several of the historians on the factual test. The study then compared how the historians and
students made sense of historical documents; the result revealed dramatic
differences on virtually any criterion. The historians excelled in the elaborateness of understandings they developed in their ability to pose alternative
explanations for events and in their use of corroborating evidence. This
depth of understanding was as true for the Asian specialists and the medievalists as it was for the Americanists.
When the two groups were asked to select one of three pictures that
best reflect their understanding of the battle of Lexington, historians and
students displayed the greatest differences. Historians carefully navigated
back and forth between the corpus of written documents and the three
images of the battlefield. For them, the picture selection task was the quintCopyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
41
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
42
HOW PEOPLE LEARN, EXPANDED EDITION
essential epistemological exercise, a task that explored the limits of historical knowledge. They knew that no single document or picture could tell the
story of history; hence, they thought very hard about their choices. In contrast, the students generally just looked at the pictures and made a selection
without regard or qualification. For students, the process was similar to
finding the correct answer on a multiple choice test.
In sum, although the students scored very well on facts about history,
they were largely unacquainted with modes of inquiry with real historical
thinking. They had no systematic way of making sense of contradictory
claims. Thrust into a set of historical documents that demanded that they
sort out competing claims and formulate a reasoned interpretation, the students, on the whole, were stymied. They lacked the experts$eep understanding of how to formulate reasoned interpretations of sets of historical
documents. Experts in other social sciences also organize their problem
solving around big ideas (see, e.g., Voss et al., 1984).
The fact that experts+nowledge is organized around important ideas or
concepts suggests that curricula should also be organized in ways that lead
to conceptual understanding. Many approaches to curriculum design make
it difficult for students to organize knowledge meaningfully. Often there is
only superficial coverage of facts before moving on to the next topic; there
is little time to develop important, organizing ideas. History texts sometimes
emphasize facts without providing support for understanding (e.g., Beck et
al., 1989, 1991). Many ways of teaching science also overemphasize facts
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989; National Research Council, 1996).
The Third International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) (Schmidt
et al., 1997) criticized curricula that were `mile wide and an inch deep¡nd argued that this is much more of a problem in America than in most
other countries. Research on expertise suggests that a superficial coverage
of many topics in the domain may be a poor way to help students develop
the competencies that will prepare them for future learning and work. The
idea of helping students organize their knowledge also suggests that novices
might benefit from models of how experts approach problem solving¥specially if they then receive coaching in using similar strategies (e.g., Brown
et al., 1989; we discuss this more fully in Chapters 3 and 7).
CONTEXT AND ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE
Experts have a vast repertoire of knowledge that is relevant to their
domain or discipline, but only a subset of that knowledge is relevant to any
particular problem. Experts do not have to search through everything they
know in order to find what is relevant; such