> > Hi Tipsters,
> > I am in need of some help from some cognitive psychologists and maybe some social psychologists (attitude, persuasion, and change folks!)
> > Thanks,
> > --Kathy Morgan
I do find one cognitive theory helpful in planning my problem based portions of my courses. Perry's model of cognitive development in the college years (or Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, Tarule"s Women's Ways of Knowing)) helps remind me that a significant portion of my students are dualistic or received knowers. These students need lots of extra structure or scafolding to notice that they are learning in anything but a highly authoritative mode. When doing group work or discussions of any kind I find clear summaries, put up on the black board or an overhead are essential. Then some of these must appear on the next test in the exact form they were on the board or overhead or my dualistic students do not see the value in these alternative methods.
I especially try to highlight any contribution or discovery which is a significant addition to or a clever application of what is in their text or reading. With some repetition these students will sometimes discover that their fellow students make comments that alolow them to have a deeper understaning of the course content. Ever now an then they notice that a studnet has an idea or understanding that is missing in the text. Then they begin to value these other methods.
I do think this takes a while so I never recommend that junior faculty try these methods out too extensively. I also think there is a significant learning curve to fit these methods to any specific course so there will often be a real drop in student evaluations when starting this process. At our school, junior faculty can't afford such a drop, as evaluation mean scores are important in the tenure process. Two excellent chemistry teachers did not get tenure because of this. I do find a high percentage of these dualistic students among our best "natural science oriented/premed" so dealing effectively with this problem is very valuable for attracting good students to our psychology major.
Sorry for such a long answer. I do have references if you want to follow up on these ideas. Craig Nelson has a short article which gives a good introduction to these ideas.
bob
Professor of Psychology
Kalamazoo College
1200 Academy Street
Kalamazoo, MI 49006
Psychology Department: http://www.kzoo.edu/psych/index.htm ---
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