1. Chapter 12 focuses on deductive reasoning and decision making which related to problem solving in Chapter 11. All three topics are related to thinking which is going beyond the information given to reach a goal, decision, or belief. It involves taking new info in(working memory), using our previous knowledge (long-term memory) and reasoning to make a decision.
2. I found it very hard to relate the decision-making strategies/heuristics to what I actually think of when I make a decision. It was hard to apply to my life. It seems to me that there should be plenty more strategies that people use to make a decision compared to the ones given in the book. I think that the book mentioned this also, but it seems like when a researcher is wanting people to make a decision in a particular way, like the engineer problem. Of course we think that the person is an engineer because we have been given other info that leads to that decision and I don’t believe that looking at the percentages of engineers and lawyers should be the only method of making this decision.
3. I could use this in my work by helping students realize that there might be limits to our decision-making processes. I need to remind students that the way a statement or question is worded may affect your decision. Students should look at both agreeing with a statement and disagreeing with a statement or finding reasons why something may be false. Overall, students need to form questions when they are making a decision or reasoning about something and be sure to think about all areas before making a final decision. I tell my students that they should even question their teachers when something does not seem to make sense.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Ch. 11 Reflection Problem Solving
1. Chapter 11 covers problem solving. It is broken into understanding the problem, problem solving strategies, factors that influence problem solving, and creativity. It relates to what we have learned previously in that when we are problem solving we have to take new info into our working memory and use our top-down processing and info in long-term memory to help us solve problems.
2. I was mostly clear on everything in this chapter because it really relates to what I teach, mathematics. Most of the examples that were given were related to math so I enjoyed the examples. I have talked about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in other education classes/workshops so I was familiar with those terms also.
3. How would I relate this to my teaching? It is an everyday occurrence to use problem solving in math. My students are always asking where we are going to use the math that they have to learn later on in life. Math teaches the problem solving skills that are needed to be successful in the future. There are several strategies that are used to problem solve. I feel that my students often use the Means-end Heuristic and the analogy approach the most in my math classroom more than the hill-climbing heuristic. The means-end approach breaks a problem into smaller problems in order to get to the end result. The analogy approach uses our previous knowledge to relate the new problem to problems that have been previously done. We use the methods that we used in the previous problems in order to solve the new problem.
I find that some students are able to problem solve better than others. In our discussions this week someone mentioned that it maybe the difference between right brained and left brained people. A person that is right-brained maybe looking at the big picture and will be able to relate a new problem to an old problem even if it is a problem that is worded differently. A left- brained person has a harder time seeing the big picture. I think that this makes sense but it is not entirely true because I am very left-brained but seem to have no problem looking at the big picture when solving math problems.
2. I was mostly clear on everything in this chapter because it really relates to what I teach, mathematics. Most of the examples that were given were related to math so I enjoyed the examples. I have talked about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in other education classes/workshops so I was familiar with those terms also.
3. How would I relate this to my teaching? It is an everyday occurrence to use problem solving in math. My students are always asking where we are going to use the math that they have to learn later on in life. Math teaches the problem solving skills that are needed to be successful in the future. There are several strategies that are used to problem solve. I feel that my students often use the Means-end Heuristic and the analogy approach the most in my math classroom more than the hill-climbing heuristic. The means-end approach breaks a problem into smaller problems in order to get to the end result. The analogy approach uses our previous knowledge to relate the new problem to problems that have been previously done. We use the methods that we used in the previous problems in order to solve the new problem.
I find that some students are able to problem solve better than others. In our discussions this week someone mentioned that it maybe the difference between right brained and left brained people. A person that is right-brained maybe looking at the big picture and will be able to relate a new problem to an old problem even if it is a problem that is worded differently. A left- brained person has a harder time seeing the big picture. I think that this makes sense but it is not entirely true because I am very left-brained but seem to have no problem looking at the big picture when solving math problems.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Chapter 8 Reflection
1. Chapter 8 discusses general knowledge and semantic memory. There were 4 approaches to classifying new information from what we already know. The feature comparison model compares the new stimulus to a list of features and characteristics. The prototype approach compares the new stimulus to a specific prototype in long-term memory. The exemplar approach compares new stimulus to prior established examples. The network approach links the new stimulus to a variety of previous knowledge through a net system. The chapter also talks about schemas and scripts, which are already known general knowledge that can sometimes aid us or cause problems with learning new information.
2. I thought it ties in with everything else that we have learned but it shows how we can take our general knowledge and apply it in order to take in new info. I also thought that it tied into chapter 2 and the approaches such as the feature analysis theory and the recognition components theory in regards to the 4 approaches of the semantic memory.
3. I felt that there were a lot of details in this chapter. I had to continuously stop and re-read to understand it. The questions that were raised by the leaders really helped to organize the new information into a hierarchy type of system for me.
4. The prototype example is used a great deal in upper level math when we are graphing and translating graphs. Schemas helped me to realize that students have difficulty understanding because of what already exists in their long-term memory.
5. The author has provided proof as related to research in this chapter but I think that it would have been more helpful to provide more or better examples to explain the approaches and schemas/scripts. I felt that the author did a better job in previous chapters to explain using examples and to engage the learning process.
6. It is important to understand how we code and compare new stimulus to our pre-existing knowledge. This can help teachers to understand how our cognitive processes work in order to possibly organize new material into these types of approaches to help students better understand the material.
7. I use the prototype approach just about everyday in my Calculus class. When we look at an equation and picture a graph the parent graph is the prototype and all transformations of it form the graph. For example an absolute value equation forms a v-shaped graph. The parent graph of y = the absolute value of x would be the prototype because it is v-shaped and is centered at the origin. Other absolute value equations are all v-shaped graphs but differ in some way like a wider or narrower v-shape, moving up, down, left, right, or even flipped upside down. All transformations show characteristics of the prototype in that they all have a vertex and the sides have opposite slopes of one-another so we can classify these graphs in the absolute value category.
8. As I mentioned earlier, I found this chapter difficult to understand so I think more examples would have helped. I was also working on my workshop at the same time so I might have been a little distracted or involved in a divided attention task. I also think that depending on what new information that we are learning we use each of the 4 different approaches instead of just 1 specific approach.
2. I thought it ties in with everything else that we have learned but it shows how we can take our general knowledge and apply it in order to take in new info. I also thought that it tied into chapter 2 and the approaches such as the feature analysis theory and the recognition components theory in regards to the 4 approaches of the semantic memory.
3. I felt that there were a lot of details in this chapter. I had to continuously stop and re-read to understand it. The questions that were raised by the leaders really helped to organize the new information into a hierarchy type of system for me.
4. The prototype example is used a great deal in upper level math when we are graphing and translating graphs. Schemas helped me to realize that students have difficulty understanding because of what already exists in their long-term memory.
5. The author has provided proof as related to research in this chapter but I think that it would have been more helpful to provide more or better examples to explain the approaches and schemas/scripts. I felt that the author did a better job in previous chapters to explain using examples and to engage the learning process.
6. It is important to understand how we code and compare new stimulus to our pre-existing knowledge. This can help teachers to understand how our cognitive processes work in order to possibly organize new material into these types of approaches to help students better understand the material.
7. I use the prototype approach just about everyday in my Calculus class. When we look at an equation and picture a graph the parent graph is the prototype and all transformations of it form the graph. For example an absolute value equation forms a v-shaped graph. The parent graph of y = the absolute value of x would be the prototype because it is v-shaped and is centered at the origin. Other absolute value equations are all v-shaped graphs but differ in some way like a wider or narrower v-shape, moving up, down, left, right, or even flipped upside down. All transformations show characteristics of the prototype in that they all have a vertex and the sides have opposite slopes of one-another so we can classify these graphs in the absolute value category.
8. As I mentioned earlier, I found this chapter difficult to understand so I think more examples would have helped. I was also working on my workshop at the same time so I might have been a little distracted or involved in a divided attention task. I also think that depending on what new information that we are learning we use each of the 4 different approaches instead of just 1 specific approach.
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