Intellectual history: The early years
 
My first teachers--my parents and grandparents, and especially Nana (my 
grandmother)--had no formal learning theories. However in my eyes, I'd 
agree with Piaget: "The child's parents are the source of everything, and 
are simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent" (Saettler, 
1990, p. 75). My father, an organic chemist, had little influence until I 
was already in school, began to understand some of the deeper ideas of 
modern science, and announced that I was going to become an astronomer 
when I grew up. 
 
My grandparents came from a long line of Lithuanian aristocracy, and as 
Tsarists, managed to escape from an oppressive regime with only their 
lives and their traditions. My grandmother was from Vilnius, the cultural 
center, and was fluent in four languages, as well as being an herbalist 
and a gourmet cook. My grandfather was from Kaunas, the capitol city and 
seat of the university. When he came to America, he had to choose a 
trade. "I choose the most honorable trade--ironworking--it was not beneath 
the Tsar's dignity, and it is not beneath mine!" Nana, on the other hand, 
was highly influenced by the Lithuanian Jewish intellectuals who 
considered the Rabbis and university professors to be the most respected 
members of society.
 
As first daughter of first daughter of first daughter in a matriarchal 
society, I was expected to take on the responsibilities for my generation 
and preserve the family heritage. My earliest memories of conversations 
with Nana went something like this, but in simpler terms: "We come from a 
proud family, and we expect you to live up to our expectations. You must 
be well-educated and self-reliant, morally above reproach, brilliant in 
conversation, and able to hold your own in gatherings of the richest and 
most intelligent company. We hope you marry a rich man; but if you don't, 
you must be absolutely self-reliant. You must be excellent at household 
arts, music, social discourse, and your schoolwork. You must also know 
how to do everything your hired help does, because you must be able to 
monitor them and correct their littlest mistakes." 
 
The idea of the Renaissance Woman pervaded all my learning, and has 
always served as a balance between my scientific studies, my passion for 
music, and my Vygotskian conception of learning as social discourse. 
Moreover, the emphasis on apprenticeship, mentoring, and the necessity 
for me to be able to teach others, was stressed at this early age. For 
example, she would say to me, "First you watch me mix the batter. Then 
you must stir it yourself, for only then will you know just what the 
consistency should be. Next, you must watch carefully as I cook the 
blinis--especially the way I turn them over. Finally, once I am sure you 
have mastered regulating the fire on the stove, I will let you cook the 
blinis yourself, but I'll be watching carefully over your shoulder until 
you can do it all by yourself." 
 
Now that I have studied Collins, Brown, and Newman (1989), I understand 
that cognitive apprenticeship goes beyond the simple selection of 
job-relevant tasks, sequenced to reflect the changing demands of 
learning, and that it emphasizes transfer of skills, rather than just 
teaching skills in the context of their use. However, learning cooking 
from Nana gave me an appreciation for the role of a cognitive apprentice. 
Later, I used this technique when I taught the other residents of the 
Ashram the principles and practices of landscaping--how to arrange, plant, 
and care for trees, bushes, and herbaceous borders. Landscaping is a 
science in that it has principles, but it is also an art, requiring color 
sense and balance. It is simply not the sort of thing that can be learned 
out of a book, any more than one can learn to cook by reading Julia Child!
 

Grade school
 
When I reached the age of five, and my playmates were about to enter 
kindergarten, my mother took me aside and said, "Lorraine, you are not 
like the others. You are not going to go to kindergarten. School is for 
learning, and kindergarten is for fun and games--it will give you entirely 
the wrong idea about learning, so you will stay home and learn household 
arts from Nana until you are ready to go to first grade and learn how to 
read and write." Clearly, she did not agree with Froebel, who saw the 
value of socialization as a basic teaching method. Well, that entirely 
destroyed my idea of social learning, and I changed from an extroverted 
toddler to an introverted child. Since then, I have always had a terrible 
time overcoming my shyness.
 
With all the reading, music, and storytelling that went on at home; 
learning cooking, cleaning, and embroidery from my grandmother; and 
watching in fascination as my father produced chemical reactions from 
elements I'd only read about, and proceeded to duplicate any scent or 
flavor known to man, I thought that school was a let-down. I was bored! 
By the time I was in fifth grade, my mother knew that something was 
drastically wrong. She said to me, "I know you are bored at school. I'm 
going to send you to the nuns. Graduates of Catholic schools get a good 
classical education, and that sets the stage for entering a good college 
later in life." She was right. Later on, when the roles were reversed, I 
said the same thing to my son and sent him to St. Sebastian's. I have 
never regretted either of these moves.
 
My first master teacher was Sister Flavia. She taught a class of 99 
students, and taught them well. Her idea was not to work hard, but to 
work smart. She said to me, "Nothing is hard in school or in life if you 
have a system, but you've got to know what system to use and when to use 
it. I am going to teach you the systems: how to balance quantities on 
each side of the equals sign in math, how to graph a sentence, and how to 
construct a paragraph. Once you know this, reading, writing, and 
arithmetic will be easy for the rest of your life." This was a crucial 
lesson! In my volunteer tutoring at Polk Community College, I used her 
system with my students at the math round table, and it worked as well 
for them as it did for me. 
 
Let's make an explicit link here.  When I read Bruer (1993), I began to 
understand just why this process worked so well--"students who can't learn 
spontaneously form new experiences need direct instruction about the 
relevant facts and about the strategies to use" (p. 13). Moreover, both 
Bruer and Bransford cite the work of Chi, who was attempting to do the 
same thing as I was, namely, to get my students to see beyond the surface 
features of a problem to the general principles that governed the 
solution, and then to ask themselves about other cases in which the 
general solution might also be applicable. Chi and Bassok's (1989) 
emphasis on self-explanations and metacognition was an integral part of 
my own tutoring. Only when students could explain their misconceptions to 
me, and to one another, could we begin to home in on just what went 
wrong, and what strategy should be used to solve the problem at hand. 
This was particularly important for the Asian calculus students, who had 
excellent "numeracy" and skill in solving equations, but who had never 
developed the ability to visualize solids of revolution.
 
Mayer (1987) also comes into play here, with the four aspects of math 
problem solving: translation, integration, planning/monitoring, 
execution. I had not read Mayer, but what I did paralleled his own 
process. Translation (comprehension) was helped by "crib sheets" in their 
workbooks, and once the students could write a formula, they could solve 
it.  The tough part was the integration; here is where I had to work the 
hardest. I had them classify the problem in to "mixture", "river", 
"financial", etc.; write down the knowns and unknowns; then using a 
matrix, rearrange them into the manner that the known formula for the 
problem type entailed, as Brent Wilson does with abstract concepts when 
trying to make sense of them. It was 6th grade learning, but college 
students really had a tough time with it.
 

High school
 
My Catholic school education paid off handsomely. I graduated at the top 
of my class. Frankly, I learned little more in my classes, except for 
more facts and strategies. I didn't work very hard, and again I graduated 
at the top of my class. I avoided history, took every science class that 
was offered, and joined every choral group, besides taking music lessons 
after school. Throughout high school, the balance of music and science 
became absolutely crucial to my mental stability, and would continue for 
the rest of my life. I was the only girl in the physics classÑthat didn't 
bother me, because I had grown used to working with my father in the lab, 
and most of my uncles and cousins were engineers. If there were a gender 
difference, I was oblivious to it, because my sense of self-reliance had 
been so instilled into me from earliest childhood, that I compared myself 
with where I ought to be rather than with my classmates. Moreover, as 
Turkle and Papert (1991) would say, I was the epitome of the "hard approach"!
 
I had no master teachers in high school. Rather, I capitalized on the 
deep understanding of the general principles of math and grammar that had 
been taught to me by Sister Flavia, and they served me well. My parents 
were quite pleased when I was accepted to all five of the women's 
colleges that I had applied to, with a scholarship to boot! It also 
thwarted their attempts to get me married off at an early age, because 
they could now see that I aspired to a university education, 
and--possibly--a professorship, the highest status imaginable!
 

College and music
 
On to college, as a physics major/music minor. College was an awakening. 
No longer could I coast through my studies with my sixth grade skills. 
Now I had to work, and work very hard. The goals were clear: either get 
married or get into a good graduate school. I wasn't used to the 
challenge, and experienced the same "sophomore slump" as four of the five 
physics majors in my graduating class. Luckily, it was at this critical 
time that I met my second master teacher--Betty Churgin, my counterpoint 
teacher. She understood my dualism between music and science, and helped 
me bridge the gap by applying scientific principles to music, and art to 
scientific/mathematical concepts. Through her, I was able to write 
outstanding harmonizations to Bach bass lines, by visualizing a 
beautiful, geometric line. It was no ordinary way of learning, but it 
bonded us very closely. 
 
Years later, my voice coach, Becky Griffin, also used visualization. It 
worked wonders. Singing is not the sort of skill that can be taught from 
a book no more than cooking or landscaping. Some techniques are 
obvious--bunny teeth, fish face, and other muscular contortions that keep 
the voice on pitch and the sound clean. However, I could not see what was 
going on deep inside my coach's throat, nor my own for that matter. Nor 
was I writing a beautiful line that I could see in the score; I had to 
produce a beautiful flow of sound that followed that line. Moreover, I 
had to visualize singing to the clock on the wall, reverberating the 
sound in the "cave of my head", and making the sound come out cleanly and 
smoothly.
 
Both of these experiences introduced me to the very close bond between 
master and novice. We were not just teacher and taughtÑwe were close 
friends, who could discuss anything and everything. Both of these 
supportive relationships helped me deal with stage fright and large 
crowds. "If you count, you won't be anxious; if you are anxious, you 
can't count, so COUNT! Even Pavarotti counts!" Tips and tricks from the 
masters were, and still are, very valuable. 
 

Graduate School and thereafter
 
I managed to land three scholarships to excellent graduate schools, which 
led to the family mantra, "When are you going to get your doctorate??". 
This has never stopped! No more emphasis on marrying a rich man, when the 
first daughter could aspire to being a university professor. Well, my 
experiences at Harvard knocked that right out of me. The only course in 
which I feel I learned anything at all was my optics lab, which landed me 
a good job with the MITRE Corporation, a government-supported think tank. 
I hated my courses, because I didn't agree with any of the professors. 
They were all disciples of B.F. Skinner--that is, except for Richard 
Alpert (alias Baba Ram Dass), my evaluation and measurement professor, 
who was an interesting lecturer and a devil's advocate. 
 
Cognitive psychology was just being born in 1961-62, but the Graduate 
School of Education seemed to be oblivious to it. "S-R-S" was the golden 
rule, and I simply didn't buy into it. Saettler (1990) sums up Skinner's 
idea succinctly: "he considered his methodological approach strictly 
atheoretical..." (p. 70). Though I considered myself a practitioner, I 
wanted to see some theory about what made people tick, what was going on 
inside their heads, and I was not getting that in my coursework.
 
Having experienced what I consider cognitive apprenticeships with Nana 
and my singing teachers, and having learned about principles, strategies, 
and metacognition from Sister Flavia, I felt that what I was being taught 
at Harvard was not only irrelevant--it was just plain wrong! I wrote what 
I believed in my papers, and got mediocre grades because I simply 
wouldn't follow the party line. Harvard was a terrible experience, and it 
left me with a very bad taste for teaching as a profession, much to the 
distress of my family. I decided to follow the corporate track, and 
remained there until I was involved in an auto accident in 1974.
 
On the dissolution of my marriage, I joined an Ashram. It was an 
intellectual Ashram, with corporate people: engineers, software 
developers, and technical writers. It was here that I really had a chance 
to dig into some learning theory, studying the philosophical writings of 
the Vedic sages and the psychological treatises of the Hindu gurus. Our 
resident guru was an ex-professor from Boston University, with one 
doctorate in Hindu studies from a prominent university in India and 
another one in communication from Boston University. Through my studies 
there, I learned that S-R-S really had some "meat" in it, and that there 
wasn't such a huge dichotomy between cognition and operant conditioning. 
The model in the Yoga Sutras isn't very different from the information 
processing models used by the systems theorists of the 1960's. However, 
they do use some additional structures described by Perkins, Jay, and 
Tishman (1993). All of these concepts appear in my cognitive map. 
 
At the Ashram, I also regained an appreciation for social learning, one 
that had been thwarted when I was prevented from going to kindergarten. I 
conducted my classes at the Ashram as interactive discussions, and 
realized that everyone had a varying mix of relevant, useful information 
and BS. It also gave me a chance to practice my mentoring skills, as well 
as apprenticing myself to the software developers and technical writers.
 
In the late 1980's, I started taking some evening courses in computer 
science, and met my third master teacher--Professor Richard Johnson. He 
picked up on my interest in visualization, and shared his insights with 
me, as he began to soften my hard approach to software design. He used 
analogy, metaphor, and visualization in his classes, and found that they 
worked very well, especially with a multicultural mix of students. 
Norman, Gentner, and Stevens, 1976, offer an interesting set of metaphors 
for cooking, just as Professor Johnson offered some "real-world" 
metaphors for abstract data structures such as stacks, queues, and linked 
lists. 
 
I worked with Professor Johnson on MPC1, "a model computer". MPC1 is a 
DOS program that enables students to write simple programs in machine 
language to solve problems in integer arithmetic, and to watch the 
operation of the model computer on-screen as it processed the data. His 
philosophy was this: if a student could see the data going through the 
computer, step by step, that would bring the abstract down to the 
concrete (Turkle & Papert, 1991; Edelson, Gomez, & Pea, 1995), and 
de-mystify the process to the students. His visionary approach wasn't 
well received by the administration at Mass Bay Community College, and he 
retired soon after I had taken my last course from him. However, I do see 
a repeat of Professor Johnson's techniques in Brent Wilson's 
pattern-making, with groupings, classifications, and matrices of key 
abstract concepts.
 
When my son graduated from St. Sebastian's and entered college, my mother 
had a mini-stroke, and I moved to Florida. In the evenings, I had the 
opportunity to take some computer courses at the local community college, 
and to do some volunteer tutoring. My theoretical and practical knowledge 
of teaching-mentoring, which I had picked up at the Ashram, served me 
well. The community college shared a campus with USF, so I was able to 
take courses at both places. It was here that I met my husband (another 
master teacher!) and once again embarked on my studies in education. 
 
Now, I realize that I can integrate my knowledge of strategies and 
metacognition into my own learning (from Sister Flavia), use patterns and 
visualization to classify data and make connections among concepts for my 
research projects (from Professor Johnson and Brent Wilson), mentor 
others both online and in person (from the Ashram), and give a decent 
presentation in front of a large group of people (from my music 
teachers). It is all starting to come together now. Unfortunately, my 
mother's mantra, "when are you going to get your doctorate??" hasn't 
stopped, so I guess I'll eventually satisfy the family's dream...
 

References
 
Bruer, J.T. (1993). The mind's journey from novice to expert. American 
Educator, 6-15, 38-46.
 
Bransford, J.D., & Vye, N.J. (no date given). A perspective on cognitive 
research and its implications for instruction. In L.B. Resnick & L.E. 
Klopfer (Eds.), Toward the thinking curriculum: Current cognitive 
research. Yearbook of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum 
Development.
 
Chi, M.T. H., & Bassok, M. (1989). Learning from examples via 
self-explanations. In L.B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and 
instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 251-282). Hillsdale 
NJ: Erlbaum.
 
Collins, A ., Brown, J.S., & Newman, S.E. (1989). Cognitive 
apprenticeship: Teaching the crafts of reading, writing , and 
mathematics. In L.B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: 
Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 453-494). Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.
 
Edelson, D. C., Pea, R. D., & Gomez, L. (1996). Constructivism in the 
collaboratory. In B. G. Wilson (Ed.), Constructivist learning 
environments: Case studies in instructional design (pp. 151-164). 
Englewood NJ: Educational Technology Publications.
 
Mayer, R.E. (1987). Learnable aspects of problem solving: Some examples. 
In D.E. Berger, K. Pezdek, & W.P. Banks (Eds.), Applications of cognitive 
psychology: Problem solving, education, and computing (pp. 109-122). 
Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.
 
Norman, D., Gentner, D., & Stevens, A. (1976). Comments on learning 
schemata and memory representation. In D. Klahr (Ed.), Cognition and 
Instruction. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.
 
Perkins, D., Jay, E., & Tishman, S. (1993). New conceptions of thinking: 
From ontology to education. Educational Psychologist, 28 (1), 67-85.
 
Saettler, P. (1990). The evolution of American educational technology. 
Englewood CO: Libraries Unlimited.
 
Turkle, S., & Papert, S. (1991). Epistemological pluralism and the 
revaluation of the concrete. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), 
Constructionism (pp. 161-191). Norwood NJ: Ablex.



Cognitive Map and Personal model of cognition
 
Cognition involves an interaction between the external environment, the 
psycho-neural system, and internal cognitive structures. The overall 
picture looks like this:
 

(typical IP model) 
 
Figure 1. Top level cognitive map.
--------------------------------- 

The external environment consists of assorted stimuli, some of which are 
associated with meaningful external representations, others of which are 
simply noise and distractions (as described by Claude Shannon). 
Instructional variables, including extrinsic motivation, are part of the 
external environment. Actions, including presentations, expert and novice 
performance, carrying out authentic tasks, and habitual actions, are also 
part of the external environment. I'll talk more about action later on. 
(see Figures 2 and 3.) 
 
The psycho-neural system consists of the sensory system and the motor 
system. Receptors in the eyes, ears, skin, etc., pick up the impinging 
stimuli and send signals to the sensory registers. A feedback loop from 
both long term memory (preattentive perception) and short term memory 
(attentive perception) filters out irrelevant patterns and stimuli, so 
that the person selectively attends to the important information that is 
coming into the system. 
 
According to Miller, approximately seven items can be stored in short 
term memory. However, by using metacognitive strategies and external 
cognitive aids, this limitation can be overcome to a certain extent. I'll 
talk about metacognition later on, and just how it influences learning. 
(See Figure 4.)
 
Information is recalled (sought and decoded) from long term memory, and 
compared with information held in short term memory. Meaningful 
connections or elaborations are built between the two. If the information 
is useful, it is linked, encoded, and stored in long term memory; if not, 
it is either rejected or held in short term memory for another pass. And, 
if the information is considered important at the time, but is not 
related to prior knowledge structures, it gets stored as inert knowledge 
and is difficult to recall later on. 
 
Long term memory consists of knowledge structures, including schemas, 
affects, and some parts of metacognition. It is not accessible to 
conscious control until it is recalled to short term memory. However, 
there are always unconscious mental processes taking place; these are 
particularly evident in meditation, sleep, and relaxation, during which 
creative insights may occur.
 
To perform an action, an impression in short term memory may be linked 
with a recalled item from long term memory. Under the control of 
metacognition, this would be a purposeful action. (There are also 
non-purposeful actions like habits, which are controlled by both 
long-term memory and short-term memory; they are partly conscious, partly 
unconscious.) A signal is sent from short term memory to a response 
generator, which, in turn, sends another signal to a motor effector such 
as the mouth, hands, arms, or any part of the body that is still 
electrically connected to the brain. The motor organ then performs the 
action, which becomes part of the external environment.
 
Now let's take a microscope and examine some parts of this map in more 
detail, starting with action.
 

(Metacognition monitors actions; actions are classified into habits and 
purposeful actions; purposeful actions consist of novice/expert behavior 
and intellectual performance)  
 
Figure 2. Classification of actions.
----------------------------------- 

Next, let's take our microscope and focus on habits. It's at this point 
that I've integrated my knowledge of the Hindu psychological treatises 
with the information processing model of cognitive psychology, Skinner's 
S-R-S cycle, and Perkins, Jay, and Tishman's (1993) new conceptions of 
thinking.
 

(A habit is an endless loop:
external stimulus => action => impression (STM) => decision (favorable y/n?)
If unfavorable, stop.
If favorable => create favorable attitude => create tendency to repeat 
action => initiate repetition next time stimulus occurs) 
 
Figure 3. How habits are created.
------------------------------- 

We start with an external stimulus, say dessert. Upon performing the 
action (eating dessert), an impression is formed in short term memory. If 
it's unfavorable, no further action is performed (except to push dessert 
away!) and no habit is formed. However, if it's favorable, then it 
initiates the creation of a favorable attitude regarding dessert, which 
Perkins, Jay, and Tishman refer to as a type of abstract conceptual 
structure. This, in turn, creates a tendency, which they refer to as a 
thinking disposition--a disposition to act. Here, the action is to repeat 
the prior action when the stimulus occurs (sure I'll have another piece!) 
Next meal, same process, until eating dessert becomes a habit. With each 
repetition of this endless loop, the process becomes more automated and 
less under conscious control, as the electrical connections are 
strengthened. I think this explains why dieting doesn't work--you may 
remove the stimulus, but you haven't touched the attitudes or tendencies!
 
Next, let's examine metacognition more closely. I've been intrigued by 
this ever since I heard about "having a system and using it properly" by 
Sister Flavia, and the research I've been doing with Karen Myers. 
Metacognition is a cognitive structure that monitors the 
search/recall/decode and encode/store processes that go on between short 
term and long term memory. It also helps build connections between prior 
knowledge and incoming information. 
 
 As I see it, the metacognitive process uses both external and internal 
cognitive aids as shown in the following figure.
 
 
(Metacognition uses external aids and internal aids; external aids are 
external representations in environment, internal aids are stored in LTM)
 
Figure 4. Metacognition.
----------------------- 

Some of the external aids used in the classroom are advance organizers; 
external representations such as epistemic forms and microworlds; and 
teacher emphasis. Internal aids are strategies used by the student 
himself, such as rehearsal; elaboration strategies such as summarizing, 
questioning, and predicting; and analogy, metaphor, and visualization. 
All of these help the student monitor and assess the learning process, 
and organize the incoming information meaningfully. 
 
One other important part of metacognition is judgment of appropriateness 
of strategy--is this the right strategy to use in this context? For 
example, a set of balanced weights on a pulley system is a problem in 
statics, not dynamics, so F=Ma is not appropriate here.
 
Finally, we move on to long term memory and the cognitive structures 
stored there. 
 

(LTM contains inert knowledge, affects, schemas, and metacognitive 
strategies; examples of affects and schemas are shown) 
 
Figure 5. Long Term Memory Organization.
--------------------------------------- 

Metacognitive strategies are stored in long term memory, and are recalled 
when needed. Schemas are organizing structures for knowledge that is 
represented as words of pictures. Action schemata also contain procedural 
knowledge. Though my books on cognitive science and instructional 
technology don't stress the importance of affective variables, these are 
equally important--especially the stress given to motivation by Brophy. 
Both metacognition and affect are areas that I need to explore 
further--especially the connection made by Spielberger between anxiety and 
epistemic curiosity.
 
You'll notice that this entire cognitive map, and all its components, are 
only shown at the individual level. Nothing is said about social learning 
here, except that other people, a distributed knowledge base, and shared 
representations do exist in the external environment. I've seen how group 
processes influence individual cognition. Moreover, Karen Myers and I 
have found a strong link between group processes and individual 
metacognition. This is an area I'm keenly interested in, and would 
definitely like to pursue.

Back to Home Page