The institutional affiliation
Assignment 2
Statement 2
Analyze the relationship between Working Memory (WM), schematic encoding and cognitive load. Discuss why it is important for teachers to understand this relationship, and describe ways in which this relationship can affect the instructional design aspects of your teaching.
Being a teacher is a unique occupation indeed, because almost everyone sooner or later goes to school or any other educational establishment. Nevertheless, there are not so many people who have experienced being a teacher and who have really comprehended all the aspects of teaching. Those elements of the educator’s work are building the foundation of his/her style of teaching. Additionally, such psychological elements as working memory, schematic encoding and cognitive load are substantial for instructional design aspects of teaching.
Many educational activities such as reading, arts, science and other areas of the curriculum that students are engaged in the classroom inflict quite considerable loads on the working memory. That in turn means that learning requires working memory capacity. It should be mentioned that working memory capacity is limited, and expands with age during the childhood (Berk, 2013). Moreover, researches acknowledge that with age children are exercising to-be-learn information more efficiently. Larger processing speed lets older children, teenagers and adults examine and transform information more quickly, as well as hold more data in working memory at once (Berk, 2013). Therefore, rational cognitive work influences academic accomplishments.
The cognitive load related to these points refers to the total amount of mental endeavor that has been used in the working memory (Alloway, Gathercole, Kirkwood & Elliott, 2009). Relevant cognitive load is required for a vital aspect of learning, in particular, for the establishment and storage of so-called schemata into a long-term memory. The key point to note is that schemata develop when information components and production rules are integrated and united into wholes. This process saves storage capacity and intensifies cognitive functioning.
More detailed studies show that it is likely that young people are suffering from growing information quantity and complexity. That is why there are children with low working memory capacity. It is possible that genes play an important role in the encephalic frontal areas that sustain working memory (Gerven & Paa, 2000). However, poor working memory capacity becomes critical when an educational task demands relatively large working memory capacity. For instance, a child with a poor working memory capacity is attempting to follow the teacher’s directions to write down a sentence. The child needs not only to keep the sentence in working memory for quite a long time to write the teacher's words, but also he/she needs to remember to find the next word in his/her working memory. Children with a low working memory capacity would find this task extremely difficult. On balance, this task would seem easy for skilled writers. As a result, a teacher should pay attention to each and every student’s personality and mental characteristics.
It should be emphasized that a lot of researches are attached upon the issue of what can be done to direct cognitive load in such a way that people attain most favorable learning and performance.
More generally, it seems hard to deny that working memory is important because it issues a mental workspace in which humans can keep informed. The capacity to do this is decisive to many educational activities in the classroom. It is true to say that professional teachers apply some of these strategies instinctively.
Statement 3
The development of vision in infancy, including acuity, color perception, depth perception, face perception, and object perception is essential to learning and development across the lifespan. Our experiences in moving, exploring independently, and manipulating materials contribute to our visual development. What implications does this have for your teaching?
The development and maturation of an individual during infancy and early childhood is a very important time in a human’s life. An infant’s brain is comparable to a blank piece of paper. During infancy the child “writes” everything he/she observes. The experiences and things that are “written” are retained for a later use in life.
In addition to these points, it could not be argued that infants develop skills while exploring the world around them. In any case, it seems clear that children should be provided with the opportunities of a challenging environment in order to learn and improve the skills that have been already gained. Different experiences form physical changes and help to increase coordination. Sensory skills are elaborated through touch, taste, seeing, smell and hearing. From that perceptual abilities are gained. Additionally, this timeframe forms the person’s future social, mental and emotional behavior, as well as personality and character.
It is interesting to speculate on the implications that early childhood development provides for teachers and teaching strategies. Every educator uses the wide variety of pedagogical approaches and methods than an average parent. The key point is that a teacher can prepare daily interactive, receptive, active and first-hand experiences along with a group work or cooperation. This was one of the most important reasons why the educational goal is to comprise the mind of the learner in its fullest sense, including his/her aesthetic, social, spiritual and moral sensibilities (Katz, 1997).
As a rule, teaching practices take into account both dynamic and normative dimensions of the development. What young children should do and should learn is determined on the basis of what is the best for their development in the long term. In any case, the younger the learner is, the larger the adult’s role is.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the child’s performance is based on how secure the child feels him/herself in the environment that should provide coziness, stability and communication.
References
Alloway, T., Gathercole, S., Kirkwood, H., & Elliott, J. (2009). The working memory rating scale: A classroom-based behavioral assessment of working memory. Learning And Individual Differences, 19(2), 242-245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2008.10.003
Berk, L., E. (2013). Child Development. United States of America: Pearson Education
Educationsociety.wordpress.com. (2013). Similarities in Child Development and Teacher Education. Retrieved 30 March 2016, from https://educationsociety.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/similarities-in-child-development-and-teacher-education/
Katz, Lilian, G. (1997). Child Development Knowledge and Teachers of Young Children. Retrieved 30 March 2016, from http://ecap.crc.illinois.edu/eecearchive/books/childdev/childdev.pdf
Van Gerven, W., M,. Fred G.,W.,C. (2000). Cognitive Load Theory and the Acquisition of Complex Cognitive Skills in the Elderly: Towards and Integrative Framework. Educational Gerontology, 26(6), 503-521. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03601270050133874
