Human Memory and Knowledge Construction: Increases in Student Learning Essay

It is infixed to alleviate students in effect investment firm and c both up schooling from their want- circumstance recollection board. charitable stock is moot to the way training is received, interpreted, stored, and retrieved. In short, selective breeding is brought into the sensory register. The input signal thusly(prenominal) moves into the working shop and is then stored in the long recollection. An apprehensiveness of Piagets theory of knowledge construction helps teachers to guide substantive lessons and conversations that maximize student get word awaying. It is therefore authorised that teachers understand human memory and learning as nearly as strategies to enhance these aspects in the classroom to support student learning. An understanding of memory is infixed for teaching students.Memory is the swear protrude of storing and retrieving information and behaviors. Human memory has several components that atomic number 18 essential for effec tive storage and convalescence. Storage is the process of taking what was presented and placing it in a location in the hotshots storage space for later retrieval. Retrieval is the process of disowning the information that was antecedently stored. peerless way to theorise most this part of memory is to conceptualize of the brain equal a file system. Although it is non entirely accurate, this coincidence works to describe parts of the storage and retrieval process. In this way, the brain is homogeneous a file cabinet.There be files for many concepts and the information is stored according to these files. This is a persons synopsis Schema is an micturate set of information about a topic. For example, a person could brook a schema for beaches. This schema would contain information such as white sand, the sound of seagulls, and tide pools. If this was a file system, there would be a file labeled beaches, and inside of that file would be information, pictures, and memo rabilia related to beaches. One way that human memory is different from a filing system is that one piece of information could be stored in conjunction to more than one schema.One way to think about this is the like a web, where the central idea is in the reduce, and ideas and information come from the center into sub categories. These subcategories buttocks also boast opposite subcategories, and can be connected to other ideas and concepts. Retrieval is related to the filing system, also. In this way, when a person is looking for information, they go to the file where the information is stored and pull out what they need. When a person is retrieving information for their memory, they use retrieval cues in a connatural manner. Retrieval cues are stimuli that help people recall(a) information.This in impartition is related to a persons schema as soundly as the web analogy. In this way, when a person sense of smells a legitimate scent, like pine corners, they pull forw ard all the schemas that contain the smell of pine trees. This allows the brain to go through with(predicate) a smaller inwardness of stored information for a faster retrieval. In this example, schemas of Christmas, the woods, and grandmas menage may be brought forward. When information is not stored in an appropriate schema, retrieval is more difficult and slower than if it were stored in a memorable place. This is important for student education and the teaching process. It is important for teachers to help students to store information learned in class in narrate to improve retrieval and net connections across schemas.There are ternary places that a remark can go. The maiden is the sensory register. This is where the brain decides whether or not the comment is necessary for a person to consciously consider. This means that some things make it to the working memory and some things are ignored. This is important because people are exposed to many stimuli at the same time and if attention was gainful to all of them, the person would not be able to focus on any given stimulus. This is often a large problem for students with economic aid Deficit Disorder ( bring). Students who switch ADD are viewed as being unable to concentrate on their school work.The actual problem is that students with ADD are paying attention to many stimuli making it difficult to concentrate on a single stimulus. Students who have ADD often have trouble with their sensory register because it does not ignore the unnecessary stimuli of their surroundings, such as noise in the hallway, leaves quivering on a tree outside, or the sound of a noisy heater. in one case a stimulus has been deemed worthy of consideration by the sensory register it moves into the working memory. This is where meaningful thinking occurs and connections are made, before the information is stored in the long term memory.This is where students need help making sense of information. The working memory is like a Post-it note. The initial idea is placed on the Post-it. Information can then be added to the Post-it, attached to other Post-its, or moved to another(prenominal) place to make a connection. Students need to be guided to make connections and understand the presented information. Long term memory is where the information is stored for later retrieval. Once a person has processed the information in the working memory and made connections to prior knowledge and attends, the brain then stores the information accordingly. effective storage requires that the information is stored according to schemas for retrieval. For example, when I was traveling in Misiones, Argentina, I came across a strange animal. Looking at this animal, it looked like a mix of a raccoon and an anteater. It had a long tail like a lemur and sat like a bear cub. Later I discovered that this animal is called a Coat. The Coat, therefore, is stored in my long term memory, in relation to schemas about Misiones, Argenti na, animals, and tropical forests. In chapter two of Ormrods (2012) book, Essentials of Educational Psychology Big Ideas to Guide Effective Teaching, Ormrod describes three processes for effectively storing information in long term memory.These processes will be discussed in relation to the case study. The case study involved a teacher, Mrs. Dennison, and her class, as they discovered menace species. Mrs. Dennison uses many different techniques to help her students to learn this material. The first process is elaboration. This is where the receiver takes the information that they have been presented with and supplements it with realistic hypotheses to more deeply understand the concept. These hypotheses come from relationships with other prior knowledge. Ms. Dennison shows the class a video to introduce the concept of jeopardize species.She begins with a video on manatees. This is an un long-familiar topic for students. She then guides the students through questioning, to elabora te on the presented information. The students are then able to make connections to what they already know about animals. For example, Ms. Dennison asks is the manatee like anything youve ever seen before? and How bragging(a) is the manatee compared to you? She also asks her students how they think that manatees swim and later asks why manatees do not live as far north as Canada. The second process is arranging. The process of organization is where a person makes connections between ideas. Under the umbrella of endangered species, Ms. Dennison introduces manatees.She then introduces fuckhead turtles. Using a matrix, Ms. Dennison guides her students to comparing and contrasting the two endangered animals. She also does this using the maps. This map shows the overlap of the habitats of the two animals and also where the muttonhead turtle can live that manatees cannot. The final storage process suggested by Ormrod is visual imagery. This process involves a person creating a picture in his or her mind either from the way he or she imagines it looks or from being exposed to images of the concept.Ms. Dennison helps her students to use this process by using videos and images. In the beginning of the unit, Ms. Dennison uses a video on manatees to introduce students to manatees and endangered species. She asks students to relate what the manatee looked like in the video to something else that they had seen before. She shows a video about loggerhead turtles as well as tapes a picture of the loggerhead turtle in the description column of the matrix.Ms. Dennison used these strategies for storing information in conjunction with the three component memory system. Initially the information is brought into the sensory register. This comes from the videos. The information is deemed as important and therefore moves to the working memory. To help students take the information from the sensory register to the working memory, the teacher asks students to make observations. pre sent the teacher guides the students to organize and elaborate on the information to be stored in long term memory. The teacher helps the students to make connections to prior knowledge, hold raw(a) knowledge through hypotheses, and organize the information for effective storage and retrieval.She does this through class discussions, the use of the matrix and map, and making meaningful connections to the things the students were already familiar with. The teacher leads the students to move the information from the working memory to the long-term memory. By helping students to organize the information into appropriate schemas, the teacher helps the students to successfully store the information into their long-term memory. She is doing this by using the matrix and maps as well as comparing and contrasting the animals. She also helps the students to practice their retrieval skills when she asks them to recall the previously discussed definitions such as habitat.The methods used by Ms . Dennison will be effective for long-term memory storage and successful retrieval because she uses all three methods for long-term memory storage. She helps the students to create meaningful connections allowing the information to be stored in many different schemas. She also helped students to create their own schema for endangered species. Within that schema, using the matrix, classroom discussions, and map, she is able to guide students to create subcategories of the schema for each animal as well as the environmental implications. The systemized organization of the schema will help students perform effective and economical retrieval for future reference.Piaget, a researcher from Switzerland, devoted his life to understanding the way fryren develop cognitively. Piagets theory of knowledge construction is found in the notion that tikeren are motivated to learn by disequilibrium. Piaget explained that when a student is in disequilibrium he or she feels uncomfortable and needs to drive home to equilibrium. This shift is made through accommodation and socialization. Assimilation is when a person takes an unidentified stimulus and fits it to an quick schema.For example, when a young child is presented with an unknown animal, such as a zebra, he or she is in disequilibrium because he or she is unsure what kind of animal it is. After observing the zebra, the child discovers that the zebra has many characteristics of a horse. In order to get back into equilibrium, the child decides that the zebra is a horse. Here the child assimilates the information into the existing schema of horse. alteration is when a person creates a impertinently schema or reorganizes an existing schema to harbor the new information. Returning to the child who sees a zebra for the first time, to book this new animal into a schema the child decides that the zebra is not a horse but a new animal all together. The child then creates a new schema for zebras that contains information re garding how the zebra is similar to and different than a horse.Piagets theory of knowledge construction is unembellished in the case study. Ms. Dennison recognizes that because of the geographic location of her students, manatees, loggerhead turtles, and other endangered species may not be something that the students are familiar with, thus make disequilibrium. In order to help her students to get back into equilibrium Ms. Dennison helps her students to accommodate the information. One way that she does this is by asking the student to relate the manatee to something that they are familiar with. Keri suggests that a manatee is like a cow. universe from Wisconsin, this is something that many students can relate to. Ms. Dennison explains that manatees are often called sea cows.If she would have stopped the discussion there students may have assimilated the information. She does not, however. Instead, she discusses the differences between manatees and cows with the students. One exa mple is that cows have legs and manatees do not. This leads students to accommodate the new information This helps students to create a new schema for manatees. This brings students back to equilibrium. She then discusses the characteristics and habitat of manatees and organizes this information into a matrix. The students are then able to add this information to their new schema. This organization will help students to retrieve the information later.There are other strategies that would be helpful for Ms. Dennison to use that would help to increase her students learning, as suggested by Ormrod. One thing that she could do would be to suggest mnemonics for information that may be difficult to remember later. One example of a mnemonic that she could use in this unit would be HIPPO. This acronym is used to remember the causes of extinction for animals. It stands for habitat, introduction of an exotic species, pollution, population, and over consumption. other way that Ms. Dennison co uld help her students would be to provide a hands-on experience to relate to the concept.This could be done within this unit by having students think of ways to conserve their environment, raise money to save a species, or write letters to government officials expressing their concern about the wellbeing of the species. Human memory has many aspects. Storage and retrieval are both essential in this process. The use of schemas can improve storage and retrieval. The three-component model of memory is a good descriptor of the process. A stimulus is initially taken into the sensory register, when it is deemed important the stimuli then moves into the working memory where it is organized, interpreted, and connected to other prior knowledge.The information is then stored in long-term memory, where it awaits retrieval. There are three significant processes that are useful for storing information in long-term memory organization, elaboration, and visual imagery. Piagets theory of knowledge construction is an essential understanding for teachers to perceive student learning through accommodation and assimilation as students move from disequilibrium to equilibrium. There are many strategies that help students effectively learn, store, and retrieve information. It is imperative that teachers help students to complete this process in order for meaningful learning to take place.ReferencesOrmrod, J. (2012). Learning, cognition, and memory. In Essentials of educationalpsychology big ideas to guide effective teaching (3rd ed., pp. 16-55). Boston,MA Pearson Education, Inc.