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Week 3 Research Blog Post

 In Chapter three of Rigor by Design, Not Chance by Karin Hess, Hess focuses on how to build schemas. “Schemas become frameworks for learning new content and dramatically expanding a learner’s knowledge base” (Hess, pg. 55) Furthermore, Hess explains that students who are reaching high learning potentials are able to build schemas, something students who are not reaching their full learning potential are missing. Being able to form schemas allows students to organize information, allow new information to “stick” and connect their knowledge outside of the classroom. Hess states on page 56, “building a schema involves integrating declarative knowledge (content) and procedural knowledge (skills and strategies)”. Hess gives educators four questions to consider:

  • What are the unifying concepts (declarative knowledge) and essential skills (procedural knowledge) of this discipline?

  • How do the parts (concepts, skills, and structures) relate to the whole?

  • What prior knowledge do students already have that they can build on or what might confuse them when knew information is introduced?

  • What common misconceptions might students have that you may need to address?

By providing students with framework like anchor charts that are a visual cue, students can draw on their prior knowledge when they go to complete a task alone. Hess explains how in primary grades this can be executed successfully during reading and writing. Hess connects building schemas to the first five stages of the Actionable Assessment Cycle. Educators can work through these stages in the order of:

  1. Clarifying learning targets

  2. Embedding short-cycle formative tasks into instruction

  3. Uncover thinking and document evidence of learning

  4. Interpret evidence and frame feedback

  5. Determine next steps to advance learning

Having students continuously practicing their new strategies and becoming fluent, they can expand their own knowledge.

After reading chapter three of Rigor by Design, Not Chance, I started searching for an article that relates to building schemas. I found an article titled, Role and Importance of Schemas in Pedagogy and Learning: A Cognitive Approach by Naveed Akram Ansari. This article is both similar to Hess’s chapter by touching on schemas, but it does take a deeper look into a more cognitive approach. Ansari states, “Cognitive approach is adopted to understand how students learn new forms of knowledge and experiences through different mental processes, quite unlike that of behaviorism. The concept of schema helps us understand how learners can link new pieces of information to the already existing knowledge in their minds” (pg. 46). Much like Hess, Anari discusses how our brains can collect and store information, even taking the information and connecting it to existing knowledge. Anari dives a little further into meta-cognition: “Meta-cognition discusses the ability of a person to perform different tasks and monitor them by himself. It also includes the understanding and remembering of the techniques applied to solve some the problems and the results obtained with the application of those techniques” (pg. 49). To arrive at certain conclusions, with the approach of meta-cognition we can also include the use of educational and pedagogical techniques and strategies. Anari focuses on five theories that relate to building schemas:

  1. Constructivism

  2. Progressive Theory

  3. Social Development Theory

  4. Discovery Learning Theory 

  5. Schemata Theory and Triangulation

Through the process of Anari looking at these theories and data analysis he comes to the conclusion of, “...the schemas and background knowledge of students can rightly be exploited for gaining and assimilation of new knowledge, thereby not only increasing the already attained knowledge but also making it rich, effective and purposeful” (pg. 58). 

Overall, both texts display how building schemas is important to a student’s learning path. Anari and Hess make connections between how learners can build upon their knowledge and engage in deeper learning. Rigor for students can be brought out through the building of schemas through teaching.

References

Ansari, N. A. (2019). Role and importance of schemas in pedagogy and learning: A cognitive approach. Journal of Communication and Cultural Trends, 1(1), 45–60.


Hess, K. (2023). Rigor by design not change deeper thinking through actionable instruction and assessment. ARLINGTON VA.

Comments

  1. KathrynNovember 10, 2023 at 6:32 PM

    Katie,
    How interesting that the Anari article connected cognitive learning theories to schema instruction. It is always valuable to see how the topics we study connect with other important topics in education. You wrote "students who are reaching high learning potentials are able to build schemas, something students who are not reaching their full learning potential are missing." That was a succinct tie in to how schema instruction relates not only to academic rigor, but academic achievement in general. Well done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Abby PlassardNovember 10, 2023 at 8:10 PM

    Katie,
    I love how you mentioned the four questions Hess included about building schemas. I feel like those four questions are a great way for teachers to think about what they are teaching before they teach it. For example, one of the questions mentioned students needing to have background knowledge. Teachers need to understand how much background knowledge a student has about something in order to understand where they need to start teaching. Here's a specific example. If I wanted to teach students about addition and subtraction, they would first need to have an understanding of numbers and how they are represented. I love how Hess gave us ideas and the article you found expanded upon how we as teachers can help students build schemas by connecting already learned information to new information that expands upon previous learning.

    ReplyDelete

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