WIT 2003

Motivation, cognition and learning

On this page, you will find an overview of the ideas behind the passion curriculum framework - specifically, ideas from cognitive and motivation psychology, and learning environment design research.

The passion curriculum model is founded on theoretical ideas from two main fields: cognitive science, and motivation psychology. The cognitive perspective is mainly drawn from goal-based scenario design (a cognitive theory of pedagogy that focuses on learner goals) and cognitive apprenticeship (a theory of pedagogy that focuses on social aspects of learning environments.) We describe those ideas on this page.

The motivational perspective was developed by looking at theories of motivation and learning through a learning-environment-design lens. We describe those ideas here.

Back to the start of the Passion Curriculum WIT module

Goal-based pedagogy

From Schank & Joseph, 1998:
Principles for intelligent classrooms

1. Center learning around cognitively appropriate goals the students have, 2. Choose learning objectives based on important and sensible expectations (including background knowledge, generalizations and skills) that students should acquire, 3. Pique the students’ curiosity (surprise them), 4. Provide access to explanations exactly when the students need them, 5. Provide experiences that relate the goals to the learning objectives, so that students will build useful stories, 6. Provide opportunities for reflection, so that students have time and space to reorganize their memories.

Any of these principles can be applied to any classroom for a cognitive benefit to the students. You may already be using some of these principles in your classroom, whether you have thought about them this way or not. While you may not be able to select learning objectives because of mandated requirements, you may be able to think of ways to pique the students’ curiosity about those learning objectives. While it may be impossible to provide multiple, interesting, story-based explanations, you may nevertheless be able to use your students’ goals to determine the content of the work you do.

Schank, R., & Joseph, D. (1998). Intelligent Schooling. In R. Sternberg & W. M. Williams (Eds.), Intelligence, Instruction and Assessment: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Back to the top of the theory page

Cognitive apprenticeship

From Collins, Brown & Newman, 1989:
"...apprenticeship embeds the learning of skills and knowledge in their social and fucntional context." So, one particularly effective way for students to learn new skills is to practice those skills in ways that are just like the ways those skills would be used in the real world. For example, they might practice writing skills by writing for a newspaper.

Some of the major teaching ideas in cognitive apprenticeship include:

• Modelling -- doing yourself what you want your students to do
• Coaching -- guiding your students as they pursue difficult problems in their work
• Scaffolding and fading --providing support as they do their work, and then taking the support away as the students develop their skills

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: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Back to the top of the theory page