EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 2, page 43

Examples

and

nonexamples

Generating examples of new ideas, and thinking about what is not an example of the idea, is a

good way to integrate new ideas with what you already know. When given a definition of

propaganda, a learner might think of currently popular ads on TV and decide which ones are

examples of propaganda and which are not. Note that thinking about nonexamples can be very

useful for learning. Realizing that a whale is not an example of a fish can be even more helpful to

understanding what a fish is, and what it is not, than is noting that a guppy is an example of a

fish.

Arguments

for or against

Thinking of arguments for and against an idea is another way to connect new ideas to what you

already know. When reading about a textbook’s description of the causes of the Industrial

Revolution, a student might try to think of arguments that would support the textbook’s claims

and also of arguments that militate against the textbook’s claims.

Applications

to the real

world

Thinking of how to apply information to solve real-world problems is a way to connect new

information to a student’s current real-world knowledge. For instance, when learning how to

solve a differential equation in calculus, you could think of situations in which you could use this

knowledge in the real world.

Explanation Explanation is a very powerful and effective way of connecting new information to knowledge

already stored in LTM. For instance, when trying to remember that animals’ temperatures

decrease during hibernation, learners may explain to themselves that maintaining a high body

temperature takes a great deal of energy, and because animals cannot eat while hibernating, their

metabolism needs to shift to a low temperature that does not consume much energy. In this

example, the learners connect the new information about hibernation to other known explanations

about body temperature and metabolism.

Elaboration Elaboration is a strategy that requires connecting new information to old information. When

learners think about what they already know in relation to what they are learning, they are

elaborating. For instance, when reading about Jackson’s presidency, learners might think about

everything else they knows about politics in the early 1800s. All of the strategies listed above in

this table can be viewed as specific ways to elaborate material. For instance, thinking about

applications to the real world are one way of connecting new information to old information.

By combining two core principles from information processing theory, teachers can gain important
insights into how students learn. These two principles are the ideas (1) that the size of working memory is
very limited and (2) that an effective means of learning is to connect new information with information
already stored in LTM (cf. van Merriënboer & Sweller, 2005). To see how these two principles work
together to explain learning, let’s look again at Rachel learning about lobsters tasting food with hairs on
their legs. To integrate these new ideas with old information that she already knows, Rachel needs to bring
the new information and the old information from LTM into working memory at the same time. We can
diagram this symbolically as shown in Figure 2.7a.
In the diagram, the N’s represent new information, and the O’s represent old information that has
been retrieved from long-term memory. Rachel is connecting the new ideas about lobsters to old
information (e.g., lobsters have eight legs, with large pincers on two of the legs, lobsters live in the ocean,
and so on). For learning to take place, Rachel needs to retain open space in working memory for this old
information to be brought in from long-term memory (represented schematically by the three O’s) to
connect to chunks of new information (the four N’s).