School Didactics And Learning: a school Didactic Model Framing An Analysis of Pedagogical Implication of Learning Theory

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) and the cognitivist position.
The Format of Information and Teaching
A second, related pedagogical problem is that of the form in which some specific content should be
presented to the students.
We stated earlier that information is stored in the long-term memory in “codes that reflect different
modalities in the environment” (Winne, 1987, p. 499) and that this information is organized in terms of
different kinds of models or networks.
Concerning the nature of the information stored, the literature in the field often distinguishes between
concepts, propositions and schemata. A concept is “the basic unit of information that represents a category”
(Winne, 1987, p. 499). Propositions are then combinations of concepts. Propositions can contain factual
information, reflect feelings, describe static relations, and describe procedural knowledge. It is in fact
claimed that descriptive factual propositions “make up the majority of academic curricula” (Winne, 1987, p.
500). Finally a schema is a collection of propositions describing prototypes of events or phenomena. These
three forms of information structures are then thought of as being highly interrelated. The fundamental
pedagogical question naturally concerns what form of information students lack in some specific subject
matter. Winne (1987, p. 501) notes that the teacher’s job is thus to decide what information should be
presented in teaching and how this teaching should be organized: 
One goal of teaching is to add properly organized information of all three forms [i.e. concepts,
propositions, schemata] to students’ permanent memories.
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Students can also fail to learn a specific content-item if their schema (their prototypical understanding) of a
certain type of content or process is not well developed. Thus teaching may in some cases be focused on the
schema needed for proper understanding of a more specific event or curricular content (Winne, 1987, p.
501).
[S]tudents whose schemata for stories are underdeveloped often fail to comprehend fully stories that
they read. This suggests that teachers may need to teach a schema for stories.
Parameters Influencing Learning
The cognitivist view of mind includes the idea of so-called parameters. Parameters are those conditions of
the information processing system that limit the scope of the individual’s cognitive system’s work.
Examples of parameters occurring in the literature are the amount of information that can be held in the
working memory for processing and the degree of automaticity of processing.
The first type of parameter limits the amount of information the individual can deal with at one and the
same time (Miller, 1956). The implication is that teachers should try not to overload the capacity available.
Chunking and taking notes are strategies suggested to reduce the load (Winne, 1987).
More recently Chandler and Sweller (1991) have argued for a so-called cognitive load theory
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focusing
on respects in which problem-solving is demanding and results in an extraneous cognitive load which, in
turn, may have negative learning consequences (Ward & Sweller, 1990). In a series of experiments,
Chandler and Sweller (1991) showed how reducing redundant information from self-explanatory learning
material enhanced learning.
A second pedagogical implication developed on the basis of cognitive load theory is that teachers should
make use of worked examples in their teaching as these allow the students to direct their attention more
appropriately (see also Sweller, 1994). A related suggestion is to use partially completed problems that
students have to complete as this reduces the cognitive load (Paas, 1992).
Third, it was argued that “information that needs to be mentally integrated in order to be understood
should be restructured into integrated formats” (ibid. p. 331). In other words, if texts and diagrams
are presented in an integrated form, it reduces the cognitive load and thus enhances learning.
The second parameter affecting the learning process was the degree of automaticity of manipulating
information (Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977). As the primary way in developing automaticity is rehearsing a
plan (or strategy), the pedagogical implication is to organize occasions for practising central processes in
order to reach the level of automaticity (Winne, 1987). It is thus argued (Winne, 1987, p. 504) that drilling
is an acceptable method as long as the content is meaningful to the student:
Drill results in rote or nonmeaningful learning only when the information being drilled is not
integrated with other propositions that could be peripherally activated during drill… Thus, it is what is
drilled and not the drill as such that influences whether learning is meaningful.
Information about the Goal State
As plans are more or less automatically applied to different learning contents, the teacher can be helpful in
various ways when the students carry out their plans. According to the cognitivist view of learning
instruction then means providing students with relevant information that helps them in their monitoring or
associative processes.
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As the goal-state of a task is important to this view of learning, a teacher’s task is to present information
concerning the goals of teaching. Understanding the goals and comparing them with the initial state helps
the students to handle these discrepancies. Winne (1987, p. 506) points out how important it is for the
learner to have relevant information describing the goal-state. An unclear picture of the consequences of the
knowledge reached hinders the student from judging whether the goal is worth striving for or not.
NOTES
1. “[T]he choice of method must be dependent on the objectives of the instruction. Didactic teaching is likely to be
very effective for the lower mental processes, although dialectical teaching will probably be necessary for the
higher mental processes.” (Bloom, Hastings & Madaus, 1971, p. 16)
2. Little attention has been paid to methods of evaluating cognitive instructional systems (Royer, Cicero & Carlo,
1993, p. 202).
3. Naturally differences at the cognitive level have not been considered the only relevant factor. Often affective and
motivational aspects are also emphasized (e.g. Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990; Seegers & Boekerts, 1993) as well as
many others like the students’ socio-cultural home background.
4. It should be noted that the present discussion excludes a consideration of learning 
approaches
and learning 
styles
to the extent that these concepts do not deal with strategies for selecting and treating information during the
learning process. 
5. Wittrock (1986, p. 310) writes: “Metacognition refers to the learners’ knowledge about and control over their
cognitive processes.”
6. See Marton (1981, 1988) and Uljens (1989, 1992a, 1993c).
7. “Successful instruction is thought to result in qualitative changes in the organisation of knowledge and in the
fluency and efficiency with which the knowledge is used.” (Royer, Cicero & Carlo, 1993, p. 202).
8. This theory is an example of what is called “limited capacity theories” (Goldman, 1991).
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