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

learner’s own
thought
processes.
If it is accepted (a) that a learner makes use of thought processes in learning, and (b) that a learner can be
aware of these processes during learning, then it seems reasonable to make such processes the object of
instruction.
In agreement with this, Wittrock (1986) concludes that there is reason to distinguish between (a) teaching
and student cognition and (b) student cognition and learning: “That is, teaching influences student thinking.
Students’ thinking mediates learning and achievement” (p. x).
The aim of teaching students learning strategies is thus to affect the way in which the learner selects,
acquires, organizes or integrates new knowledge. These are also called encoding processes (Weinstein &
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Mayer, 1986, p. 315). Weinstein and Mayer also claim that the encoding processes called selection and
acquisition determine how much is learned. This view matches the dualistic stance on the epistemological
problem in that a causal theory of information was accepted, implying that pieces of information were
received by the perceptual system.
Hieberg and Lefevre (1986, p. 4) support this view:
The development of conceptual knowledge is achieved by the construction of relationships between
pieces of information. This linking process can occur between two pieces of information that already
have been stored in the memory or between an existing piece of knowledge and one that is newly
learned.
The encoding process called construction and integration would “determine the organizational coherence of
what is learned and how it is organized” (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986, p. 317).
Five distinct categories of strategies are then pointed out by Weinstein and Mayer (1986): rehearsal
strategies, elaboration strategies, organization strategies, comprehension monitoring and affective
strategies.
Winne (1987, p. 502) in turn distinguishes between the following five ways in which information is
manipulated: attention, coding, associating, rehearsing and monitoring.
Paying attention means focusing on some specific item of information in the long-term memory. Paying
attention to a concept in the long-term memory activates this concept and transfers it to the working
memory.
Coding means that information received by the sensory system is changed “into a form that is
manipulable by the cognitive system” (Winne, 1987, p. 502). Information can also be receded. In receding,
existing information in the working memory is simply given another code, e.g. a visual image may be
changed into a symbolic code.
Associating refers to forming propositions. “Chunking” is the association of several concepts on the basis
of one shared feature. Associating new information with information in the long-term memory is called
encoding (Winne, 1987). Also concepts like elaboration and organization are used to define how an
individual connects new information with previous knowledge (McKeachie, Pintrich & Lin, 1985). Garcia
and Pintrich (1994, p. 141) define elaboration as follows: 
Elaborative strategies include paraphrasing or summarizing the material to be learned, creating
analogies, generative note-taking (where the student actually recognizes and connects ideas in their
notes in contrast to passive, linear note-taking), explaining the ideas in the material to be learned to
someone else, and question asking and answering.
Organizational strategies again include “behaviors such as selecting the main idea from a text, outlining the
text or material to be learned, and the use of a variety of specific techniques for selecting and organizing the
ideas in the material” (ibid., p. 141).
Rehearsing is a strategy for keeping information active in working memory without changing it.
According to Garcia and Pintrich (1994, p. 140): “Rehearsal strategies involve the reciting of items to be
learned or the saying of words aloud as one reads a piece of text”. According to Winne (1987, p. 502)
“Rehearsing seems to transfer information to permanent memory by a method of brute force, but this may
produce information that is less interconnected with other information stored here.”
7. PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
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Monitoring, finally, refers to the process of evaluating the match between a schema (a prototype) and a
current state of information. The following-up of the relation between a goal-state and the results of an
intermediate cognitive process can thus point to continuous discrepancies. When this occurs, a
discrimination is achieved which is thought to lead to the activation of an executive plan. By this procedure,
other relevant information is looked for and other strategies are tested.
As claimed earlier, individual variation in applying strategies like these are used to explain differences in
learning achievements. Consequently an important instructional implication is to teach such strategies to the
learners (see also Gagné & Briggs, 1979).
On the Teaching of Strategies
As learning is thought to occur as the result of applying the strategies indicated above to different forms of
information (concepts, propositions, schemata), a general educational equivalent is to teach effective
information processing strategies to students, especially to weak learners (Uljens, 1989, pp. 59–62).
First, the teacher has to decide how new information should be structured in advance and presented to the
students, i.e. if teaching should be started by introducing new concepts, propositions or schemata. These
decisions should be related to the students’ previous knowledge of the subject-matter in question. 
The second major problem is deciding what information processing strategy is the most appropriate for
manipulating the information presented. For example, as regards teaching students how to make inferences,
Glaser (1987, p. 308) suggests that “abilities to make inferences can be fostered by instruction that demands
that their current knowledge is restructured”. This is most conveniently achieved if the students are “placed
in a constructivist position in which they build new knowledge from existing information” (ibid.).
McKeachie, Pintrich, Lin and Smith (1986, p. 30) emphasize the following principles in teaching learning
strategies:
1. The instructor should teach different learning strategies for different tasks;
2. [S]trategies should be able to be decomposed into multiple components related to particular information
processing variables and operations… Students can learn the components and then adapt and combine
them in different ways depending on the task;
3. Learning strategies must be considered in relation to students’ knowledge and skills… Students must
have the prerequisite skills to master certain strategies;
4. Learning strategies that are assumed to be effective must be empirically validated… There must be
empirical data on the effectiveness of various strategies and general strategy programs if we are to learn
more about how to teach learning strategies;
5. Direct instruction in strategies is not only useful for students, but almost required;
6. Modelling the strategies for students and providing guided practice in the use of strategies.
Evaluation Affecting the Use of Strategies
The issue of evaluation has been discussed in more detail earlier in this study. In the present context it will
suffice to make it clear that within the cognitivist paradigm it is thought that the form of evaluation affects
the way information is processed.
Among others, Winne (1987, p. 506) supports the view that the form of evaluation may affect the
students’ learning strategies:
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Students process curriculum differently if told they will be tested by a multiple-choice test than by an
essay test. Though the same basic set of propositions may be required to answer questions on both
tests, multiple-choice items require information to be chunked differently than essay items.
Metacognition—A Method of Learning Learning Strategies
The concept of metacognition or metacognitive processes reflects an important part of the cognitivist
paradigm on learning. In the literature the term has been defined in various ways. In fact it is still called a
fuzzy concept (Bråten, 1993). It has been taken to refer both to individuals’ knowledge of learning and
cognition, and to individuals’ self-regulation of this process (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983;
Flavell, 1979).
5
A major idea in metacognition is that the individual may turn their attention to the learning
strategies used in learning: “When students monitor how they are cognitively processing information, they
are said to be engaged in meta-cognition” (Winne, 1987, p. 507).
Recently the concept of metacognition has aroused considerable interest. However, an earlier model of
metacognition was presented by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) when they talked about control processes
helping the learner to remember. Another early version was presented by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram
(1960) and their TOTE-unit (test/operate/ test/exit).
The educational equivalent is naturally that the cognitive processes made use of in learning are dealt with
as curricular contents to be learned. As a correct and relevant understanding of the goal-state itself is not
sufficient to guarantee successful learning, knowledge of and abilities to use these strategies effectively
become important, it is argued. However, to have knowledge of strategies does not necessarily mean one is
able to make use of them (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994, p. 142).
Several models of metacognition include the following three strategies: planning, monitoring and
regulating (e.g. Corno, 1986; Corno & Snow, 1986; Garcia & Pintrich, 1994). Although it is argued that
they may be explicated separately (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994, p. 143), it is more than evident that they are
closely interrelated. Planning would “include setting goals for studying, skimming a text before reading,
generating questions before reading a text and doing a task analysis of the problem” (Garcia & Pintrich,
1994, p. 143). Brown and Pressley (1994, p. 156) discuss how monitoring would then refer to how students
cognitively process information:
Good thinkers monitor their progress, shifting strategies when they sense problems and moving
forward when subgoals are accomplished. Thus, once the good writer senses that sufficient planning
has occurred so that good progress can be made in drafting a manuscript, writing begins. When the
writer senses an impasse due to conceptual gaps, the skilled writer plans and researches some more.
Regulation strategies are almost identical with monitoring strategies (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994, p. 144).
McKeachie et al. (1986, p. 28) write that “as learners monitor the comprehension of a text, they can regulate
their reading speed to adjust for the difficulty of the material. This continuous adjustment and fine-tuning of
cognition is an important component of metacognition”.
It is evident from the treatment of cognitive and metacognitive strategies above that the distinction is not
always kept strictly. For example, while Winne (1987) sees monitoring as one central cognitive strategy,
McKeachie et al. (1986) and Garcia and Pintrich (1994) conceive of monitoring as a metacognitive strategy.
Yet the pedagogical implications are similar.
7. PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
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Content Independent and Content Dependent Strategies
A pedagogical question posed simultaneously with the growing awareness of the importance of domain-
specific learning strategies has been whether teaching should focus on the development of the previously
discussed content-neutral general abilities or whether more domain-specific strategies should be
emphasized. A majority of earlier training programmes can be seen as aiming at the development of general
strategies (McKeachie et al., 1986). Glaser (1987, p. 409) concludes:
A further instructional problem for investigation is whether to teach general model-building strategies
independent of specific domain knowledge, so that this capability is developed for use as a general
learning skill, or whether to concentrate on building up specific knowledge structures which should
aid in the construction of domain-specific models, and which may eventually result in a more
generalized model-building ability.
During recent years the cognitivist approach has, to a growing extent, moved away from the metaphor of the
learner as the possessor of general problem-solving or learning strategies. Research indicates that
domainand context-specific strategies have been considered effective while general strategies are
considered weak “because their application does not, in and of itself, ensure problem solving success”
(Ashman & Conway, 1993b, p. 74). Consequently it is claimed that advocates of general cognitive skills
“have overlooked the importance of a rich knowledge base upon which learning and problem-solving
operates” (ibid., p. 74). The interest has moved towards domain-specific learning skills (Gallagher, 1994, p.
173):
When teachers try to encourage the mastery of thinking skills, the most successful programs appear to
be organized around particular bodies of knowledge and interpretation—in other words, particular
subject matter—rather than around general abilities.
In more recent research both domain-specific knowledge and strategies are emphasized more evenly. The
issue has been called the strategy-knowledge interaction issue (Siegler, 1990).
A compromise position has developed focusing on content-specific strategies and the need for
generalizing the knowledge reached in one situation to other situations (Marfo, Mulcahy, Peat, Andrews &
Cho, 1991; Reid & Stone, 1991).
One example of a recent approach to instruction based on both specific and general strategies is the so-
called model for process-based instruction (Ashman & Conway, 1993a). The idea of process-based
instruction (PBI) is, in short, to teach students about the process of planning. The idea is that students can
use plans as metacognitive instruments to become aware of their learning process. When teachers make use
of this approach (Ashman & Conway, 1993b, p. 75) they
assist students to understand the constellation of learning and problem solving events that are
appropriate at their particular developmental level, and assist them to develop their ability to
anticipate where planning successes or failure may occur.
A widely accepted view is that research on strategy instruction is by no means a finished chapter, quite the
contrary. For example, research on implementing strategy instruction in classroom contexts is still
considered an open field of research (Bråten, 1993).
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What Learning Strategies are Effective in Learning Learning Strategies?
In order to learn learning strategies, both general and domain-specific, these strategies must naturally be
treated as part of curricular contents. In fact it is often claimed that not only subject-matter contents but also
strategies as such should constitute a substantial part of the curriculum (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986, p. 325).
The problem here is that the student naturally makes use of a learning strategy in order to learn an
effective learning strategy. Thus we can assume that learners applying effective learning strategies in their
learning of learning strategies will learn these strategies more effectively compared with students applying
weak strategies. The instructional implication would then be to begin with teaching supporting effective
learning of good learning strategies (Uljens, 1989, pp. 59 f.). These first-order learning strategies should, in
the name of consistency, be called content-specific learning strategies, the content being learning strategies.
However, such a position is clearly problematic; accepting this view would in fact lead to endless regress.
Firstly the learner had to learn effective learning strategies in order to learn and then learn how to learn
strategies that could be applied in order to effectively learn “first-order” learning strategies. If this seems
problematic it is not the only fundamental problem in cognitivist learning theory. We may in fact ask if it is
possible, in principle, to be aware of one’s cognitive learning process at all.
Is Awareness of the Learning Process Possible?
It is a fundamental idea of the cognitivist approach to learning that an individual may be aware of her
cognitive processes. The concept of meta-cognition discussed earlier clearly revealed this. By being
engaged in metacognitive processes, the learner is thought not only to be aware of the content of their
thoughts but also of thinking process. In addition, the learner is expected to be able to influence these
cognitive activities (see e.g. Säljö, 1995, p. 15).
However, there is reason to ask: Are we really able to be aware of the way we are aware of something? If
we accept awareness of cognitive processes, this position seems to suggest the existence of something like a
consciousness that would have the capability of being aware of all subordinated cognitive processes and
schemas (Eckblad, 1981).
I will argue that we are not, in principle, aware of our cognitive processes, through which the world
presents itself to us.