Fordham University

Faculty Member, Graduate School of Education

Professor and Division Chair

About

Guided Cognition for Unsupervised Learning
A collaborative research project with William B. Whitten II.
Funded by Institute of Educational Sciences, Department of Education.

A new method to improve the efficacy of unsupervised learning (e.g., homework) is introduced and evaluated in this project. This method, called guided cognition, structures study tasks to guide the learner to engage in specific, observable cognitive events (e.g., drawing a diagram, listing multiple approaches to solving a problem, listing specific evidence that support conclusions). These cognitive events are hypothesized to elicit underlying cognitive processes that have been shown to facilitate learning in laboratory-based experiments. Unlike traditional homework, students completing guided cognition homework are provided with questions that are designed to elicit specific cognitive events. The researchers have developed these questions or tasks based on observations of the types of strategies teachers use to elicit thoughtful responses from their students. For example, in the context of classroom instruction, teachers often ask students to relate content to prior experience, to answer a question from more than one point of view, or to illustrate visually a principle described in a text. The research team has identified a set of strategies that teachers use and adapted them to create questions and tasks that can be incorporated into homework. Whereas a traditional homework question might be "Why does Macbeth visit the witches?" a Guided Cognition question might be "Give two opposite but potentially valid reasons for this visit by Macbeth to the witches." The researchers hypothesize that incorporating Guided Cognition questions into homework will improve student learning.

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