A Germ of an Idea

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There’s a tinkling in my brain after I posted this response to discussions happening in this week’s topics for 6411 Cognition and Learning. I’m not sure what it is, but there’s a germ of an idea here that may sift through in the coming weeks.

My response:

It’s funny you mentioned this tech experience you’ve analyzed. My students in the critical digital literacy course have been working on understanding code breaking which looks at common operations, conventions, navigational mechanisms, modalities, and stylistics (Hinrichsen & Coombs, 2014) when using any technology (which includes pens or pencils by the way). One of their observations includes just what you’ve identified – prior knowledge plays a key in our ability to break codes and figure out how to use new tech. But the other factor many of the students said was that prior experience or knowledge wasn’t enough when learning new digital tools. Since I’ve asked them to blog as part of the course work, they’re experiencing first hand how challenging tasks can be when there is no background experience upon which to build new skills. But, there are mechanisms that technology affords us – means to build schema incidentally, on the fly, in the moment, in situ. Many of them talked about working with friends, watching how-to videos, and reading information manuals.

So, to answer your question, I think schema development is often un-intentional, and a by-product of what we do or experience. But it is very intentional when it’s something we desire to do, are inherently interested in accomplishing, or even remotely motivated to work on. When I think about those four necessary characteristics for schema development, as outline by Ghosh & Gilboa (2014) – associative network, episodic events, variability and deviations, adaptability – these are activated when we intentionally, consciously decide to break code to make a new cell phone work or post a blog for the first time. There is intentionality in the actions, directions, purpose driven work we do to make it work the way we want. So, yes, I’d speculate there’s self-regulation involved in schema development.

References

Ghosh, V. & Gilboa, A. (2014). What is a memory schema? A historical perspective on current neuroscience literature. Neuropsychologia, 53, 104-114.

Hinrichsen, J., & Coombs, A. (2014). The five resources of critical digital literacy: a framework for curriculum integration. Research in Learning Technology, 21. doi:https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21.21334