Thought paper 1

SMT 5000
Rabindra Bajracharya
February 20, 2010

The development of theories in the field of human cognition seemed to

have evolved from lower order animal instinct to higher order human

thinking. Psychologists like Pavlov and Thorndike have their theories

based on the lower level instinctive learning such as in animals. The

outcomes of their experimentations on animals could not be used to

explain the higher order thinking of human minds. Piaget’s theory

seemed to set a bridge between instinctive lower order thinking and

abstract higher order thinking. Vygotsky’s theory, on the other hand,

claims that learning is mediated through social interaction. Thus, it

emphasizes the importance of socialization in learning process. Other

theories like connectionist theory and piece model theory tried to

explain the human cognition process from microscopic perspective. No

single theory has yet been able to elucidate the cognition mechanism

satisfactorily or successfully. All the cognitive theories propounded

until today tried only to explain the learning process from narrow

aspects. No theory has yet seen to plunge into the depths of the

human mind to inspect the ultimate cognitive mechanism. There

should be an inspection of the behavior of human mind at its deepest

level in order to understand the cognition process. The mysteries could

be revealed, to extract the strategies for effective learning, only

through a unified theory that includes all the aspects of human

cognitive process.

Most of the theorists have focused their attention in revealing the

function of the human cognitive behavior in mechanistic way.

However, these findings are not the ultimate cognitive behaviors of

human beings. What seemed to be the abstract theories are merely

the tendencies of mind’s learning behaviors. These tendencies and

hence the theories are not universal and constant. For example, up

until 1954, the scientific and athletic communities thought that it was

impossible to run a four-minute mile. But, in 1954 Roger Bannister had

proved the claimed to be wrong by completing a mile in just 3 minutes

and 59.4 seconds. The 'four minute barrier' has since been broken by

many male athletes, and is now the standard of all professional middle

distance runners. It will not be offensive to say that no theory has yet

been able to reveal the true human cognition capacity and hence its

true mechanism.

As already mentioned, the ‘piece model theory’ and the ‘p-prim theory’

have shown great courage to explain the learning behavior from

microscopic perspective, which could be a milestone for the study of

the quantum behavior of human cognition. If we think from quantum

perspective, any big idea appears to generate from numerous quanta

of discrete lower level ideas. Those quantum ideas could be

categorized into different pieces of

sub ideas as suggested by the

piece model. Those pieces could form p-prims which may help a leaner

to explain any phenomenon at primitive phenomenological level.

Through the correct coherence of these micro-ideas, one forms a

higher order abstract idea, whereas the incoherent micro-ideas

generate a misconception or alternative conception. An alternative

conception in itself is not absolutely wrong. Alternative conceptions are

comprised of pieces of one or more incoherent primitive ideas which

could be forced to cohere by correcting the incoherent pieces. For

example, the letter ‘F’ shown below comprises of number of discrete

boxes. Each box represents a piece of primitive idea. The missing

boxes in the second letter could be interpreted as the missing ideas at

quantum level resulting in a big incomplete idea or an alternative

conception. The third letter is also same as the second one with more

quanta missing. When there are only few missing pieces in the letter

one can still make sense of what exactly the letter represents.

However, when either more pieces are missing or even only few

important pieces are missing, the letter does not give any sense or

otherwise give some wrong meaning. Thus, a misconception or an

alternative conception may not be considered useless and hence

discarded. It may give valuable information about the missing and/or

incoherent ideas of a learner. Piece model is discrete in the sense that

it highlights on the construction of ideas from discrete pieces of ideas,

where as misconception does not claim an idea to be discrete.

Misconception argues that a big idea is either absolutely right or

absolutely wrong. Piece model could give important clues about the

cognitive behavior of a student by inspecting his learning mechanism

at quantum level. So, it is an important concept to be considered for

class teaching. A teacher should vigilantly observe all the discrete

quantum ideas that are either missing or incoherent in students’

learning process. Once those missing or incoherent ideas are

corrected, a student will be able to generate an acceptable correct

idea.

In our generation, the entire analog signals have been displaced by

digital signals. We can see this displacement everywhere ranging from

TV, computer, camera, automobile, phone etc. Educational psychology

should also pursue the trend to employ the digital concept in studying

human cognition. Classical misconception model is an analog aspect of

cognition which should be replaced by digital aspects of cognition such

as by alternative conception model, which emphasizes on piece model

thinking. Piece model in itself is not a perfect discrete cognition model

but it is a ground breaking model in this field. Different macroscopic

theories should be incorporated with the digital model to facilitate the

learning process. For example, the piece model could be integrated

with connectionist theory to form a better model to understand human

cognition. The resultant model will be the hybrid of theory and

application. Connectionist theory could help the teachers to determine

the effective teaching strategies such as the extent of scaffolding.

Teachers can dig up clues about which pieces of the students’ ideas

are missing or incoherent and how much scaffolding has to be

provided to correct those quantum pieces.

Accommodation and assimilation could also be explained on the basis

of quantum discrete model. Although accommodation and assimilation

appear to be macroscopic in their entirety form, both of them occur at

Fig A and Fig B: A big idea comprised of coherent

Fig C and Fig D: A big idea comprised of missing
micro-ideas and incoherent micro-ideas
Figure
2
microscopic quantum level. For example, in the figure 2, the circle

represents a big idea, say an idea ‘A’. Idea ‘A’ comprises of different

pieces of micro-ideas. One can also form a completely different idea,

say idea ‘B’, by rearranging all the pieces that comprised the previous

idea ‘A’. Since all the micro-ideas are already present in the mind, the

big idea ‘B’ will easily be assimilated by the learner. However, if the big

idea ‘B’ lacks either partially or fully one or more pieces of micro-ideas,
then one cannot make sense of the big idea. In that case, one has to

accommodate the new idea first at microscopic level. The learner first

tries to accommodate those micro-ideas which are missing or

incoherent with the already present micro-ideas. Only after

accommodating all the micro-ideas, one can accommodate the new big

idea. Suppose, a novice student claimed following as an innovative

idea:

“Since we know that earth rotates in its fixed axis, we do not need to

fly an airplane all the way from one place to another place. We can

simply fly an airplane vertically up for couple hundred miles and then

we can stop the plane until the new place comes just below it. Once

the destination comes vertically below the airplane, it could be

descended down and landed on ones destination.”

In the above example, although the student has good knowledge about

the rotation of earth, he is missing the big idea of gravity. So, he needs

to accommodate the idea of gravity. But gravity itself is a big idea. In

order for him to accommodate the idea of gravity, he should first

accommodate all the micro-ideas that comprise the big idea of gravity.

The examples of micro-ideas may be acceleration, force, properties of

gravity force, etc.

Although constructivist theory is gaining huge popularity everywhere,

skeptics caution about the risk that could arise from fallaciously
constructed ideas. When one tries to generate a big idea from

incoherent micro-ideas, it results in an alternative conception. In order

to minimize the risk of negative side effect of the constructivist

approach, a teacher can use the piece model. This could be done by

implementing diagnostic assessments to the novice learners. The

diagnostic assessments should probe the micro-ideas of the learners

that could generate the big new ideas. Teachers should actively

facilitate to eliminate all the micro-misconceptions and replace them

with new correct micro-ideas. Hence, piece model could enhance the

constructivist mode of learning by curing the incoherent micro-ideas.