Cognitive Flexibility Theory and the Blog

I find in my writing, I can be much more reflective and constructive of my own knowledge when I am able to hyperlink back and forth to other text and information. I think it is a way to let my reader see into my world and construct knowledge right along with me. It’s like sharing a good book and your ideas about it on steroids. After I read about the Cognitive Flexibility Theory,which states, "

"A critical goal of many education programs, especially in professional education, is to help the students transfer what they have learned to different, even unique, situations. This ability is often referred to as "cognitive flexibility." "[T]his includes the ability to represent knowledge from different conceptual and case perspectives and then, when the knowledge must later be used, the ability to construct from those different conceptual and case representations a knowledge ensemble tailored to the needs of the understanding or problem-solving situation at hand" (Spiro, et al., 1992, p. 58). According to cognitive flexibility theory, the way students are taught is a significant influence on the type of cognitive structures they create and the way they store and structure knowledge they acquire determines to a great extent how flexible they will be when they must use that knowledge. Encouraging cognitive flexibility requires a flexible teaching environment. Information must be presented in a variety of ways, as well as for a variety of different purposes. Flexible instructional methods help students learn the contours and complexity of the material they are studying, and it helps them work with that content from several different perspectives (Spiro, et al., 1992).

The computer, with appropriate supporting material, is well-suited to flexible instruction. It can provide the variability needed to present ill-structured knowledge domains and to help students explore more than one perspective on a topic or issue. For example, hypertext systems provide a nonlinear, multi-dimensional medium in which to present complex subject matter that traditional systems (textbooks, lectures, etc.) lack. It is important, however, to keep in mind that traditional instruction may be very successful in teaching well-structured, simple subject matter. When the information is not simple and well structured, the power of the computer and the format of hypertext support a more flexible approach to instruction that some have called random access instruction (Spiro, et al., 1992). This allows the learner to access information as needed in any order pertinent to the his or her needs"

Now I was able to verbalize what I had been observing all along. As far as I know, no other tool has been able to do this with the relatively ease of use as the blog. If I were able to blog my rationale for the Social Justice web site or have the children and their parents blog about the "Food Pantry", then side by side with them, we could discover, reference, hyperlink and construct mental models in ways that were never possible before.

Some Further Information on the Cognitive Flexibilty Theory

Cognitive Flexibility Theory
Implications for Teaching and Teacher Education
http://www.kdassem.dk/didaktik/l4-16.htm

Cognitive Flexibility Theory (R. Spiro, P. Feltovitch & R. Coulson)
Cognitive flexibility theory focuses on the nature of learning in complex and ill-structured domains. Spiro & Jehng (1990, p. 165) state: "By cognitive flexibility, we mean the ability to spontaneously restructure one's knowledge, in many ways, in adaptive response to radically changing situational demands...This is a function of both the way knowledge is represented (e.g., along multiple rather single conceptual dimensions) and the processes that operate on those mental representations (e.g., processes of schema assembly rather than intact schema retrieval)."
http://tip.psychology.org/spiro.html

Constructivist literature
The Constructions section provides an overview of constructivist literature Welcome to my pages on Designing a Constructivist Multimedia Curricula. and how such literature can be applied to a curricula design.
http://www.edb.utexas.edu/mmresearch/Students97/Rutledge/home.html

Spiro's Cogntive Felxibility Theory
A Graduate Presentation of the theory
http://www.fhsu.edu/~ggiebler/WebProj/Cft-Modified/TitlePage.htm