Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Matt Koehler

CEP 909

Nov 7, 2001

Why Non-linearity

• Not all domains require the use of potentially confusing non-linearity

• Simple domains are best left to simple presentation modes

• Reserve the use of non-linearity for “complex, ill-structured domains” [More in a bit about this]

• Propose Cognitive Flexibility Theory as a way to avoid the pitfalls of teaching and learning in an ill-structured domain

Complex, Ill-Structured?

• Domains that are not easily compartmentalized

• Domains that are not easy to understand

• Domains that require “deep understanding” between principles and practice

• Domains that require a lot of experience to learn well

Pitfalls to Avoid

• Singular representations -Students learn only one way to represent ideas (electricity is like water flowing through a pipe)

• Students over-simplify the domain (presenting a complex domain as a linear progression of ideas can make the domain seem simpler than it is).

• Compartmentalizing knowledge (seeing ideas in isolation).

• Presenting boundaries of learning (knowledge in complex domains is continual)

• Failing to understand the active process of learning

• Failure to transfer knowledge to new problems of practice

Cognitive Flexibility Theory to the rescue

• Represent knowledge in it’s smallest elements that still have meaning (e.g. “mini-cases”)

• Represent knowledge in multiple ways

• Never hide complexity from readers

• Mini-cases represent more than one idea, and represent the complex, ill-structured connections between multiple ideas

• Criss-cross the cases to produce flexible, rich understanding

Criss-Crossing the Conceptual Landscape

• “The best way to come to understand a given landscape is to explore it from many directions, to traverse it first this way and then that (preferably with a guide to highlight significant features). Our instructional system for presenting a complexly ill-structured “topical landscape” is analogous to a physical landscape exploration, with different routes of traversing study-sites (cases) that are each analyzed from a number of thematic perspectives” [Spiro et. al, 1987, pp-187]

Claimed Advantages of the Approach

• Students don’t:

– Compartmentalize knowledge

– Oversimplify

– Rely on a few canonical cases

• Students do:

– Develop multiple representations

– Develop connections between knowledge

– Are better able to transfer to new problems

– Come away with a better overall understanding of complexity, multi-faceted knowledge, and learning (Mishra, et al)

– Have accelerated learning experience

Remaining Questions?

• What counts as complex, ill-structured?

• How do you make a CFT hypertext?

• How would you go about proving any of these claims?