How cultural factors affect one cognitive processEducation

What is a good education?

How is education different in different cultures / countries?

In the era before industrialization, what

would have been considered a good

education?

According to Bruner, children of any culture learn the basics of culture through schooling and daily interactions with members of the culture in which they live.

Now read ‘An excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell, "None of the Above: What IQ Doesn't Tell You about Race," New Yorker (December 17, 2007)’

Michael Cole lecture (11 mins)

In the 1960s and 1970s, Michael Cole and colleagues conducted a series of experiments investigating two areas of cognitive functioning.

One study looked at how the Kpelle and Vai people of Africa performed on memory and intelligence tasks.

The other looked at the effects of schooling on cognitive processes.

“It is hard to conduct cross-cultural research when we are immersed in it.”

Michael Cole

Cole et al set out to test the stereotype that people from non-literate cultures have tremendous memories.

They wanted to investigate whether a cognitive process such as memory is universal.

Memory Research

Adults from America found to use clustering when performing free recall tasks.

Cole and Scribner (1974) found that this was not the case with Kpelle people of Liberia.

Read Cross-cultural studies of memory and answer the questions.

HOMEWORK

WRITE A STUDY SHEET FOR COLE ET AL’S STUDY ON MEMORY

READ PAGES 84-86 LEVELS OF ANALYSIS IN PSYCHOLOGY

Michael Cole: the effect of schooling on

cognitionPost 2nd world war

How could low economic development be increased?

It was thought that formal education (as opposed to fundamental education) would take children beyond their communities.

1960s

Many African nations began to include more formal schooling

Based on Western schooling

What problems do you think this might have caused?

What fraction of all coins worth less than a pound are silver in colour?

What fraction of all coins worth less than a pound are silver in colour?

Why might this be a tricky question for someone not familiar with British coins?

Would being asked questions like this impede a student’s mathematical learning?

Performance in many African schools was low.

In 1963 Michael Cole went with a group to study the impact on formal education in Liberia.

Kpelle students found learning maths more difficult than had been expected.

They found it hard to classify geometric shapes.

Why do you think that might be?

Cole was told that the Kpelle students performed poorly

because:Perceptual problems meant they could not identify geometric shapes

They could not classify

They used rote recall, rather than thinking (to try to find an answer)

Cole did not believe this.

What kind of research could be done to test whether these 3 assumptions were true?

Perceptual problems meant they could not identify geometric shapes

They could not classify

They used rote recall, rather than thinking (to try to find an answer)

READ PAGES 85-86 LEVELS OF ANALYSIS IN PSYCHOLOGY

Then answer the questions on your handout.