Ask the Cognitive Scientist Inflexible Knowledge: The First Step to Expertise

http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/winter2002/willingham.cfm

Summary

This article was discussing the different types of knowledge; rote, inflexible, and flexible. Rote knowledge is when the definition of something is understood and can be recalled very quickly but no meaning is understood.  On the other hand, inflexible knowledge is when someone has an understanding of something but not in a large sense.  Instead, the understanding is very limited and "narrow".  The main idea highlighted in this article is that the goal of education is to change inflexible knowledge to flexible knowledge, which is when both the meaning and the definition of the concept are understood.  Inflexible knowledge is the normal expertise that many people can achieve because flexible knowledge can be too advanced.  

A study was done where a group of people were split up into 3 sub-groups and given a problem to solve.  The first group did not see the problem at the same time as the other two groups.  The second two groups were given a logic problem that was outlined so the answer was easy to find.  Then the third group was given a hint to solving the second problem (that this problem had the same way to solving the solution as the first) that neither the first or second group was able to see.  Finally, all three groups were given a problem similar but a bit more difficult than the first.  The group that was given the hint had almost a 100% rate of solving the problem.  The group that saw the first problem but not the hint had a little more than half able to solve the problem.  And the third group that only saw the second problem had a very small success rate of solving the problem.  Thus showing that prior knowledge about a topic and strategy will help with knew knowledge.  

 

Personal Response

This article helped me to grasp the idea of the three different types of knowledge and why flexible knowledge is the most useful type but the hardest to achieve.  It makes sense that flexible knowledge, which requires being able to think about a topic in a way that is different from the "normal" way of thinking.  For example, the group that only saw the second problem, had to think flexibly in order to solve the problem.  Without the prior knowledge of the strategy for solving the first problem, it would be extremely difficult to realize that the doctor would need to shoot the laser from many different points at a lower intensity.  This example made it much easier to understand how the different types of knowledge worked as well.

Connections

I can connect this very strongly to our Brain Research and Learning class with Ken because we did the exact same experiment/ problem in his class.  The results were very similar to the results in the study from this article, showing that this does happen in real life and the information from the article is true.  This also helped me realize that it is important to think about concepts in many different ways; the reason why Ken will teach us a topic in three different ways before giving us a quiz on that material.  I was happy to see that this information proved to be true what we are learning right now in the class. 

Personal Opinion

I found this article very interesting and helpful as I described above, and I think it would be extremely helpful for many teachers.  I would also use this information to a great advantage in my own classroom, because it showed me that students learn and think in many different ways and as a teacher you need to address all of those ways in order for the students to learn.  I think this is a topic that will stick with me through the rest of my life, as I will try to use it to my benefit for studying and learning new things.