Promise of Educational Psychology, The, Volume II: Teaching for Meaningful Learning

Consider the following situation: Dorothy studies hard for her geometry test on finding the area of a circle. She reads the textbook chapter carefully. She memorizes the formula A = r 2 and recites it as "Area equals pi times radius squared." She successfully applies the formula to exercise problems in the textbook. On the classroom test, she performs well; she remembers the appropriate formula and applies it to the problems. From her excellent test performance, you might say that Dorothy has learned well. Yet I wonder how much Dorothy really understands. Can she use what she has learned in new situations? Later that week, she goes to the pizza shop with friends. They need to figure out which is a better buy--two 10-inch pizzas for $9.99 or one 14-inch pizza for $9.99. One friend says the two smaller pizzas are a better buy because 20 is greater than 14. Another says the one larger pizza is a better buy because it is usually better to buy the larger size. Confused, Dorothy raises her hands in disgust and says, "We never learned about this in school, so I don't know what to get. Let's just go home." Before they leave, one of her classmates, Sarah, says, "Hey wait. We did learn about this. The radius of each small pizza is 5, so the area is 25, and with two of them, the total area is 50. The radius of the larger pizza is 7, so the area is 49. I guess they are both about the same!" No longer confused, the group makes it purchase and enjoys the snack. In this example, Dorothy demonstrates what can be called inert knowledge (Whitehead, 1929)-she knows the formula for finding the area of a circle but does not realize that she should use it. In contrast, Sarah demonstrates what is called meaningful learning. My goal in this book is to figure out how to help students to learn in ways that allow them to take what they have learned and apply it in new situations--that is, I am interested in exploring teaching methods that will help people think like Sarah rather than like Dorothy. In short, in this book I investigate how to teach for meaningful learning. Teaching for meaningful learning means helping students to learn in ways that will allow them to be able to apply (or transfer) what they have learned to new situations. The search for transfer has a long history in education and psychology. For example, in the 1930s, the great Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer asked: Why is it that some people, when they are faced with problems, get clever ideas, make inventions and discoveries? . . . What can be done to help people to be creative when they are faced with problems? (Luchins & Luchins, 1970, p. 1) At the time there were no clear answers to Wertheimer's provocative questions because the behaviorist theories that dominated psychology and education were not aimed at understanding how to teach for transfer. Today, fortified with decades of educationally relevant research on instructional methods, we can return to Wertheimer's deceptively simple questions. My goal in this book is to figure out "what can be done to help people to be creative when they are faced with problems." In short, I want to see what we have learned about instructional methods that promote meaningful learning. The discovery of instructional methods that lead to meaningful learning is, perhaps, one of the greatest achievements of educational psychology in recent years. If you are interested in understanding what research leas to say about teaching for meaningful learning, this book is for you. I do not assume that you have any previous background in education or psychology. I do assume that you prefer to focus on research about teaching for meaningful learning rather than opinions and unsubstantiated claims. This book is appropriate for undergraduate or graduateRichard E. Mayer is the author of 'Promise of Educational Psychology, The, Volume II: Teaching for Meaningful Learning', published 2001 under ISBN 9780130964441 and ISBN 0130964441.