What is Cognitivism and Do We Use it Today?
Overall, it is important that people construct their own knowledge through life long experiences. Cognitivism, recognized around 1956, is also known as constructivism in curriculum and instruction today in education. The overall theory is it is important that students learn how to use different skills in the creative process in order to become productive in society. I believe that many good teachers today allow their students to construct their own knowledge. I say this because one math program comes to mind known as TERC. In this math series, I remember, we the students had to form our own conclusions. It felt pretty good to see how different people formed their answers. We asked a lot of questions and constructed our own knowledge. It was more like find out the answer for yourself. It was almost as if there was no right or wrong way of coming up with the solution. Also, many of the MCAS questions used today are open response questions, I wonder if they are going along with the idea of Cognitivism? I believe a lot of teachers are instructing this way now, especially while teaching mathematics. They ask students lots of open ended critical thinking questions. This process allows the student to think on their own and defend their own conclusions.
Many people believe that with the Constructivism Theory work performance increases. Jean Piaget’s theory about Cognitivism which basically simplified is that people need to construct their own knowledge. In this theory, people do not just receive knowledge, they work on proving it. Basically, your memory helps you when you acquire new knowledge. The new knowledge may attach itself to what you already know, change your thoughts or you may learn something new. In this learning process you store the information so you may use it later. The educator assists the students in processing the information. Overall, Cognitivism means “thought process.” "This can mean comprehension, reasoning, interpreting, analyzing and synthesizing. The Cognitivist asks the question “why?” in terms of behavior and in learning” (suite 101). This promotes independent thinking.
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