Some Learning Principles

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The new task must lie within the learner's Zone of Proximal Development.

Zone of Actual Development (ZAD): a learner can do the task alone without assistance

vs.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): the task lies just outside the learner's capabilities, but she can do it with assistance from an expert or a more capable peer

That assistance typically follows this sequence:

I DO/YOU WATCH > I DO/YOU HELP > YOU DO/I HELP > YOU DO/I WATCH

[modeling] [guided practice] [independent practice]

Ongoing learning is a process of scaffolding:

When the learner has enough independent practice, she will eventually internalize the procedural knowledge (i.e., problem-solving strategies), not just the knowledge. That knowledge then enters her ZAD and becomes the known upon which new "unknowns" can be added.

For new learning task, the number of "knowns" must always far exceed the number of "unknowns." If not, the learner will be succumb to cognitive overload.

Feedback loop must be as fast as possible: "just in time" and "on demand."

>video games

De-contextualized learning is the hardest;

contextualized learning (or situated learning) is the easiest.

>video games

>coaching

Metacognition is crucial to retention. If a learner can't articulate what she has learned, that knowledge has not entered her Zone of Actual Development.

Learning should be "hard fun" [purposeful play; play with rules]

"In play, the child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself."

- Vygotsky, qtd. in Strategic Reading, p. 24.

>inquiry-based/problem-based