Cognitive resources perspective as an account of reasoning development during phenomenon-based instruction¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 1 claim rests on one study

Description¶

The article draws on the cognitive resources perspective, attributed to Hammer and Elby, to interpret how instruction influences students' explanatory reasoning. It states that "students possess various resources that can be activated during learning and problem-solving tasks," which are small knowledge components or skills combined and reorganized into more complex understanding. The study uses this lens to analyze which resources students activate when engaging in causal mechanistic reasoning on assessment tasks, and to interpret instruction as modeling content that can help activate students' resources.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Instruction and tasks must be designed to activate the resources instructors want students to grasp, per the article's scaffolding discussion.

Constraints¶

• The article notes that different amounts of information provided in a prompt may activate different resources, so the level of reasoning elicited depends on how questions are written.

Target Learners¶

• undergraduate introductory chemistry students

Target Learning Objectives¶

• activating particulate-level cognitive resources to explain chemical phenomena

Claims¶

• Instructional Cmr Time Correlates Student Cmr [+M]

Related Theories¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Scharlott, L. J.; Rippey, D. W.; Rosa, V.; Becker, N. M. (2024). Progression toward Causal Mechanistic Reasoning through Phenomenon-Based Learning in Introductory Chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00517