ERIC Number: EJ855516
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009
Pages: 7
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0737-0008
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A Theory Bite on Contextualizing, Framing, and Positioning: A Companion to Son and Goldstone
Greeno, James G.
Cognition and Instruction, v27 n3 p269-275 2009
Son and Goldstone (2009) provided orienting activities intended to increase personal engagement, and these activities reduced participants' transfer based on concepts of signal detectability theory. I offer a theoretical interpretation that differs from theirs. First, instead of assuming that activity is contextualized in some conditions and not in others, I assume that activity always occurs in some context, or framing. Second, instead of hypothesizing that generality is achieved by ignoring features of specific situation, I adopt the classical hypothesis (e.g., from Judd, 1908; Wertheimer, 1945/1959) that generality results from framing in which specific features are organized in a particular way that includes conceptual structure. Third, although I agree that an enactive positional framing, with more personal engagement, can result in a narrower depth of field, I hypothesize that what is enhanced or inhibited by enactive positioning depends on the activity, so that if activity is focused on conceptual structures (for example, in constructing explanations as studied by Chi et al., 1989) personal engagement could increase generality of learning.
Descriptors: Learner Engagement, Cognitive Structures, Student Attitudes, Epistemology, Perspective Taking, Learning Theories
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Descriptive
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Language: English
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