202017959 771699 - Reflections on Teaching and Learning in

202017959771699 - Reflections on Teaching and Learning in Secondary – Essay (SCITT)

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Pedagogy can be understood as the ‘immediate image of the teaching situation’, not

just the teacher’s role in the delivery of knowledge, but the environment in which the

learning is taking place, in addition to the perceived role of the learner (Tochon and

Munby, 1993: 207). Epistemic approaches to learning have evolved over recent

years, in particular the role of the learner and, subsequently, how the learning is

achieved. Consequently, if the role of the learner is a changeable entity, fluctuating

between actively seeking knowledge and the passive receptacle of information, the

capacity and responsibility of the teacher in the classroom is, thus, also adaptable.

As a result, pedagogy is a dynamic concept that must be continually reflected upon.

The failure to reflect and examine one’s pedagogy has the potential to limit the effect

and change, and therefore, learning, achieved through education (Murphy, 2008).

Before analysing different pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning, it is first

imperative to understand what learning is. Learning is a multifaceted process which

is susceptible to multiple theoretical interpretations (Ertmer & Newby, 1993).

However, this essay contends, in accordance with scholars such as John Sweller

and Paul Kirschner, that learning is the transformation of knowledge, and/or skills,

from the working memory, to the long-term memory (William, 2016). Once stored in

the long-term memory, we have the ability to recall it back into our working memory

when required. However, in order for this new information to be stored, it must be

added to existing schemata (Sherrington, 2019). Nevertheless, there are a number

of pedagogical approaches within educational epistemology, each arguing that this

transformation of information from the working memory to the long-term memory is

achieved in through differing ways. Two of these epistemological approaches I

intended to examine throughout the thesis are cognitivism and constructivism. The

former contends that learning is achieved through a mental change that occurs,

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through the development of the learner’s schemata; however, the latter argues that

knowledge is constructed as a result of associating new information to prior

knowledge. By first situating and explaining the context and demographic of my Host

School, this is essay is going to analyse the two aforementioned epistemological

approaches and how they affect teaching and learning in the classroom. By critically

evaluating the contemporary and historical literature, the thesis will reflect on, and

apply it to my own practice in teaching History.

Since September 2020, I have been working as a trainee History teacher,

delivering, and observing lessons to classes throughout Years 7 to 10. The Host

School in which I have been working, henceforth to be referred to as HS, is located

in a rural location with a wide catchment area. It is a large comprehensive school,

with the number of students enrolled in the school and sixth form combined, totalling

at 1,369 (HS Administration, 2020). The HS is non-selective, and its characteristics

can be considered further by analysing the student demographic. For instance, out of

the total school population, there are 237 students eligible for Pupil Premium (PP)

funding, 165 of those, for free school meals (HS Administration, 2020). Additionally,

there are 135 students with English as Additional Language (EAL), and 73 on the

SEND register (10 of which with an EHCP) (HS Administration, 2020). These are all

factors I consider in my pedagogical approach to teaching and learning, some of

which will be explored throughout this paper.

The first pedagogical approach that will be examined, constructivism, is the

theory that stipulates that students are active agents in their own learning, achieved

by constructing their own knowledge (Schcolnik et al., 2006). Constructivist scholars,

such as, Ernst von Glaserfield (1995), contend that learning is not the simple

transference of knowledge from teachers to pupils, rather the active process that

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encompasses the conception of ideas. Constructivist ideas were heralded as a

paradigm shift in educational thinking in the West following the translation of Lev

Vygotsky’s, Thought and Language, in 1962, and had become the dominant

pedagogical approach in classrooms throughout the 1980s and 1990s. (Liu &

Mathews, 2005). For Vygotsky, the student’s social environment is fundamental in

their development, asserting that it is a student’s interaction with more

knowledgeable members of society, for instance, their teachers and peers, that

enables them to acquire knowledge that is deemed societally important (Keenan et

al., 2016). Consequently, according to constructivist educational theory, learning is

facilitated by social processes and interactions, thus making them imperative to

cognitive development and, therefore, learning (Keenan et al., 2016). Vygotsky

maintained that this social nature of learning, with teacher and peer support, reduced

a student’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), the disparity in what a student

‘can do today in cooperation’ and what they will be able to do ‘tomorrow… on [their]

own’ (Vygotsky, 1962:67).

Although knowledge is not commodified and viewed to be transferred from

teacher to learner, it is regarded as a construct to be built through an active process

that involves interaction in the learning environment. Therefore, learning is still

shaped by the activities, and the structure of activities (Schcolnik et al., 2006). Under

this context, the teacher assumes the role of a facilitator of student’s learning.

Schcolnik et al, (2006:13) stipulate that learners should be ‘exposed to materials,

experiences, and situations from which they can build their own knowledge’. Within

the history classroom, this inquiry-based approach to learning history has been

expanding over the last couple of decades. This has manifested as students utilising

materials, such as historical sources and interpretations (historiography), provided by


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the teacher, in order to construct their own inquiry and understanding of the past

(The Historical Association, 2018). Cognitive constructivists, such as Jean Piaget,

have highlighted the importance of this inquiry-based learning for students in terms

of the effects of power on student’s acquisition of knowledge. He conveys that the

inequalities that manifest in traditional, didactic, and dualistic, methods of teaching

as a result of classroom hierarchy, means that students are less likely to formulate

their own understanding of history as a result of the assertion of the teacher’s

conceptual reality. Consequently, it is more probable that they will assume the

teacher’s understanding and interpretation as truth (Lancaster, 2018). In accordance

with constructivist theory, discussing sources and historiography, provided by the

teacher, with their peers, permits the students to reach their own conclusions and

interpretations, thereby constructing their own knowledge.

Richard Fox (2001) has highlighted a number of flaws with Piaget’s argument

that constructivist learning transgresses the limitations on learning imposed by the

dualistic approaches of traditionalist learning theories. Piaget’s contention of

conceptual relativism being more important to learning than the exertion of external

realism – that assertion that knowledge is a construct of the human mind – is flawed.

An individual’s conceptual reality is limited, and we cannot simply reject knowledge,

or the existence, of things external to the human mind. Fox instead maintains that

the ‘background assumption’ of external realism (rejected by constructivism for its

didactic and dualistic effects on learning) is imperative to learning. Therefore, the

rejection of external realism by constructivist ideology is actually limiting to

classroom discourses and, therefore, to the discovery of knowledge. Furthermore, to

efficaciously handle sources and historiography, students require security in both

their substantive knowledge and their disciplinary knowledge. Although


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constructivism’s aim is to enable a growth in both student’s substantive knowledge

and disciplinary knowledge simultaneously, it actually has the potential to be

detrimental to both. Having strong factual (substantive) knowledge is imperative

before attempting to approach historical sources, which, in their own right require a

student to understand, and have knowledge of, a whole different set of skills.

Attempting to combine the two within the classroom can lead to confusion and

misconceptions being made. The activity of using sources to find out information

about the past, that is common within constructivist classrooms, is confusing

academic history, with history that is taught in schools. Experienced historians (or

history students at a higher level, such as university), already approach the archive

with an expansive range of substantive and disciplinary knowledge. Consequently,

when looking at sources, even in a subject not necessarily studied before, they,

unlike students in years that I have experienced teaching, are able to infer the

necessary information from them (Taylor, 2020).

However, the criticism of the teacher as a facilitator is often overly reduced

and critiqued by critics of constructivism, often over-simplifying this ‘facilitator’ role to

a mere provider of resources. The aim of a constructivist teacher is actually to

provide a number of interventions in order to guide the students in the construction of

their knowledge. Jerome Bruner (1983) suggests that one way in which the teacher

should provide a structure to this enquiry-based method to learning is the provision

of ‘scaffolding’. The aim of these scaffolds is to encourage learners to discover

knowledge through active dialogue and which is removed in correlation with the

learner’s progress. David Wood (1988) has built further on Vygotsky’s and Bruner’s

ideas of scaffolding, articulating that there are five levels to scaffolded learning,

ranging from a demonstration of the task (modelling), for new concepts, to general


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verbal encouragement. Within a history classroom, this scaffolding can assume a

number of visages. One of the most common being the use of writing frames, or

sentence starters, during written work for students. Within my own practice, I have

implemented the use of P.E.E.L – Point, Evidence, Explain, and Link (back to the

question) – to aid students in organising their knowledge when answering written

questions, and provided relevant sentence starters to further aid their work. Although

scaffolds have a fundamental role in allowing students to develop their knowledge

and disciplinary skills, such as writing historically, it is imperative that they are

gradually removed when students begin performing at a higher level to enable a

higher level of student individuality to their learning (Sherrington, 2019). If scaffolds

are not removed, it can cause students to become too formulaic in their work, and

potentially limit the extent to which students can expand their knowledge outside of

scaffolded frameworks for learning.

The second epistemological theory that this thesis will examine is cognitivism.

Cognitivist learning theory first emerged in the 1950s, with educationalists beginning

to divert emphasis away from the observable changes in behaviour as an indicator of

learning, something that the previously dominant theory, behaviourism, had

contended (Ertmer & Newby, 2013). The emphasis was instead placed on changes

in cognitive processes, such as, ‘thinking, problem solving, language, concept

formation, and information processing’ (Ertmer & Newby, 2013: 50). Cognitivist

theory, unlink constructivist, understands that learning is associated with what the

learners know and how they acquire new information, rather than what they learners

do. However, they are still viewed as active agents in the learning process due to the

active nature of cognitive processes (Fox, 2001). In a further disparity to

constructivism, in cognitivism, the teacher is not seen as a facilitator for the child’s


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learning. Instead, they are responsible for learning by organising knowledge, and its

delivery, in an optimal way. Cognitivism understands learning as a change in the

long-term memory of an individual, where information (obtained from the working

memory) is stored in schemas, where it can be recalled into the working memory

(Clark et al., 2012). However, the teacher is responsible for how this knowledge is

first delivered and how it fits into student’s schemas by building on their prior

knowledge.

Perhaps one of the biggest contributions that cognitivism has made to

educational epistemology is the development of cognitive load theory. First

described by John Sweller in the 1980s, cognitive load theory expands on the

commonly accepted hypothesise on how human brains process and store

information, for example, the division of the brain into working and long-term

memory. The former is described as ‘the limited mental “space” in which we think’,

whereas the latter is where information is stored for longer periods of time (Clark, et

al., 2012:8). Cognitive load theory stipulates that information is organised and stored

in the long-term memory as ‘schemas’ and people can only learn new information

which builds on their prior understanding and knowledge that constitutes their

schema (Sweller et al., 1998). Processing new information places a load on the

working memory. That way in which this load is handled in the learning environment,

for instance, how new information is delivered, has the capacity to effect learning

outcomes. If too much new information is delivered, it may result in cognitive

overload, leading to confusion and misunderstanding in the learner (Kirschner et al.,

2006). According to Cowan (2001), the working memory is finite and is limited to the

capacity of four new pieces of information at a given time. However, a schema,

regardless of its complexity and size, only constitutes one element of the working


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memory, thereby reducing cognitive load. It is therefore imperative for the teacher to

maximise learning potential by undertaking measures in lessons to reduce cognitive

load for their students.

Cognitive load theory states that cognitive load is divided into three

components: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane load (Sweller, 1988). The first of

which, intrinsic load, is considered to be related to the difficulty of the content the

learner is encountering (Cooper, 1998). Ton de Jong (2010) portrays that material

with a higher number of elements the learner interacts with is more difficult than

material with lower interactivity. Although considered intrinsic to the subject,

cognitive load theory stipulates that intrinsic load can be affected (or minimised) by

the level of the learner’s prior knowledge or existing schema (Sweller et al., 1998).

However, it cannot be influenced, or changed, by adapting the way in which

instructions are delivered. De Tong, however, highlights the limitations of cognitive

load theory in its handling of intrinsic load. Along with other scholars, such as J. J. G.

van Merriënboer et. al. (2003), de Tong epitomises that instructional design can

actually decrease intrinsic load. For instance, sequencing tasks from simple to

complex can limit the intrinsic load experienced by learners. An example of this in

the classroom could be the use of a ‘laddered’ task, commonly used in differentiated

activities, so only high attaining pupils (HAPs), with greater prior knowledge and

more complex schema formations, are encountered with more difficult tasks.

The second type of cognitive load outlined by cognitive load theory is

extraneous load. This cognitive load is ‘load that is not necessary for learning… [and]

that can be altered by instructional interventions’ (van Merriënboer & Sweller, 2005:

150). Extraneous load has two potential origins. Firstly, the way that information and

instructions are delivered to the learners, something that can be overcome by


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altering instructional design and using techniques, such as dual coding. Another

source of extraneous load is when students encounter tasks, or are required to solve

problems, when they have no prior knowledge or schema. One way in which

cognitivists suggest reducing the impact of this on learners is the use of modelling, or

worked examples, during instruction. This method is also advocated by

constructivists, such as Bruner and Wood, through techniques like scaffolding

previously mentioned (Wood, 1998). One cognitivist theory whose work on modelling

has been influential is Barak Rosenshine. In his Principles of Instruction (2012),

Rosenshine highlights the importance of modelling in helping students in problem-

solving activities by providing cognitive support. Once a full model has been shown,

teachers can start to reduce the information and help they are giving students, but

still provide the necessary scaffolds to reduce cognitive load (Sherrington, 2019).

The majority of cognitive load studies that have taken place have focused on

the study of extraneous load and how to limit its effect on the cognitive load of

learners. However, de Tong has highlighted that despite these multiple

investigations, there are still a number of flaws that must be addressed (de Tong,

2010). One of the critiques de Tong has raised about cognitive load theory’s efforts

to mitigate extraneous load is that the extraneous load that students experience

during tasks that require skills, such as problem solving, or knowledge they may not

have developed schema foundation for, actually stimulate germane processes.

Cognitive load theory asserts that the final kind of cognitive load, germane load, is

the load involved in processing and constructing schemas (Sweller et al., 1998).

Sweller et al. (1998), ascertain that, due to the positive nature of germane load,

instructional design should stimulate and guide learners in schema construction.

Consequently, if, as de Tong infers, some extraneous load can induce germane load


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and therefore encourage schema production and development, steps to mitigate

extraneous load may not be as effective for learning as cognitive load theory asserts.

So far, this essay has examined two epistemological approaches to teaching

and learning: cognitivism and constructivism. The former advocates an inquiry-based

approach to learning, where the teacher enacts the role of a facilitator, providing

essentials, such as materials, for learning. We have seen that critics of

constructivism, for instance, Fox, can be overly reductive in their reproach of this

pedagogical approach and that the teacher makes a far greater contribution to the

classroom, through the provision of scaffolds. On the other hand, the essay has also

evaluated cognitivist approaches to learning, specifically in the discussion of

cognitive load theory. The essay has considered methods through which teachers

can reduce the cognitive load faced by students, like implementing modelling,

differentiated/’laddered’ tasks, and dual coding, in their lessons. The second half of

this essay is going to assess the ways in which my HS implements these

approaches to learning. By also analysing and reflecting on my own teaching

practice, to see how I can maximise the learning potential of my lessons.

My HS implements many of these pedagogical approaches in lessons across

the school. The structure of lessons is largely replicated throughout, with slight

adaptations depending on the subject that is being taught. This endeavours to

ensure that the students know what is expected of them at various stages of a

lesson, irrespective of the teacher. In a large comprehensive school (1,369

students), where low-level disruptive behaviour is a prominent issue, this

behaviourist method of conditioning students is displayed throughout lessons

through icons displayed on the PowerPoint being shown (HS Administration; Pavlov,

1962). For instance, students know that the ‘Do Now’ icon (pictured below) means

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that they are expected to carry out the ready to learn activity, aimed at getting them

engaged in the lesson. Although largely successful, there are some classes where

this approach does not have the desired effect of student compliance; for example,

classes where more severe behaviour issues may be an additional obstacle.

Fig. 1a

However, although the displaying of these icons has a conditioning effect,

advocated by behaviourist thinker, Ivan Pavlov, my HS’s approach to lessons

structure is largely constructivist. Using ideas of scaffolding, previously discussed

through the works of Vygotsky, Bruner, and Wood, classes throughout the HS use a

structure of ‘I Do’, ‘We Do’, ‘You Do’, shown through another set of icons also

displayed on the PowerPoint presentations. This structure of lessons adopts

Vygotsky’s theory of the ZPD which stipulates that with teacher support (‘I Do’), and

peer support (‘We Do’), the student maximises their ability to execute tasks, using

knowledge and skills they have acquired throughout the lesson, themselves (‘You

Do’) (Vygotsky, 1962). Furthermore, it also mirrors Wood’s (1983) five-tiered

approach to scaffolding, with the ‘I Do’ assuming the capacity of a complete teacher-

led explanation of knowledge and skills, to the ‘You Do’ being student-led, with

general encouragement from the teacher.


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Fig. 1b, c, d.

A second way in which I apply constructivist ideas of scaffolding to my

teaching is through the provision of sentence starters. Sentence starters are the

fourth stage on Wood’s (1983) levels of support, the only rank above being a

physical demonstration of the task. I provided these sentence starters by displaying

them on the PowerPoint presentation when students were completing a written task.

When answering the question, ‘Why did the population ‘explode’ after 1745? What

was the most important reason and why?’, an example of sentence starters may look

like:

One reason for the population ‘explosion’ after 1745 was…

This contributed to the population growth because…

Another reason for the population ‘explosion’ after 1745 was…

This this lead to a growth in the population because…

I think the most important reason was…

This is more important than… because… (HS scheme of work, 2020)

Although initially highly effective, especially within historical inquiry, in enabling

students to see what was required to correctly execute a specific task, there are

limitations to their continued use in this way, especially in certain groups (Mercer &

Littleton, 2007). As previously discussed with Sherrington’s (2019) approach to


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scaffolding, their repeated use can be limiting and detrimental to some students work

due to the reliance on sentence starters causing student’s work to become too

formulaic. However, some students may still need access to this support to

effectively master a task. Due to restrictions of COVID-19 on classroom practice, it is

more difficult to get personalised support to individual students. Consequently, when

reflecting on this in my practice, I created a resource for students to use, should they

require this support. I created a history ‘placemat’ with a number of aids for students.

As you can see in Fig. 2 below, there is a section with sentence starter scaffolds for

a range of questions they may encounter. Students have this in their book covers

and can refer to it when they feel they need this structured support. But, for those

students who do not, perhaps HAPs, they are not limited by the restrictive nature of

these scaffolds.

Fig. 2

Provenance of sources.

Some useful connectives:

For adding information

and also as well as additionally too furthermore

For sequencing ideas or events

firstly secondly thenfinally eventually afterwardsnext meanwhilewhilst since

To compare

equally likewise similarlyas with like in the same way

To contrast

whereas instead of alternativelyotherwise unlike buton the other hand in contrast

To show cause and effect

because so thereforethus consequently

To further explain an idea

although however unlessexcept apart from yetif as longas

To give examples

for example such as for instance

in the case of as revealed by

PEEL Paragraph:

Point Evidence Explain Link

One of the major causes of…was…

One consequence of…was…

The most likely cause of… was…

… has caused significant impacts on…

Source __ is useful because…

One thing that can be inferred from the source is…

This is highlighted by… This suggests… It can therefore be inferred that…

Important historical vocabulary:

Chronology:the occurrence of events in time order. Cause and consequence:the relationship between events and the results of those events. ‘Something that happened.’This meant that/this led to.Provenance: information about the background of a source.Turning point:a time where a decision changes the courses of events. These can be positive or negative.Change and continuity:over history, some things stay the same and others change. A fancy way of saying differences and similarities.

This can be seen in the source by…

This suggests… As a result, we can see that source __ is/is not useful, because…

This can be seen in… This portrays (shows) that…

We can therefore conclude that…

We know this because…

This shows that… From this, we can deduce that…

For example… This highlights that…

This means that…

Therefore, we can argue that…

This is evidenced by… Because of this…


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Another way in which constructivist approaches are implemented in lessons in

the HS is through the inquiry-based approach to discovering knowledge in history.

One way in which I have carried this out in my own practice is through the use of

historical sources. During a scheme of work on Empire and Slavery, I had given

students an image of an aspect of life on a plantation (see example on the next

page), and asked the students to write down four inferences they could make about

life on the plantation from these sources. Although I had provided scaffolds through

the prompts shown in the boxes, these were not a sufficient level of support for the

students to complete the activity (Wood, 1983). This activity was carried out by a

high ability Year 8 group, with no SEND or EAL students, therefore, for this activity,

no additional differentiation had been put in place. Through using the inquiry-based

approach to learning I had not given sufficient consideration to the lack of

substantive knowledge students had about plantations during the Slave Trade, or the

limited experience with disciplinary skills, such as source and inference work, that

this activity required (Taylor, 2020). As a result, this inquiry-based approach put

additional strain on cognitive load of students in the class due to the limited schemas

they possess for both the substantive and disciplinary aspects of the task. Although,

as de Tong (2010) contends, some students may have experienced germane

processes and, subsequently, constructed schemas, for the majority, this cognitive

overload led to confusion and misunderstanding (Kirschner et. al., 2006). This

excess extraneous load could have been mitigated by the aforementioned use of

modelling, or by ensuring students had the prior knowledge and skills to complete

this task effectively (Rosenshine, 2012).


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Fig. 3

This drawing is of the J amaica House of Correction in 1834. J amaica is a Caribbean island. The slaves in the picture are being punished.

My inference (what the source tells me):

How can I tell this?








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When considering the application of cognitive principles in teaching and

learning in my HS, I am going to reflect on a number of practices and assess how

they fit into cognitivist literature. The first one I encounter regularly in my HS

environment is the use of ‘laddered’ tasks within lessons. These are predominantly

situated towards the end of the lesson when students have been taught and exposed

to the knowledge and skills, they need to complete the tasks. This laddered

approach to instructional design efficaciously differentiates for a range of student

abilities and works well in my Year 7 class which has a wide range of learners in.

The class has not been set yet and, as a result is hugely diverse in its range of LAPs

to HAPs, as well as having several students with a SEND, and one EAL student. As

already discussed, due to COVID-19 restrictions, it is harder to distribute

differentiated and personalised resources to students. Consequently, laddered tasks

are a good way of ensuring the majority of student abilities are accommodated for.

This kind of approach to instructional design is discussed in the literature

surrounding cognitive load theory. Although scholars, such as Sweller (1988) and

Cooper (1998), have asserted that intrinsic cognitive load is fundamental and

unavoidable through changes in instructional design, their argument is somewhat

limited by not accommodating for the fact that, if learners do not encounter material

that they do not have well-developed schema for, they will not experience cognitive

load due to too much intrinsic load (van Merriënboer et. al., 2003).

The design of these laddered tasks directly correlates with models of

questioning, for instance, Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956; cited through Armstrong, 2016).

Although a constructivist principle of teaching and learning, Bloom’s application

corresponds with the instructional design of these laddered tasks. For example, the

first task on these ladders usually requires students to simply recall, or describe,


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events or concepts, that parallels with the first and second categories of Bloom’s

Taxonomy: remembering and understanding (Armstrong, 2016). This contrasts with

the latter tasks of the ladder, where students may be asked to analyse, assess, or

develop, these events or concepts further (Armstrong, 2016). These later tasks

require greater metacognitive abilities than those earlier on the ladder and, therefore,

are likely only to be executed by HAP students, who are more likely to have greater

developed schemas. However, for learners who do not have the same extent of

cognitive capacity, the instructional design of these tasks mean that the chances of

them experiencing intrinsic cognitive overload is reduced.

One way I have executed this approach in my own practice was during

a Year 8 lesson, with a top set, on changes and developments in Victorian

Education. The students had been given an A3 timeline, blank, other than for a

number of key dates. They had also been given a sheet with all the necessary

information on it, in addition, to me delivering the substantive knowledge required

during the ‘I Do’ section of the lesson. The first task asked the students to write a

short description (of no more than ten words) that occurred on each date on the

timeline. Once students had executed this, they could move up the ladder, and,

subsequently, the Taxonomy, and perform an analysis of each event. I gave them

prompts for how to carry this out, asking questions, such as: ‘What impact did it

have? Good or Bad? For whom? Was it a change or continuity?’ (HS scheme of

work, 08.10.2020). the final task asked students to extend the concepts and events

they had learnt in that lesson (the final Bloom’s category), and link them to others

that they had studied in the scheme of work on Victorian Britain, again providing

prompts. Although initially successful, as the students were predominantly high

achieving with a good pre-existing schema, the first task was completed with ease by


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the majority of the class (Sweller et al., 1998). However, when the tasks began to

require a greater amount of metacognitive strength, the students visibly began to

struggle with the amount of intrinsic cognitive load they were experiencing.

One way in which I could have mitigated, or reduced this, according to

cognitivism, would have been through providing a worked example (Rosenshine,

2012). By showing the students a modelled example of each task, and how it may

look on their timeline, the intrinsic and extraneous load they experienced, would

have been reduced. If I had given them one worked example, clearly articulating the

success criteria for the tasks, they would have had the cognitive support necessary

to advance further (Sherrington, 2019). Although de Tong (2010) critiques this

approach to reducing extraneous load, instead suggesting that not showing models

would generate germane processes in the learners, thereby leading to schema

formation, in this task, the use of models would have been advantageous to the

learning. By providing one worked example, the students still had the opportunity to

create these schemas within the tasks due to the nature of the timeline activity.

However, with the use of models, they would have been able to do this more

efficaciously, without the confusion caused due to intrinsic and extraneous cognitive

overload.

Over the course of this essay, I have critically evaluated educational

epistemology, focussing on an analysis of constructivist and cognitivist pedagogies.

Considering these approaches to teaching and learning, and applying them to the

context of the history classroom, has enabled me to reflect on my own practice and

how I may adapt my own pedagogy going forward. Both epistemologies view the

student as an active agent in their own learning, constructivism through social

interaction and discovery of knowledge, whereas cognitivists contend that it is the


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active nature of a learner’s cognitive processes that provide the active dynamic to

their learning. The main emphasis in constructivist pedagogy is the facilitator role of

the teacher in the learning process, such as providing scaffolds, however, students

are stull expected to ultimately guide their own learning experience. Although

effective if executed correctly, constructivism’s approach to inquiry-based learning,

often carried out in the history classroom through the use of sources, is often flawed

by incorrect assumptions that students have sufficient substantive and disciplinary

knowledge to execute these tasks. Consequently, constructivist approaches, such as

inquiry-based learning, often lead to confusion and misconceptions amongst

students, ultimately impeding their learning. On the other hand, although not without

its limitations, some of which have been articulated through the arguments of de

Tong (2010), cognitivism relies on the presence of prior knowledge, or schema, in

the student’s learning and recommends a number of techniques in order to enhance

the learning potential of students.

Adopting the view of Murphy (2008) that failing to reflect on and examine

one’s pedagogy has the potential to limit the learning achieved through education, I

have reflected on my own practice. Considering how I implement a variety of these

educational epistemologies in my own pedagogy and the effect this has had on my

students, I have outlined a number of both constructivist and cognitive approaches I

have observed and utilised in my HS. Overall, my pedagogy will not be limited to one

epistemological approach as teachers need to maintain an adaptive and dynamic

approach to their practice, combining a variety of methodologies and considering

which is most suitable for the students and the task being delivered. As a result, I will

endeavour to adopt both paradigms of constructivism and cognitivism in the history

classroom and continue to expand on their efficacy. One of the main areas I intend


25

to improve on is the provision of models in my practice in an attempt to limit the

extraneous cognitive load experienced by my students. Furthermore, applying

cognitive load theory to the constructivist approach my HS implements in its lesson

structure (‘I Do’, ‘We Do’, ‘You Do’) will enhance this scaffolded approach to

learning. By ensuring that my students have the schema necessary to carry out

tasks, such as the substantive and disciplinary knowledge needed for source work,

they will increase their learning potential in these activities and give them greater

agency in their own learning.


26

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Appendix

Fig 1. a,b,c,d, HS scheme of work (2020)

Fig 2. Student 202017959 (2020) History Placemats

Fig 3. Host School scheme of work (2020) What Was Life Like on the Plantations?

Documents

202017959 771699 - Reflections on Teaching and Learning in