Schemas - A schema describes both the mental and

physical actions involved in understanding and

knowing. Schemas are categories of knowledge that
help us to interpret and understand the world.
In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of
knowledge and the process of obtaining that
knowledge. As experiences happen, this new
information is used to modify, add to, or change
previously existing schemas.
For example, a child may have a schema about a type
of animal, such as a dog. If the child's sole experience
has been with small dogs, a child might believe that all
dogs are small, furry, and have four legs. Suppose then
that the child encounters a very large dog. The child
will take in this new information, modifying the
previously existing schema to include this new
information.

Assimilation - The process of taking in new

information into our previously existing schemas is
known as assimilation. The process is somewhat
subjective, because we tend to modify experience or

information somewhat to fit in with our preexisting

beliefs. In the example above, seeing a dog and
labeling it "dog" is an example of assimilating the
animal into the child's dog schema.

Accommodation - Another part of adaptation

involves changing or altering our existing schemas in
light of new information, a process known as
accommodation. Accommodation involves altering
existing schemas, or ideas, as a result of new
information or new experiences. New schemas may
also be developed during this process.

Equilibration - Piaget believed that all children try

to strike a balance between assimilation and
accommodation, which is achieved through a
mechanism Piaget called equilibration. As children
progress through the stages of cognitive development,
it is important to maintain a balance between applying
previous knowledge (assimilation) and changing
behavior to account for new knowledge
(accommodation). Equilibration helps explain how
children are able to move from one stage of thought
into the next.

Table of The Cognitive Domain (original)

Category

Example, Key Words (verbs), and Technologies for Learning

(activities)

Examples: Recite a policy. Quote prices from memory to a

customer. Know the safety rules. Define a term.

Knowledge: Recall data or information.

Key Words: arranges, defines, describes, identifies, knows,

labels, lists, matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes,
reproduces, selects, states
Technologies: bookmarking, flash cards, Internet search,
reading

Comprehension: Understand the

meaning, translation, interpolation, and
interpretation of instructions and
problems. State a problem in one's own
words.

Examples: Rewrites the principles of test writing. Explain in

one's own words the steps for performing a complex task.
Translates an equation into a computer spreadsheet.
Key Words: comprehends, converts, diagrams, defends,
distinguishes, estimates, explains, extends, generalizes,
gives an example, infers, interprets, paraphrases, predicts,
rewrites, summarizes, translates

Technologies: create an analogy, participating

in cooperative learning , taking notes, story telling

Application: Use a concept in a new

situation or unprompted use of an
abstraction. Applies what was learned in
the classroom into novel situations in the
work place.

Examples: Use a manual to calculate an employee's

vacation time. Apply laws of statistics to evaluate the
reliability of a written test.
Key Words: applies, changes, computes, constructs,
demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates,
predicts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses
Technologies: collaborative learning , create a process,
material good, etc.), blog, practice

Analysis: Separates material or concepts

into component parts so that its
organizational structure may be
understood. Distinguishes between facts
and inferences.

Examples: Troubleshoot a piece of equipment by using

logical deduction. Recognize logical fallacies in
reasoning. Gathers information from a department and
selects the required tasks for training.
Key Words: analyzes, breaks down, compares,
contrasts, diagrams, deconstructs, differentiates,
discriminates, distinguishes, identifies, illustrates, infers,
outlines, relates, selects, separates
Technologies: fishbowls, debating, questioning what
happened, run a test

Synthesis: Builds a structure or pattern

from diverse elements. Put parts together
to form a whole, with emphasis on
creating a new meaning or structure.

Examples: Write a company operations or process manual.

Design a machine to perform a specific task. Integrates
training from several sources to solve a problem. Revises
and process to improve the outcome.
Key Words: categorizes, combines, compiles, composes,
creates, devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies,
organizes, plans, rearranges, reconstructs, relates,
reorganizes, revises, rewrites, summarizes, tells, writes
Technologies: essay, networking

Examples: Select the most effective solution. Hire the most

qualified candidate. Explain and justify a new budget.
Evaluation: Make judgments about the
value of ideas or materials.

Key Words: appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts,

criticizes, critiques, defends, describes, discriminates,
evaluates, explains, interprets, justifies, relates,
summarizes, supports
Technologies: survey, blogging

Table of The Revised Cognitive Domain

Category

Example and Key Words (verbs)

Examples: Recite a policy. Quote prices from memory to a

customer. Knows the safety rules.
Remembering: Recall or retrieve
previous learned information.

Understanding: Comprehending the

meaning, translation, interpolation,
and interpretation of instructions and
problems. State a problem in one's
own words.

Applying: Use a concept in a new

situation or unprompted use of an
abstraction. Applies what was
learned in the classroom into novel
situations in the work place.

Analyzing: Separates material or

concepts into component parts so
that its organizational structure may
be understood. Distinguishes
between facts and inferences.

Key Words: defines, describes, identifies, knows, labels, lists,

matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes, reproduces, selects,
states.

Examples: Rewrites the principles of test writing. Explain in one's

own words the steps for performing a complex task. Translates an
equation into a computer spreadsheet.
Key Words: comprehends, converts, defends, distinguishes,
estimates, explains, extends, generalizes, gives an example,
infers, interprets, paraphrases, predicts, rewrites, summarizes,
translates.

Examples: Use a manual to calculate an employee's vacation

time. Apply laws of statistics to evaluate the reliability of a written
test.
Key Words: applies, changes, computes, constructs,
demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates,
predicts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses.

Examples: Troubleshoot a piece of equipment by using logical

deduction. Recognize logical fallacies in reasoning. Gathers
information from a department and selects the required tasks for
training.
Key Words: analyzes, breaks down, compares,
contrasts, diagrams, deconstructs, differentiates, discriminates,
distinguishes, identifies, illustrates, infers, outlines, relates,
selects, separates.

Examples: Select the most effective solution. Hire the most

qualified candidate. Explain and justify a new budget.
Evaluating: Make judgments about
the value of ideas or materials.

Key Words: appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts, criticizes,

critiques, defends, describes, discriminates, evaluates, explains,
interprets, justifies, relates, summarizes, supports.

Creating: Builds a structure or

pattern from diverse elements. Put
parts together to form a whole, with
emphasis on creating a new meaning
or structure.

Examples: Write a company operations or process manual. Design

a machine to perform a specific task. Integrates training from
several sources to solve a problem. Revises and process to
improve the outcome.
Key Words: categorizes, combines, compiles, composes, creates,
devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies, organizes, plans,
rearranges, reconstructs, relates, reorganizes, revises, rewrites,
summarizes, tells, writes.

Enactive
(0 - 1 years)
This appears first. It involves encoding action based
information and storing it in our memory. For example,
in the form of movement as a muscle memory, a baby
might remember the action of shaking a rattle.
The child represents past events through motor
responses, i.e. an infant will shake a rattle which has
just been removed or dropped, as if the movements
themselves are expected to produce the accustomed
sound. And this is not just limited to children.
Many adults can perform a variety of motor tasks (typing,
sewing a shirt, operating a lawn mower) that they would
find difficult to describe in iconic (picture) or symbolic
(word) form.
Iconic
(1 - 6 years)
This is where information is stored visually in the form
of images (a mental picture in the minds eye). For
some, this is conscious; others say they dont
experience it. This may explain why, when we are
learning a new subject, it is often helpful to have

diagrams or illustrations to accompany verbal

information.
Symbolic
(7 years onwards)
This develops last. This is where information is stored in
the form of a code or symbol, such as language. This is
the most adaptable form of representation, for actions &
images have a fixed relation to that which they
represent. Dog is a symbolic representation of a single
class.
Symbols are flexible in that they can be manipulated,
ordered, classified etc., so the user isnt constrained by
actions or images. In the symbolic stage, knowledge is
stored primarily as words, mathematical symbols, or in
other symbol systems.
Bruner's constructivist theory suggests it is effective
when faced with new material to follow a progression
from enactive to iconic to symbolic representation; this
holds true even for adult learners. A true instructional
designer, Bruner's work also suggests that a learner
even of a very young age is capable of learning any
material so long as the instruction is organized
appropriately, in sharp contrast to the beliefs of Piaget
and other stage theorists.

Educational Implications
For Bruner (1961), the purpose of education is not to
impart knowledge, but instead to facilitate a child's
thinking and problem solving skills which can then be
transferred to a range of situations. Specifically,
education should also develop symbolic thinking in
children.
In 1960 Bruner's text, The Process of Education was
published. The main premise of Bruner's text was that
students are active learners who construct their own
knowledge.

Bruner (1960) opposed Piaget's notion of readiness.

He argued that schools waste time trying to match the
complexity of subject material to a child's cognitive stage
of development. This means students are held back by
teachers as certain topics are deemed to difficult to
understand and must be taught when the teacher
believes the child has reached the appropriate state of
cognitive maturity.
Bruner (1960) adopts a different view and believes a
child (of any age) is capable of understanding complex
information:'We begin with the hypothesis that any
subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually

honest form to any child at any stage of development'.

(p. 33)

categorizing information using a coding system. Bruner

believe that the most effect way to develop a coding
system is to discover it rather than being told it by the
teacher. The concept of discovery learning implies that
students construct their own knowledge for themselves
(also known as a constructivist approach).

Bruner (1960) explained how this was possible through

the concept of the spiral curriculum. This involved
information being structured so that complex ideas can
be taught at a simplified level first, and then re-visited at
more complex levels later on. Therefore, subjects would
be taught at levels of gradually increasing difficultly
(hence the spiral analogy). Ideally teaching his way
should lead to children being able to solve problems by
themselves.

The role of the teacher should not be to teach

information by rote learning, but instead to facilitate the
learning process. This means that a good teacher will
design lessons that help student discover the
relationship between bits of information. To do this a
teacher must give students the information they need,
but without organizing for them. The use of the spiral
curriculum can aid the process of discovery learning.

Bruner (1961) proposes that learners construct their

own knowledge and do this by organizing and

Define Cognitive Thinking Necessary Skills

5. Which cognitive skills are most important for
success?
Since the brain is such a sophisticated organ, learning is a
complex process. Many interrelated cognitive skills
contribute to academic and occupational success. Broadly
categorized, these critical skills include:

Attention

Working Memory

Processing Speed

Long-Term Memory

Visual Processing

Auditory Processing

Logic and Reasoning

Attention

Sustained Attention enables you to stay on task

for a period of time.

Selective Attention enables you to stay on task

even when a distraction is present.

Divided Attention allows you to handle two or

more tasks at one time.
What to watch for: The inability to stay on task for long
periods of time, to ignore distractions, or to multi-task will
limit the student's other cognitive skillswhich will
impact all academic areas.
Working memory

These skills are interdependent. Often they overlap in

their work with other skills, as all the bits of information
entering the mind are processed and acted upon.
Define Cognitive Thinking The Connection to
Learning
The detailed list that follows shows how each skill
connects to the learning task it enables. The strength or
weakness of one skill impacts the general effectiveness of
other skills.
Read through this list carefully. You will see how each skill
makes a contribution and needs to function well for overall
learning to be easy, fast, and successful. You will also
realize why the causes of both learning success and
learning difficulty are not as much of a mystery as they
may seem.

Working Memory is the ability to retain

information for short periods of time while processing or
using it.
What to watch for: Learning suffers if information cannot
be retained long enough to handle it properly.
Processing speed

Processing Speed is the rate at which the brain

handles information.
What to watch for: If processing speed is slow, the
information held in working memory may be lost before it
can be used, and the student will have to begin again.
Long-Term memory

What to watch for: If the ability to store and retrieve

information is poor, wrong conclusions and wrong answers
will result.

Auditory Processing is the ability to perceive,

analyze, and conceptualize what is heard and is one of the
major underlying skills needed to learn to read and spell.

Auditory Discrimination is hearing differences in

sounds, including volume, pitch, duration, and phoneme.

Visual Processing

Phonemic Awareness is the ability to blend

sounds to make words, to segment sounds, to break words
apart into separate sounds, and to manipulate and analyze
sounds to determine the number, sequence, and sounds
within a word.

Long-Term Memory is the ability to both store

and recall information for later use.

Visual Processing is the ability to perceive,

analyze, and think in visual images.

Visual Discrimination is seeing differences in size,

color, shape, distance, and the orientation of objects.

What to watch for: If blending, segmenting, and sound

analysis are weak, sounding out words when reading and
spelling will be difficult and error-prone.

Visualization is creating mental images.

What to watch for: When visual imagery is poor, tasks like
math word problems and comprehension, which require
seeing the concept/ object in the student's mind, are
difficult.
Auditory Processing

Logic and reasoning

Logic and Reasoning skills are the abilities to

reason, prioritize, and plan.
What to watch for: If these skills are not strong, academic
activities such as problem solving, math, and
comprehension will be difficult.