| الوصف: |
This chapter reports 11 experiments that were done to determine whether Guided Cognition-designed homework would facilitate learning in high school and middle school literature classes. The experiments were done in an authentic learning environment, which means that students were in their normal school environment and were not aware that their learning was being observed. Students never saw the researchers, and all materials were handled by their regular teachers. The experiments fit seamlessly into the regular curriculum and did not affect students' course grades. Typically, a student would experience Guided Cognition-designed homework only once or twice during the entire school year. Guided Cognition homework was found to improve students' performance on unexpected quizzes by about 10%, approximately one letter grade. The effects were replicated with various literature (Shakespeare's MacBeth , Conrad's The Secret Sharer, Anouilh's Becket, Hinton's The Outsiders ), under controlled time conditions, with and without explicit teaching of the content, with repetition of Guided Cognition homework, for grades 7–12 (ages 12–18) and for students of average, and advanced abilities. These results demonstrate that the advantages of Guided Cognition study are not due to specific content, time-on-task, teaching effects, or novelty and are obtained across a range of ages, ability levels, and subject matter. Improved learning resulted from engaging in effective cognitive processes triggered by the cognitive events that were embedded into the homework questions and tasks. |
