The Push Down Principle

The other day my chair, Dr. Paul Merrill, described to me Dr. Dave Merrill's "push-down" principle---the idea that as things become learned more deeply they require less effort and can be applied more broadly (or something like that). I'll need to look this up in the literature to understand it better.

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Learning Environment

The learning environment can be one or both of the following: 1) Content providing: e.g. other skiers provide good and bad examples, mountain provides visual input to understand skiing (compared to talking about skiiing in a classroom, chalkboard drawings, pictures, video, etc...) 2) Performance enabling: e.g. the mountain, snow, a ski lift, provide a place to ski; skis, boots and poles provide equipment to ski. e.g. a harness can help a diver safely learn a new dive, e.g. a foam pit can help a gymnast safely learn a new move

Preface note for dissertation

Although I feel that this work is of value it seems so insignificant compared to what I have learned in producing it. If only I could give that to the world, then I would feel my contribution is truly great. However, that progression is not something that can be given, but rather something that each person must discover and attain individually. Hopefully this work will, at least, give a good strong nudge in the right direction. (me, 2008)

Trait vs state

"A useful distinction in the discussion of student characteristics is trait versus state. Traits are student characteristics that are relatively constant over time...whereas states are student characteristics that tend to vary during individual learning experiences, such as level of content-specific knowledge." (Reigeluth, 1983, p. 32) Reigeluth also states that "many strategy components have been shown to help students with all kinds of traits to learn" [p. 32]. My position is that we do not know a priori which aspects of our instructional strategies, learning environment, motivator, etc... will generalize across many or all students. However, with a localized learning theory we can learn over time which do and which do not. At the same time, we will likely find ways of grouping students that we never would have before imagined.

Principles of Learning

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