Cognitive Disequilibrium Essay

Some pupils may find the activity either too easy or too difficult therefore the activity may need to be adapted to suit the needs of these pupils. Also additional activities may be included for those pupils who finish quicker than others. The teaching assistant must take each pupil’s learning needs into consideration.

  Albert Einstein once said "everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole existence thinking it is stupid". There are many students who relate to that fish believing they are unintelligent and useless. Believing that they cannot possibly succeed in the education system. The education system is failing to teach students and bring out their maximum potential. Everyday thousands of students drop out of school because they are failing to succeed. Gerald Graff argues in his article “Hidden Intellectualism” that the educational institution are failing to nurture students. He believes that some students would be more willing to learn and have better

The pillow method is a five-step process used to resolve a disagreement or enable two people to gain understanding from a disagreement. The process involves each individual to look at the problem through five different perspectives. These steps or perspectives include: “I’m right you’re wrong”, “You’re right I’m wrong”, “both right both wrong”, “this issue isn’t important”, and “the truth is in all perspectives” (Alder & Proctor, p. 104). The purpose of the pillow method is for each person to gain insight from each step in the process. By looking at the problem from multiple perspectives each person gets the chance to enhance their cognitive complexity (Alder & Proctor, p. 104). In this paper I

| Some learners may not feel confident contributing – good ice-breaker required Other learners may dominate discussion – teacher facilitation important Easy to digress from topic – ground rules and teacher facilitation important

“The more typical view of learning resembles the mental equivalent of consumerism: the more knowledge we acquire, the better 'educated' we think we are. But as some of the leading researchers and practitioners in the field have observed, such education 'focuses more on memorization and static answers rather than on the art of seeking new possibilities through dynamic questioning.' Instead of teaching students 'how to ask powerful

Students have their own best way in effectively learning the lesson. With the diversity of students, the problem is each student has a preferred learning style. It becomes undeniably one of the reasons that make it difficult to achieve the best expected outcome out of teachers’ effort. However, teachers try to incorporate various teaching techniques to make every learning opportunity become productive, meaningful, and relevant for the learners.

If one is trying to pull a thought or feeling in closer, or push it away, they may be attempting to manipulate their cognitive dissonance. If one knows that they are not happy with their actions, they can dilute that feeling of cognitive dissonance by decreasing the negative or enhancing the positive attitudes about it (Smith & Mackie, n.d.). One might be a smoker for instance, and know that smoking is bad for them, but continue smoking anyway. A perception of a clash of unsuitable elements is a way to describe the way one feels when their actions and beliefs are at odds (McLeod, 2014). So, if one is unhappy about the things they do because they do not match what they think they should do, they will be said to be experiencing cognitive dissonance.

They must engage in a fight to help the student confront and reject the verbal formulas and stock responses, to convert passive acceptance into active, constructive power. It is a fight against illiteracy and for the maturation of the mental process, for the development of skills which once acquired will never become obsolete”(par.13). This quote explains the important role teachers play in order to properly assist students with becoming more active in breaking the barrier of verbal formulas and assisting students in being well-spoken with quality.

In order to thoroughly engage learners and their specific brain dominance it is important to discuss subject matter with a big picture approach and then to discuss the details. This will involve learning from the left side as the small details flow into a larger subject. The right side of the brain will also be engaged when learning a subject through visualization of the big picture. In today’s school systems subjects tend to be taught the same: different subtopics are broken up and taught at different times until all material is covered. The big picture of the new material is not usually united to the many small groups of details that create it. This makes learning much more challenging instead of a natural reaction that teachers should strive for.

In the beginning of the text, J.H. Plass begins to discuss the importance of learning-to-learn and how even though some people can memorize facts, they still cannot form their own opinions. He begins with a story about the young man who is “incapable of formulating

It is not about finding the answer but thinking of many possibilities and asking many more questions along the journey.

To help students effectively interact with new knowledge, I often preview new content prior to the critical input experience with a short engaging video. Often I also purposefully organize students in groups to enhance the active processing of information. New information is presented in small chunks or digestible bites. Questions are then asked for my

Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes. The American Psychological Association defines cognitive psychology as "The study of higher mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, and thinking."[1] Much of the work derived from cognitive psychology has been integrated into various other modern disciplines of psychological study including social psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, and educational psychology.

Expert teachers generally are comfortable with a wide range of instructional strategies, and they vary them skillfully with the nature of the learning task and learners’ needs (Berliner, 1986).

Leon Festinger created the cognitive dissonance theory as an attempt to explain why people desire to have consistency between their behaviors and actions. Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold (Festinger, 1957; as cited in Griffin, 2009). Thus, people are motivated to change either their behavior or their belief when feelings of dissonance arise.