Wittrock Generative learning

Merlin Wittrock (1931 - 2007) worked at the University of California and saw good learning as a generative process. In a series of papers over two decades he saw 'generative' learning as the key to creating a shift in education towards more efficient learning. 

It has its roots in Bartlett (1932) and Piaget (1926) who both saw learning as acts of construction and, for Piaget, fitting knowledge into existing schemas. But for Wittrock, generative learning theory was built on the idea of learners integrating new knowledge and skills into what they already know though generative activities, where effective teaching facilitates leavers to construct meaning from various generative experiences.

Generative theory of learning

Wittrock not only developed his generative theory of learning, he also researched its effectiveness and applied it in practice. Learners, for Wittrock, are not passive receivers of knowledge, they are active reorgansisers of knowledge, creating meaning from their own generative activities. His generative learning theory was built on the idea of learners integrating new knowledge and skills into what they already know through generative activities. Effective teaching must therefore facilitate learners to construct meaning from various generative experiences.

His model encourages learners to generate meaning and understanding from instruction through effortful, generative activities and has four major processes:

(a) attention - directing generative processes on relevant incoming material and stored knowledge

(b) motivation - willingness to invest effort to make sense of material

(c) knowledge and preconceptions - prior knowledge, experiences, and beliefs

(d) generation - sense making

For Wittrock all four have generative components, what some would describe as constructive, where the learners control and build their own models, rather than interpreting taught content. Teachers must therefore learn to lead learners towards learning by encouraging generative activities. 

Generative activities

The generation of notes in one’s own words, use of analogies and effortful activities are all generative. Summaries and analogies in reading, for example, is an effective learning strategy, Wittrock & Alesandrini (1990). 

Fiorella & Mayer (2015) recommend eight types of generative strategies:

Summarizing: Create a written or oral summary of the material 

Mapping: Create a concept map, knowledge map or matrix organizer 

Drawing: Create a drawing that depicts the text

Imagining: Imagine a drawing that depicts the text 

Self-testing: Give yourself a practice test on the material 

Self-explaining Create a written or oral explanation of the material 

Teaching: Explain the material to others 

Enacting: Move objects to act out the material

Problem solving

With Richard Mayer, Wittrock also contributed to research on problem solving in order to identify the best way to teach it, with three main findings:

1. Domain-specific principle - teach problem as a domain specific skill not as a general skill

2. Near transfer principle - accept that problem solving skills work across a limited range of applicability

3. Knowledge integration principle - use guided problem-solving tasks to teach knowledge

   
   

Wittorck was heavily involved in teacher training and his generative theory was not just about what the learner did, it was also about appropriately generative teaching strategies. Problem solving was one such strategy.

Critique

Generative learning has been criticised by some as swinging the instructional pendulum too far towards discovery or exploratory learning, diminishing the role of direct instruction. Its singular focus on the generative processes, some think are partial, with other processes involved in learning.

Influence

Wittrock’s work on generative learning has not had as much influence as the topic and his work deserve. As technology has developed and social media normalised, the creation of text, images and videos have become common online, generative activities.

Bibliography

Wittrock, M.C., 1992. Generative learning processes of the brain. Educational Psychologist, 27(4), pp.531-541.

Wittrock, M.C., 1989. Generative processes of comprehension. Educational psychologist, 24(4), pp.345-376.

Wittrock, M.C., 1974. Learning as a generative process. Educational psychologist, 11(2), pp.87-95.

Fiorella, L. and Mayer, R.E., 2016. Eight ways to promote generative learning. Educational Psychology Review, 28(4), pp.717-741.

Wittrock, M.C. and Alesandrini, K., 1990. Generation of summaries and analogies and analytic and holistic abilities. American Educational Research Journal, 27(3), pp.489-502.

Mayer, R.E., 2010. Merlin C. Wittrock's enduring contributions to the science of learning. Educational Psychologist, 45(1), pp.46-50.

Mayer, R.E. and Wittrock, M.C., 2006. Problem Solving In P. Alexander, P. Winne, & G. Phye.

Education during COVID debate in Berlin

The UK Government has announced an acceleration of the booster programme, as they know a huge wave of infections is coming based on Omicron's infection rate (high). Although the variant is less lethal, when you have so many people infected, the strain on hospitals will be intense and people will die.

Yet the Government (and opposition) completely ignores the fact that schools and Universities are two massive vectors for infection. They are basically wheel and hub networks designed to optimise viral spread. Schools bring huge groups of people, a thousand and more, from every street in the community, to sit in small cramped rooms all day, then send them back to their homes, five days a week. With Universities you do this on a national scale with longer distances. These vast networks basically boost infection by forcing millions into close contact wil Amazon levels of distribution reach.

I took part in The Big Debate in Berlin this month. The motion was “This house belives that Education has failed to learn the lesson of Covid19”. I was up against the head of the NUS, who thought that “poor students who had to study in their pyjamas and dressing gowns” were “suffering badly from mental illness and loss of social contact”. Not only was this a caricature of education, as most people being ‘educated’ were in schools or the workplace, it was the usual placing of students on a social pedestal.

My retort was that viewing students as victims was an insult to the front line workers who had no choice other than to risk their lives, and sometimes die doing so, to keep us fed, supplied and safe - the delivery drivers, lorry drivers, paramedics, care home workers, police officers, bus drivers and factory workers - almost none of whom went to ‘Uni’.

I did argue that educators did a good job, many raising their skills as online educators under immense pressure. It was also good for both teachers and learners to raise their digital skills and literacy. Like Eric Mazur at Harvard,, I argued that it would be "almost unethical" to go back on those gains,

Rather than build on the advances we’ve made on Blending learning, the education system seems to be defaulting back to their old model. Why? Lecturing is easy, teaching is hard. We have a chance to make Higher Education cheaper, more accessible and efficient. We may blow it.

Tales of the absurd from Berlin

It was my first live conference for eons and the final session was a L&D roundup which was a bit of fun but two odd things happened. It was one of those bingo word events, where someone in the audience chooses a word from the screen and someone else stands up to say something for five minutes on that word. I can’t remember all of the words but they were things like ‘resilience’ and ‘curiosity’ and ‘obstacles’. When asked about ‘obstacles’ I put my hand up and said that I thought faffing around with abstract words in L&D had become an ‘obstacle’ to progress. 

BIG mistake, as I then heard the words ”Next we have (can’t remember their names) who will speak on ‘Resilience’”. To be fair the whole room laughed. If I’m resilient, it’s on one thing, trying to stop learning people rattle on about grit, resilience, or any other obscure, abstract noun, that no real people ever actually utter. We’ve only just put ‘mindfulness’ to bed, when a new one appears. I’ve had a bellyful of the stuff and lost interest when they were describing their ‘resilience meter’. It really is a thing. It just wasn’t my thing. Actually they were lovely people.

My SECOND mistake was to drift off, then coming round to hear “...so turn to the person next to you and give it a try” a phrase that makes my heart sink. I missed the first part of the sentence and on turning round, I said something and the person, who is a good friend of mine, started to object to what I said. She was repeatedly abrasive. My responses, at first polite, became angier and then I got obstreperous. Turns out it was a role-play, the key piece of information that had failed to register . A third person turned to me and said “You do know it’s a role-play?”. I apologised and all was fine. Again we had a bit of a giggle.

I suppose I’m just weary of this stuff, the idea that L&D is some sort of pop-up therapy service. Is this resilience thing much more than HR once again ticking people off for having a perceived deficit, a weakness, a flaw? Then there’s that old-school performative ‘turn to the person next to you’ BS. Are we really going back to that after Covid?