Critical reviews of literature

 
Critical Reviews of Literature

By researching the current literature, you will have a better understanding of your context of the question or problem you are considering. A literature review is a critical, in-depth evaluation and summary of previous and current research. It establishes why you are pursuing a particular research study; it validates your wanting to do so. You are evaluating the quality and findings of studies in a way that supports your own research. As such, you want to be critical of the credibility of the sources.

Create an annotated bibliography or critical review of five research articles from peer-reviewed or scholarly sources about empirical studies that relate to your topic as defined in Week Two. You will be able to use this to write a literature review for your Capstone project. Examine each article for its relevancy to your study. Each article must have been published within the past five years. Your assignment should be two to five pages in length.
The Writer?s Handbook: Writing Book Reviews.
Below is the paper from week 2

Instructional Problem
Brandon Raynes
EDU 695
Dr. Patrice Jones
2/11/13

 

 

 

 

 

Instructional problem
Instructional leaders, especially classroom teachers frequently get involved in researching and developing new ways of instruction to improve their teaching, and classroom learning. Sternberg (1998) denotes that teachers who engage in action research are likely to reflect, make connections, and better understand their classroom instruction activities. This essay addresses a major problem that commonly affects classroom instruction and the possible changes that would improve instruction and learning. Particularly, it describes different brain activities and the changes that need to be carried out to enable students with poor comprehension skills improve and perform better in the classroom. The brain activities addressed include cognitive thinking, long-term memory, short-term memory, and attention.
Foreseen with Cognitive Skills
The functioning of the human mind is enhanced by cognitive skills. They are mental skills, which include memory skills, thinking skills, and procedural skills. Sternberg (1998) provides that they can be categorized into two categories: lower-order cognitive skills; and higher-order cognitive skills. Lower-order cognitive skills include listing and recalling whereas higher-order cognitive skills include decision-making, problem solving, and self-reflecting. Lower-level cognitive skills are taught in grade K-2 while higher-order cognitive skills are taught in Grades 7-12. Those skills are inherent and they demand sophisticated instruction and learning programs. Classroom instruction is impaired when the learners lack these skills because they find problems with analysing, evaluating, problem solving, and decision-making on the subject under study.
Therefore, students with poor cognitive skills give instructional leaders problems during classroom instruction. They require special attention to enable them understand and compete effectively with their classmates, who have fast understanding abilities. The problem mainly arises when they are required to acquire a lot of information at once. Therefore, it is important for educators to understand the working of the human brain. Psychologists argue that the part of the human brain that processes the acquired information is small. It can only handle small bits of information at once. This implies that the working memory gets overwhelmed and confused when too much information is acquired at once. Thus, instructors sometimes pose a major problem for students when they teach a lot of information and require that the students? working memory assimilate it at once.
According to Sternberg (1998), during classroom instruction, students receive and interpret instructions differently. Some students have higher cognitive abilities, which enable them to understand and interpret tasks easily while others encounter problems comprehending the same instructions. This can be attributed to different brain activities that affect instruction and learning. Therefore, understanding the way the human brain acquires and processes information is helpful to instructional leaders. It enables them to develop strategies that would assist learners overcome the limitations of their working memory when learning new knowledge. Moreover, development of cognitive skills is an indispensable goal for education, and it is vital for lifelong learners.
Poor Cognitive Skills
Higher-level thinking operations interest many educators because it involves interpretation and comprehension of the text, scientific processes, and mathematical problem solving. Many scholars have written about the need for learners to perform higher-level thinking operations in every subject area, but little has been done to facilitate these learning strategies (Barbara, 2004). The teaching of these operations often fails because students experience problems due to limited cognitive skills, and inadequate instruction. Educational psychologists argue that the human brain is a sophisticated organ (Barbara, 2004). Thus, learning is a complex process that requires the integration of many cognitive skills to be successful. Students with poor attention skills find problems staying on the task for a long time, find it hard to ignore a distraction, and cannot multi-task effectively.
Poor attention skills limit the student?s other cognitive skills. This affects his/her entire academic areas. The working memory enables learners to store information for short times so that they can handle it effectively. However, learning suffers greatly when the information cannot be retained for long enough to enable proper handling to take place. This problem is common during classroom instruction whereby some students lose information almost immediately. On the other hand, long-term memory skills enable students to store information for later use. Lack of this cognitive skill leads to wrong conclusions, hence wrong answers.
Materialistic theory provides that the working memory is limited in capacity when learners are introduced to new information. It can only assimilate, retrieve, comprehend, and recall a limited amount of information (Sternberg, 1998). Therefore, learners get overwhelmed when they are required to acquire complex cognitive tasks at once. Educators need to utilize materialism and constructivism pedagogical aspects that interrelate with student?s cognitive abilities to enhance classroom instruction and learning (Kyung-Sun & Allen 2002). Technology provides important tools that can enable learners to acquire cognitive skills. Therefore, educators need to design and develop interactive multimedia learning environments to enhance the development of higher-level cognitive skills.
Effective learning occurs when it is organized around a project (Barbara, 2004). Project-based learning is very important because it enables students to engage in cognitive processes such as problem solving, decision-making, designing, and evaluating. As a result, they transform information and construct their own knowledge and interpretation. Treating learners as builders during classroom instruction encourages them to make autonomous decisions, which finally endows them with a great sense of achievement.
Why Cognitive Skills is Important
Studying cognitive skills is important because it allows educators to develop strategies that will facilitate learning in the classroom. Instruction and learning processes have undergone revolutions due to technological growth. Therefore, exploiting avenues that enhance the usage of interactive media to improve the student?s cognitive skills is important. Project-based learning using computer technology can enhance students? cognitive skills and help them to become creative in a constructive learning process. This requires educators to develop the appropriate scaffolding to support learners in comprehending new skills (Sternberg, 1998). Conventionally, scaffolding involved personal interactions between learners and teachers. However, replacing traditional scaffolding with modern interactive media technology can enhance effective learning.
Three Research Questions that address the Problem of Cognitive Skill
1. How do interactive media enhance development of the learner?s cognitive skills?
2. What is the relationship between cognition and interactive media technologies?
3. How can technology support the acquisition of cognitive skills to improve the learning process?

 
References
Barbara, K. (2004). Epistemological Understanding as a Metacognitive Process: Thinking Aloud During Online Searching. Educational Psychologist, 39(1): 43-55.
Kyung-Sun, K., & Allen, B. (2002). Cognitive and Task Influences on Web Searching Be?havior. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 53: 109-19.
Sternberg, R. (1998). Thinking and Problem Solving: Handbook of Perception and Cognition. Burlington, MA: Academic Press.

 

 

ORDER THIS ESSAY HERE NOW AND GET A DISCOUNT !!!

 

 

You can place an order similar to this with us. You are assured of an authentic custom paper delivered within the given deadline besides our 24/7 customer support all through.

 

[order_calculator]