Recently the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (PSLC) opened public access to a wiki version of their theoretical framework which had previously only been available in PDF format. Kurt VanLehn, one of the PSLC directors, and a pioneer in the field of intelligent tutoring systems, serves as editor. The framework attempts to provide a cohesive structure for understanding and furthering PSLC research. Academics seem to insist on inventing their own theories and terminology. As Kurt quotes in his PSLC Summer School Overview presentation:
“Theories are like toothbrushes, everyone has a theory, but no one wants to use someone else’s theory”
This is true within a given field such as artificial intelligence / cognitive science in which the PSLC work is based. It is even more true if you look across multiple fields such as education (teacher preparation), cognitive science, instructional design, and math education. Each of these fields have something to say about learning and teaching math, but the languages of their literatures are as different as English, Urdu, Chinese, and Russian.
I recently presented on the PSLC and this framework at a recent USU Math & Stat Journal Club meeting (see my PSLC Theoretical Framework Trailfire Trail). In our discussion it was brought up that sometimes teachers object to the type of instruction that is typical of the PSLC model tracing intelligent tutors because it is not open-ended or exploratory. My reactions to this criticism is that the tutors are not meant to replace all instruction. This type of instruction is very effective at teaching procedural (algorithmic) skills consisting of a sequence of steps. It turns out that a lot of the math what we expect middle school and high school students to learn (and demonstrate on standardized tests) is of this nature.
Posted on April 22nd, 2008 by joel
Filed under: math education
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