Procedure of topic

◎Cognitivism
What is cognitivism? Briefly speaking, cognitivism means through interaction and self cognition development to acquire knowledge, and concern what learner know and how to use efficiency way to processing information.

◎Information processing theory
Since behaviorism had weakness, and computer was invented, so another theory that stimulate computer was created, it’s cognitivism. First we want to talk is information processing theory, here’s the flow of information processing

Information processing theory

◎Piaget and Vygotsky
Piaget's cognitive development theory mentioned some points. First is schema, he think since that time when people were born, they acquire knowledge by using our basic behavior model and reacting with environment, and he call it schema, when people encounter things, they use schema to deal with things, when children learn language, they can easily distinguish the word’s shape and meaning is also because they have schema about the word. Second is assimilation, accommodation and equilibration, if people get well with assimilation and accommodation, equilibration happens; but if people don’t get well with them, then disequilibrium happens. Piaget through experiment arranged stages of cognitive development to improve from child to teenagers, how cognitive development change. From Piaget’s theory, we can see Piaget proved that child mind development is active, he also proved that every children through the same cognitive development stages and he points out the change in quality and quantity, and every children’s cognitive development speed is not all the same. Vygotsky’s idea is a little different with Piaget, Piaget thought people change because of inherent change, and ignored the importance of social reaction, but Vygotsky thought people start to react with society when they were born, so social culture not only effect adult, children as well, Vygotsky’s cognitive development is from outside to inside, and he thought egocentric speech is very important, because it's the way they can relieve emotion but help them thinking, it's also different from Piaget. From Vygotsky's idea we mentioned above, he inferred zone of proximal is important, he thought teacher should give children proper help that children can achieve best performance.

◎Bruner and Ausubel
In cognitivism, another two famous theorists are Bruner, who invented discovery learning theory. And Ausubel, who invented meaningful learning theory. There are two points in Bruner's theory, one is discovery learning theory, another is cognitive representation theory. Although he invented representation theory, but he didn’t stand that teach should broke into age or grade, because people have individual difference, so teacher should teach by individual students’ mind development, teach them how to think and get notions from activities, then process to their own experience, it’s the  main point of discovery learning theory.

Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory, just like discovery learning theory, all belongs to cognitive structure theory, but there are some differences between them, Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory demonstrate learning can only created by students who have enough prior knowledge, it’s the main idea of meaningful learning, Ausubel also divided cognitive structure into derivative and correlate subsumption, superordinate and combinatorial learning.

◎Application in Instruction
How do we apply cognitivism into instruction? From information we learned above, we clearly understand how to apply cognitivism into instruction. First, we should know what is students' prior knowledge, because it will decide what instructional material should design, and make knowledge meaningful. Second, we should use the concept of information processing theory to arrange the easiest method and help student memorize, we also need to organize new information and relate to existing memory, it's also make student easy to memorize information. Third, we should let student active research, give proper help when students have question, this idea fits discovery learning theory and zone of approximate development.

After all of this. can you retrieve and arrange what you just learn? Maybe you can try to write it down and compare with our arrangement.

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	Explain
What is Cognitivism	Through interaction and self cognition development to acquire knowledge, and concern what learner know and how to use efficiency way to processing information.
Theorist	Piaget(Schema, Assimilation, Accommodation, Equilibration and Disequilibrium, Cognitive development stages), Vygotsky(Egocentric speech, Zone of aproximal development), Brunar(Discovery learning, Cognitive representation), Ausubel (Meaningful learning, Prior knowledge, Cognitive Structure)
Apply in instruction	Know what is students' prior knowledge, and make knowledge meaningful. Use the concept of information processing theory to arrange learning material and help student memorize, we also need to organize new information and relate to existing memory. Let student active research, give proper help when students have question.

Arrangement about cognitivism

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