The document presents a case study analysis of a teacher, Ms. Rita, who struggled with engaging her secondary 2 students in a lesson about tsunamis due to not properly considering their cognitive development level and learning processes according to theorists like Piaget and Vygotsky. It analyzes the students' developmental level and how they learn, and proposes pedagogical strategies Ms. Rita could employ to improve her lesson planning and instruction, such as activating prior knowledge, using scaffolding techniques, and facilitating social interaction and meaning making.

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Yong Ping Aisha
Shahirah Syarifah
The Proposal
for Ms Rita.
An Ed-Psychological Case Study.

2. How we are going to present our case
Defining our Problem
Meeting the Problem
+
Analysis of the Problem
Level of Development
How Students Learn
Pedagogical Solutions proposed for Ms. Rita

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The Scenario
Miss Rita is in her 4th month of teaching after
graduating from NIE. Despite her inexperience,
she is enthusiastic in her lesson preparation
on the topic of "tsunamis". She prepared loads of
videos and pictures to show her class, and even
got the help of Mr Yeo, who gave her higher-order
level thinking questions.
However, at the end of her lesson, she found
herself being frustrated and
disappointed with her class. Her
colleagues helped by lending a listening ear.

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Meeting the Problem
We aim to…
 Help Ms Rita to understand Sec 2 students'
 level of cognitive development
 learning process
 Suggestions for Ms Rita to improve her teaching pedagogies

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ANALYSIS
LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT

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Level of Development
Secondary 2 Students’
Level of Cognitive Development
 Formal Operational Stage (aged 11 to Adult) Piaget
 Formal thinking, as opposed to concrete operational thinking
 Thinking of most high school students is still concrete
operational.
 Many students lack the concrete experiences which are
required to think at the level of abstraction.
 Teachers to realize this and provide these experiences for
the students

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Level of Development
Application to our situation
 Students are not able to relate to the concept
 Ms Rita assumed sufficient prior knowledge Piaget
 Ms Rita did not provide prerequisite knowledge
 “Come on, Ms Lim, they are sec 2 students, these should be part of
their general knowledge. You know, to my horror, some of them
don‟t even know what a tsunami is! Haven‟t they heard of the 2004
tsunami catastrophe?”

8. + Piaget
Level of Development
Piaget on Pedagogical Application
 Teachers to be mindful of students’ developmental needs
 Provide concrete experiences & help in linking
 Social interaction; a powerful tool
 Designing of learning experiences to bridge development
Without necessary guidance, students are unable to learn effectively.
Importance of engaging prior knowledge is emphasized.

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Level of Development
 assumes that learners are active in social
contexts and interactions
vygotsky
 suggests that learners first construct knowledge in a
social context and then internalize it individually

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Level of Development
 Students learn through cooperative and
collaborative learning with their peers or with
adults
 Social life is primary in learning
vygotsky
Learning takes place in Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
 the distance between a student‟s ability to perform under adult
guidance and/or peer collaboration and the student‟s ability in
solving the problem independently

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ANALYSIS
HOW STUDENTS LEARN

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How Students Learn
 ZPD differs between each student, depending on
culture, society and experience
 Importance of scaffold and guidance in interaction
vygotsky

13. + How Students Learn
Information Processing Theory

14. + How Students Learn
Information Processing Theory
1. Sensory memory
 Students more likely to pay attention to a presentation that has
interesting features
 Students more keen on lessons that activates prior knowledge
2. Working memory
 Organization and repetition
3. Long-term memory
 Learners actually „know‟ more than they can easily recall because
learners are able to store information into the long-term memory.

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How Students Learn
Marzano’s Dimensions of Learning
Marzano
1. Attitudes and Perceptions
2. Acquire and Integrate Knowledge
3. Extend and Refine Knowledge
4. Use Knowledge Meaningfully
5. Habits of Mind

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How Students Learn
„Students often need prompting to use, and to
improve on, their ability to construct meaning.‟
Marzano
 Constructing meaning: recalling prior knowledge, linking it
with new knowledge, making and verifying predictions, filling
in unstated information
 Ms Rita did not guide students in construction of meaning
but merely pinpointed their errors:
 „His answer was “Tsunamis are caused by high atmospheric
pressure!” When I gawked at him in disbelief, he quickly
changed his answer to “No, its low atmospheric pressure.”

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How Students Learn
Marzano
Use K-W-L strategy to get students to construct
meaning while watching video about tsunami
KNOW WANT LEARNED
They are powerful How do they form?
and destructive
waves.

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THE PROPOSAL

19. + The Proposal
 build upon the students' prior knowledge of tsunami and have them
share with each other
 probe the students with basic knowledge questions before
jumping into higher order questions.
 Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to present the knowledge needed
 Question - “How does a tsunami form?” This would require students
to comprehend what happens in a tsunami before they are able to
answer how tsunamis are formed.

20. + The Proposal
How does a tsunami form?
What did you see in the video/pictures?
What can you derive? Does that
explain what a tsunami is?
After watching the videos and seeing
the pictures, what is tsunami? What
was the definition given?

21. + The Proposal
 Ms Rita should get students to think on what made them give the
answers – right or wrong.
 understanding is more powerful than merely telling them that their
answer is wrong
 through questioning in class and reasoning, other students could
take note and learn from the mistakes made by their peers or even
learn from the explanation of their peers,
 falling back to Vygotsky‟s theory - learners learn through social
interaction since students are generally better able to internalize
verbal communication.

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USING THE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH IN THE CLASSROOM
Principle Example
Bring to mind relevant Review previous day's lesson.
prior learning. Have a discussion about previously covered content.
Show a logical sequence to concepts and skills.
Present information in
Go from simple to complex when presenting new
an organized manner.
material.
Provide opportunities for
Connect new information to something already known.
students to elaborate on
Look for similarities and differences among concepts.
new information.
Make up silly sentence with first letter of each word in
Show students how to
the list.
use coding when
Use mental imagery techniques such as the keyword
memorizing lists.
method.
State important principles several times in different
ways during presentation of information.
Provide for repetition of
Have items on each day's lesson from previous lesson.
learning.
Schedule periodic reviews of previously learned
concepts and skills.

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