This document discusses complex cognitive processes such as conceptual understanding, thinking, and problem solving. It describes how concepts are formed and ways to prompt concept formation, including learning features, defining concepts with examples, building concept maps, and hypothesis testing. It also discusses different types of thinking like reasoning, critical thinking, decision making, and creative thinking. Strategies are provided to encourage critical and creative thinking in students.

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2. Complex
cognitive
processes
Conceptual
understanding Thinking Problem Transfer
solving

3. Conceptual Understanding
 help students understand the main
concepts in a subject rather than
just memorizing isolated facts

4. Concepts are….
 categories that group objects, events and
characteristics on the basis of common
properties (Zacks & Tversky, 2001).
 elements of cognition that help to simplify
and summarize information (Hahn &
Ramscar, 2001; Klausmeier, 2004; Medin,
2000).

5.  Concepts helps to generalize objects in meaningful
order.
 Concepts are formed through direct experiences with
objects or through symbols (e.g., words, formulas,
graphs and pictures).
 Concepts helps to improve the efficiency of memory,
communication and use of time.
 Some concepts are relatively simple, clear and
concrete, while others are more complex, fuzzy and
abstract.

6. Ways to Prompt Concept Formation
Learning the features of concepts
 Defining elements or dimensions that make
it different from another concept
 E.g., the feature “three-sided” is important
of the concept of “triangle”, while size and
colors are not.

7. Defining concepts and providing
examples
 4 steps in Rule-Example Strategy
1) define the concepts
2) clarify terms in the definition
3) give examples to illustrate key features
4) provide additional examples

8. Building concept maps
 It is a visual presentation of a concept’s
connections and hierarchical organization.
 The concept map can be created with the
assistance of students, or let them try to
develop individually or in small groups.

9.  Example of a concept map for dinosaur:
Reptiles
Characteristics
- usually lay eggs
- vertebrate
- breathes by lungs
- …..
Non-Dinosaur Reptilian
- snakes
- lizards
- crocodiles
- turtles
- …….
Dinosaur
Attributes
- extinct
- reptilian
- …..
Types
- triceratops
- brontosaur
- stegosaur
- …..

10.  Hypothesis testing
 Specific assumptions/predictions that can be
tested to determine whether the theory holds
up.
 This is done to come up with a rule about why
some objects fall within a concept and others
do not.
 Examples:

11.  Prototype Matching
 A process to decide whether an item is a member
of a category by comparing it with the most typical
items of the category (Rosch, 1973).
 The more similar the item is to the prototype, the
more likely it is said belongs to the category (e.g.:
sparrow is more typical birds than ostriches).
 However, ones may vary greatly but still have
qualities that make it a member of that category.

12. Thinking
 involves manipulating and transforming
information in memory.
 Individuals can think about concrete or
abstract objects; think about the past and
the future; think about reality and fantasy.

13. Types of Thinking
 Reasoning
logical thinking that uses induction or
deduction to reach a conclusion.
Inductive Reasoning deductive Reasoning

14. Inductive Reasoning
 involves reasoning from the specific to the
general.
 Example: an empirical research of studying a
sample of participants (specific) in order to
draw conclusions about the population
(general) from which the sample is drawn.
 Inductive conclusion may be very likely, but
there always is a chance that it is wrong.

15. Deductive Reasoning
 involves reasoning from the general to the
specific.
 Deductive reasoning is always certain in the
sense that if the initial rules or assumptions
are true, then the conclusion will follow directly
as a matter of logic.
 Example:
All philosophers are human. Socrates is a
philosopher. So, he is a human. (true)
All philosophers are human. Socrates is a
human. So, he is a philosopher. (wrong)

16.  Critical Thinking
 involves thinking reflectively, productively
and evaluating the evidence.
 However, most schools emphasize on
getting students to give single correct answer
in an imitative way rather than encouraging
them to expand their thinking by coming up
with new ideas and rethinking earlier
conclusions.

17. Guidelines to encourage
critical thinking:
 Be a guide in helping students to construct
their own thinking
 Use thinking-based questioning and
teaching
 Provide positive role models for thinking

18.  Decision Making
 involves thinking in which individuals
evaluate alternatives and make choices
among them.
 When we make decisions, the rules are
seldom clear-cut and we may have limited
knowledge about the consequences of the
decisions.
 Normally, people choose the outcome with
the highest expected value when making
decisions (Smyth et al., 1994).

19. Common flaws in decision making :
 Confirmation bias
 the tendency to search for and use
information that supports our ideas rather
than refutes them.
 Belief perseverance
 It is the tendency to hold on to a belief in
the face of contradictory evidence.

20.  Overconfidence bias
 the tendency to have more confidence in
judgments and decisions than we should
base on probability or past experience.
 Hindsight bias
 the tendency to falsely report (after the fact)
that we accurately predicted an event.

21.  Availability heuristic
 a prediction about the probability of an event
based on the frequency of the event’s
past occurrence.
 Representativeness heuristic
 we sometimes make faulty decisions
based on how well something matches a
prototype rather than its relevance to the
particular situation.

22.  Creative Thinking
 the ability to think about something in novel and
unusual ways and come up with unique solutions.
 Convergent thinking:
-produces one correct answer
-characteristic of the kind of thinking required on
conventional intelligence tests.
 Divergent thinking:
-produces many answers to the same question
-more to characteristic of creativity.

23. Strategies to encourage
creative thinking
 Brainstorming
 a technique in which people play off each other’s
ideas and say practically whatever comes to mind
that seems relevant to a particular issue
 Provide environments that stimulate creativity
 encourage independent work and make resources
readily available.
 provide exercises and activities that stimulate
students to find insightful solutions.
 organize field trips to locations where creativity is
valued.

24.  Don’t over control students
 Students’ creativity is diminished when
teachers hold over expectations for their
performance and expect perfection from
them.
 In contrast, let students select their
interests and support their inclinations will
maintain their natural curiosity.

25.  Encourage intrinsic motivation
 Intrinsic motivation is the satisfaction
generated by the work itself.
 Competition for prizes & formal evaluations will
undermine intrinsic motivation & creativity.
 Foster flexible and playful thinking
 Having fun helps to disarm the inner censor that
can condemn a student’s ideas as being off-base.