2-084 - Relational Learning in Real-World Contexts: Cognitive, Educational, and Socio-Cultural Factors

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Relational learning is essential to children’s general cognitive development (Alfieri et al., 2013). Previous research has typically focused on identifying mechanisms of analogies used in artificial laboratory contexts, without considering factors that might influence relational learning in real-world contexts. This symposium presents new research that examines these factors, including lower-level cognitive processes, socioemotional classroom interventions, and cultural shifts in educational practices.
The first two talks will address cognitive factors involving relational learning of STEM concepts, including concepts important for understanding pressing societal issues. Paper 1 will investigate relational learning across multiple timescales, examining preschool and elementary-age children’s memory for an animal adaptation lesson. Paper 2 will show that relational comparison of computer simulations can aid 9th graders in understanding the pertinent issue of climate change. The second two talks will address educational practices and socio-cultural factors contributing to how children learn through relational comparison. Paper 3 will investigate the roles that gender, an expressive writing intervention, and anxiety play during a classroom lesson on mathematics using relational comparison. Paper 4 will address how Japanese educators’ initial emphasis on relational learning in elementary school mathematics nearly disappears by junior high.
Taken together, this research demonstrates the importance of considering real-world influences on relational learning, from lower-level processes such as memory to higher-level considerations such as emotions and cultural practices. In the face of all these cognitive, educational, and socio-cultural factors that are present in everyday life, we see that analogies remain powerful learning tools for promoting children’s learning and cognitive development.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Emma Lazaroff, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Individual Presentations

• Differences in Children’s Long-Term Memory for Science Concepts Learned Using Structural Alignment - Presenting Author: Emma Lazaroff, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Haley Vlach, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Increasing Transfer of Complex Systems Principles from Computer Simulations with Analogical Comparison - Presenting Author: Micah B Goldwater, The University of Sydney

• Anxiety and Children’s Mathematical Learning: Testing an Expressive Writing Intervention - Presenting Author: Almaz Mesghina, University of Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Lindsey Richland, University of Chicago

• Support for Relational Learning in Japanese Math Textbooks - Presenting Author: Bethany Rittle-Johnson, Vanderbilt University