Cognitivism: Theory and Practice (2 blogs)

***Blogs 2 and 3 combined***

Theory:

The cognitivist theory of reading privileges the text, as opposed to the expressivist theory which privileges the reader and the social-constructivist theory which privileges the context.  The model favors the mental capacities of a reader, and from a traditionalist perspective, views learning to read as acquiring a set of skills. 

Central to the cognitive model is schema theory, which according to Mary Crawford and Roger Chaffin, works on three main assumptions:

Mental representations are abstract, not literal copies…schemata are thought to serve as the basis of comprehension and memory…[and] finally, schemata are said to enable readers to make inferences when they are reading (p 18-21).

An objectivist perspective might stress that knowledge is “directly embedded” in texts, and that providing readers with particular schemata, or background knowledge, leads toward ‘correct’ ways to comprehend or interpret the text. 

They focus on so few schemata and because they privilege particular schemata that are supposedly needed to understand a text ‘correctly’, they paradoxically suggest that schemata can be considered as discrete, independent structures rather than as complexly interwoven networks of discourses” (p. 25).

This reminds me of something I once witnessed in a CMS reading and basic skills class.  The (international) students were reading a short story in which one of the characters wore a fancy suit.  The teacher wanted the students to make inferences about the character based on the clothing he wore.  One student from Saudi Arabia said that the character must have a job, because all people who wear suits have jobs.  The teacher told the student he was wrong – in the United States, it’s not true that all people who wear suits have jobs.  The student really tried to argue his case by explaining that in his country, all people who wear suits also have jobs, but to the teacher, the student was comprehending the text incorrectly.  He was using his own schemata to make sense of the text in a way that allowed the words and ideas to interact with his own culture and knowledge, but wasn’t getting at the meaning favored by the teacher.  It doesn’t sound so bad written out here, but my co-TA and I were both pretty surprised by how the student was treated in his own attempt to make meaning of a text. 

Practice:

To put the cognitive model into practice, a teacher might provide pre-reading exercises to activate students’ background knowledge.  One approach to the situation described above (a less progressive and culturally sensitive one), might involve some pre-reading questions which lead students to make specific types of connections between how people dress and their employment statuses.  In this case, the students would be guided toward the correct answer, which would allow them to comprehend the text in a specific pre-determined way.  Another more expressivist approach might allow students to explore their own ideas about dress, work and culture, drawing on their own schemata as it fits into their discourses and cultural backgrounds, so that they may interpret the text more subjectively. Schema seems pretty simple to activate by leading discussions about topics related to a text before reading, but McCormick certainly complicates the issue, adding many cultural implications.