Recent research about student learning emphasizes learning for understanding.  This research provides insights that can strengthen the link between what researchers know about learning and what happens in the classroom.

            Jones, Palinscar, Ogle, and Carr (l987) have proposed six assumptions about how students learn.  Because these assumptions stem from significant research and have important implications for reading, including reading in science, they warrant study by educators who want to examine how learning theory aligns with and undergirds reading theory.

Assumption 1:  Learning is goal oriented.

Skilled learners have two goals:  to construct meaning and to regulate learning.  Reading is not a passive activity; t is the active construction of meaning by learners. Both inquiry and reading should involve the processes of planning, monitoring, evaluating comprehension, making inference, drawing conclusions, revising schema, extending and refining knowledge, and analyzing information based on prior knowledge.  These processes help learners construct meaning and regulate their learning.  Simply doing a “cookbook” activity or engaging in reading as merely a word-calling exercise does not help students construct meaning or regulate their learning.

Assumption 2:  Learning is the linking of new information to prior knowledge.

Students bring to a learning experience their current explanations, attitudes and abilities.  They have conceptions and misconceptions about the natural world, both of which influence their learning.  Through meaningful interactions with their environment, with their teachers, and among themselves, they reorganize, redefine, and replace their initial explanations, attitudes, and abilities (NRC, 2000).  Textbooks, however, are often set up in a “tell-and-verify” format; students are expected to read about science {and environment} and then do a cookbook experiment that verifies what they have just read.  Providing students with the opportunity to explore science and environment concepts through stimulating, hands-on activities and investigations before reading can give students the opportunity to have concepts reinforce, confirmed, or enriched as they read about them.

Assumption 3:  Learning involves organizing information.

Realizing that authors of informational science text (textbooks or trade books) organize information in a variety of organizational patterns can help learners make meaning of what whey have read.  Similarly, helping students make connections between the science activities they are doing and their science reading can aid their understanding of science concepts.

Assumption 4:  Learning is the acquisition of cognitive and metacognitive structures.

Strategic learners are aware of their learning styles and are able to select and regulate their use of learning skills and strategies. 

Assumption 5:  Learning occurs in phases, yet is nonlinear.

Costa and Garmston (l994) and Buehl (l995) believe that learning has three phases:  preactive thought, interactive thought, and reflective thought.  Preactive thought involves preparing for learning; interactive thought (or processing) occurs during learning; and reflective thought involves integrating, extending, refining, and applying what has been learned. 

Assumption 6:  Learning is influenced by cognitive development.

Not all students arrive at school with the same set of knowledge and skills.  Effective readers may have their own reading strategies; other readers may benefit from learning additional reading strategies; and poor readers may not be aware that there are strategies to help with understanding.

Barton, Mary Lee, Jordan, Deborah (2001).  Teaching Reading in Science.  Aurora, CO