STEM Learning and Learning Environments  

A Rational Analysis of How Teachers' Examples Constrain Learning and Inference

Effective Years: 2015-2017

Research has shown that both children and adults differentiate between pedagogical and non-pedagogical situations, that pedagogical inferences override factual information and impede discovery learning in children, and that pedagogical demonstrations lead to predictable patterns of inferences in undergraduates. The purpose of this CAREER project is to explore the extent to which social-pedagogical context affects learning with preschool students and undergraduates. The project will contrast learning from a knowledgeable teacher with learning from a naive teacher, to explore how different inferences result from these situations, even when the exact same examples are provided. The principal investigator proposes to use a Bayesian model of social-pedagogical learning across six laboratory-based studies to test the main hypothesis that pedagogical situations affect the inferences that learners draw from data in ways that are manipulable and predictable. For each of the six experimental studies the researcher will recruit approximately 50 preschoolers or undergraduates and randomly assign them to one of two conditions in a laboratory setting. The research will explore how inferences are drawn from a set of examples while manipulating how those examples are generated (e.g., from a knowledgeable teacher vs. at random). The goal of the project is to learn more about when, why, and how social-pedagogical context affects learning to inform a theoretical framework for understanding children and adult abilities to transmit and accumulate knowledge.