Learning How to Learn, 1st Edition
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Learning how to learn
JOSEPH D. NOVAK AND D. BOB GOWIN
Department of Education
New York State College of
Agriculture and Life Sciences
Cornell University
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo
Cambridge University Press
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521265072
© Cambridge University Press 1984
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant
collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1984
23rd printing 2008
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-521-26507-2 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-31926-3 Paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2010
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that
any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices,
travel timetables and other factual information given in this work are correct at the time of first
printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information
thereafter.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Jane Kahle
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Learning about learning
What is this book all about?
The knowledge Vee
The four commonplaces of educating
Learning and instruction
Metaknowledge and metalearning
Honesty and responsibility in educating
Classroom testing of theory and teaching technology
2 Concept mapping for meaningful learning
The nature and uses of concept maps
How to introduce students to concept mapping
Educational applications of concept mapping
3 The Vee heuristic for understanding knowledge and knowledge
production
Why use a heuristic?
Introducing the Vee to students
An example from the social sciences
Scoring Vee diagrams
The Vee applied to reading material
Application of the Vee to instructional planning for laboratory or studio
work
4 New strategies for instructional planning
The uses of concept mapping
An example of curriculum development in science and technology
Uses of the Vee in instruction
5 New strategies for evaluation: concept mapping
Broadening the range of evaluation practices
Concept mapping as an evaluation tool
Scoring concept maps as related to learning theory
6 The use of the Vee for evaluation
Value and evaluation: what has educational value?
Using Vee diagrams
The Vee as a tool for evaluation in practical settings
Using the Vee to assess students’ understanding of expository materials
Thinking and doing
Theory-laden observation
7 The interview as an evaluation tool
The interview
Planning an interview
Conducting the interview
Evaluating interviews: category systems
Concept-mapping evaluation
Concept propositional analysis (CPA)
Gowin’s Vee analysis
Summary
8 Improving educational research
Theory-driven research
Research proposals
Selecting a research problem
Creating new educational events
Data gathering
Record transformation
Knowledge claims
Value claims
Conclusion
Appendixes
Appendix I: Sample concept maps
Appendix II: Sample Vee diagrams
Appendix III: Sample forms
References
Index
FOREWORD
During the past year two aspects of my life have often been juxtaposed. As
president of a national teaching association, I have served on state and
national commissions concerned with clarifying the crises in science
education and I have traveled the country discussing the identified crisis
with classroom teachers. As a science educator concerned about how
students, particularly female and minority students, learn, I have assessed
and analyzed learning among black teenagers who used the constructs
described within this book. What amazes me in retrospect is how and why
those two activities were so separate, so distinct. Surely the first concern of
the prestigious commissions and researchers, as well as the journalists who
publicized their work, was how children learn. Yet neither in the headlines
nor in the footnotes did I find references to meaningful learning – to
education. Rather, I read about training, testing, disciplining, and
employing. Yet, shouldn’t the science education of the children in my
research help them think about the consequences of using a nuclear weapon
as well as teach them how to read the operational manual and run the
machine?
As the hoopla concerning the crisis fades and the work of rejuvenating
education begins, I suggest that parents, teachers, administrators, and
researchers read this book. It succinctly and clearly presents a view, a
theory, of how children learn and, therefore, how teachers and others can
help children think about science as well as other topics. Its ideas and
techniques may be adopted for preschoolers when objects are conceptually
ordered, or for theoretical physicists when findings are conceptually
organized. In addition, the authors offer evidence that their propositions
work, that children can learn how to learn.
Two of the constructs described and discussed in the book, Concept and
Vee diagramming, augment learning by combining the theoretical with the
practical, the unfamiliar with the familiar. The third one, clinical interviews,
allows teachers and parents to assess such integration. Together they build a
firm foundation for learning and for thinking.
Perhaps times are changing. Recently I gave a workshop, mandated by a
state’s commission on education, for some rather reluctant science teachers.
They were tired of unsolicited, external edicts about longer school days,
fewer teacher aides, more student-centered laboratories, student and teacher
competency tests, and differential teacher pay. Politely they listened to my
summary of national reports; quietly they assessed texts with readability
formulas; passively they evaluated computer software. But the atmosphere
changed when I introduced concept mapping. Enthusiastically and eagerly,
they sought more information on how children learn because they could
relate the material to learning problems in their classrooms. I believe that
changes will come not from legislators or commissioners, but from
classroom teachers. Novak and Gowin relate learning with teaching in a
way designed to help classroom teachers who, in turn, will educate our
children.
Jane Butler Kahle
West Lafayette, Indiana
PREFACE
THIS BOOK was written for all those who believe that learning can be
more effective than it now is, either in schools or in any other
educational setting. The work grows out of sixty years of the authors’
combined experience and research dealing with problems of educating in
classroom and field settings.
For almost a century, students of education have suffered under the yoke
of the behavioral psychologists, who see learning as synonymous with a
change in behavior. We reject this view, and observe instead that learning
by humans leads to a change in the meaning of experience. The
fundamental question of this book is, How can we help individuals to
reflect upon their experience and to construct new, more powerful
meanings?
Furthermore, behavioral psychology, and much of currently popular
“cognitive science,” neglects the significance of feelings. Human
experience involves not only thinking and acting but also feeling, and it is
only when all three are considered together that individuals can be
empowered to enrich the meaning of their experience. All readers of this
book have surely experienced sometime during their schooling the
debilitating effect of an experience that threatened their self-image, their
sense that “I’m OK.” We have found repeatedly in our research studies that
educational practices that do not lead learners to grasp the meaning of the
learning task usually fail to give them confidence in their abilities and do
nothing to enhance their sense of mastery over events. Whereas training
programs can lead to desired behaviors such as answering math problems or
spelling correctly, educational programs should provide learners with the
basis for understanding why and how new knowledge is related to what
they already know and give them the affective assurance that they have the
capability to use this new knowledge in new contexts. Schooling is too
often an assault on students’ egos because the rote, arbitrary, verbatim
instruction so common in classrooms has few intrinsic rewards. Students
who do seek meaning in such instruction often fail. For them, school is at
best frustrating and at worst an ordeal in which they must suffer the ridicule
of teachers, classmates, and sometimes parents. We commonly blame these
victims for failing at rote learning, and categorize them as “learning
disabled” or, more denigrating, school dropouts or simply losers. The cost
of these failures, both to the individuals and to society, is enormous.
We have come to recognize that questions of learning cannot be
addressed comprehensively unless we consider simultaneously questions
dealing with three other commonplaces involved in education: teachers and
how they teach, the structure of the knowledge that shapes the curriculum
and how it is produced, and the social matrix, or governance, of the
educational setting. In any episode of educating, all four must be
considered. The strategies we present are designed to enhance educating by
helping learners to learn about human learning, about the nature of
knowledge and the construction of new knowledge, about strategies for
better curriculum design, and the possibilities for governance of education
that is liberating and empowering.
We do not intend to demean teachers. We seek instead to celebrate the
sense of achievement that results when students and teachers share
meanings and give emotional support to each other. The relationship
between students and teachers need not be an adversarial one -poor
pedagogical practices or a poor curriculum, or both, are usually to blame.
Much that is wrong with education can be changed, and most of the needed
changes are not expensive. Although programs that offer new pedagogical
strategies or create new curricula do cost money, it costs us very little to
change our minds. Are our ideas cost effective? We need only consider one
point. Teachers have been working very hard to achieve what is both
impractical and burdensome, and therefore costly: We have expected them
to cause learning in students, when of course learning must be caused by
the learner. When students learn about learning in the ways we recommend,
they take charge of their own learning. Relieved of the burden of having to
cause learning, teachers can concentrate on teaching. When the goal of
teaching becomes the achievement of shared meaning, a great deal of both
teachers’ and students’ energy is released. The strategies offered in this
book can not only help learners, they will also make better and more
powerful teachers. And therein lies much of the potential of the book, for in
the course of a career, a teacher can influence the lives of thousands.
There is, we believe, a solid theoretical foundation for the practical
strategies we put forward. This is a “how to do it” book with a solid
theoretical base and considerable empirical research behind its claims.
Throughout the book, we cite our own and others’ works, as well as the
Master’s and PhD theses of some of the more than fifty students who have
worked with us. But we are not out to convince the skeptic. Rather, our
purpose is to provide workable strategies to help students learn how to
learn. We also illustrate how these same strategies can be applied to better
organize educational programs and to benefit future research in education.
We recognize that helping students learn how to learn in the sense we
intend is a new and profoundly important endeavor. Because we have just
begun to explore the human potential for learning, our ideas will
undoubtedly be revised and expanded in the future. Our experience has
shown us, however, that the basic strategies we propose are useful and
powerful, and can only become more so as they evolve.
So we invite you, the reader, to join us in an adventure in education that
is potentially revolutionary and has no limits, for there are no limits to the
power of the human mind to construct new meanings from experience.
J. D. Novak
D. B. Gowin
Ithaca, New York
May 1984
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SIRbecause
ISAAC NEWTON said that if we achieve something of value, it is
we stand on the shoulders of giants who have come before us.
We recognize our indebtedness to the brilliant thinkers whose work has
shaped our thinking, especially John Dewey, Joseph Schwab, and David
Ausubel. But equally important have been the many graduate students and
teachers who have worked with us, offered counsel and criticism, and often
provided encouragement as well as wisdom. Among the teachers are Mary
Bente, Harris Brotman, Loy Crowder, Jay Decatur, Sarah De Franco,
Richard Eklund, Jon Glase, Kenneth Greisen, David Henderson, Roald
Hoffmann, Donald Holcomb, Jane Kahle, Doug Larison, James Maas,
Richard McNeil, James Noblitt, Walter Slatoff, and Charles Wilcox.
The students who have contributed directly to the ideas presented in this
book include Cheryl Achterberg, Mary Arnaudin, Julia Atkin, Charles Ault,
Benzy Bar Lavie, Stewart Bartow, Christopher Bogden, Michael Brody,
Regina and Bernardo Buchweitz, Peter Cardemone, Hai Hsia Chen, Kathy
Colling, John Cullen, Debra Dyason, John Feldsine, Eugenia Francese,
Patrick Galvin, Geri Gay, ’Laine Gurley, Doreet Hopp, June Kinigstein,
Susan Laird, Carlos Levandowski, Susan Melby-Robb, Leah Minemier,
Sister Mollura, Marli and Marco Moreira, Brad Nadborne, Greg Norkus,
Joseph Nussbaum, Terry Peard, Leon Pines, Richard Rowell, Judith and
James Stewart, Donna Talmage, John Volmink, Margaret Waterman, and
Linda Weaver.
Some of the research work that led to the development of the strategies
reported here was supported by funds from Shell Companies Foundation,
Hatch Act grants, and the National Science Foundation (SED-78-116762).
Art work was done by Julie Manners. We are most grateful to Sid Doan and
Alison Reissman, who typed numerous drafts of the manuscript.
1
LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ALL ABOUT?
WElearn
ARE CONCERNED with educating people and with helping people
to educate themselves. We want to help people get better control
over the meanings that shape their lives. Educating is powerfully liberating;
failures in educating are powerfully oppressive. Wherever educating occurs,
in schools and out, we think we can help people get better control over the
events of educating, and thus over that part of their lives that is being
transformed.
“Seek simplicity, but distrust it,” claimed Alfred North Whitehead. We
share this view, and desire in seeking simplicity to preserve complexity.
Sometimes simple ideas are so obvious they are obscure. We will try to
illustrate simple but potentially powerful strategies to help students learn
and to help educators organize learning material. The two principal
educational tools we will discuss are concept mapping (see Figure 1.1),
which is a way to help students and educators see the meanings of learning
materials, and knowledge Vee diagramming (see Figure 1.2), which is a way
to help students and educators penetrate the structure and meaning of the
knowledge they seek to understand. In addition, we will describe some
strategies that help students and teachers move toward what we will call
shared meanings and feelings. This task is ambitious, but our experiences
have shown that it is not unattainable. We invite you to join us in an
exploration that is still very much in progress, for we (the authors) and our
students are continuing our search for ways to become better teachers
and/or learners and to help students learn what it means to learn. This
process is symbiotic: illuminated by the teacher and student sharing ideas
and advanced by their mutual commitment to educating.
In Chapter 2, we will present a full discussion of concept mapping. We
provide both practical advice and theoretical perspective, stressing that
people think with concepts and that concept maps serve to externalize these
concepts and improve their thinking. In Chapter 3, we show that Vee
diagramming based on epistemological study of an event is a simple and
flexible way to help students and teachers grasp the structure of knowledge.
It has been our experience that once people have tried applying concept
mapping and Vee diagramming to familiar material, they see the value and
power in these strategies.
Figure 1.1 A concept map showing the major ideas presented in this book regarding acquisition and
construction of knowledge. Key concepts are shown in ovals; appropriate linking words form key
propositions.
