Cognitive Science of Student Learning

To help students learn, we must understand how they think and how to map their prior knowledge and mental structures onto new ideas. Cognitive Science of Student Learning is an introductory textbook on student thinking and its implications for instruction. The book is organized around a set of fundamental cognitive principles: the limitations of working memory; the structure of knowledge; the role of analogy in thinking, learning, and problem-solving; and the domain-specificity of expertise, including reading, writing, math, and science. Detailed coverage of metacognition, motivation, reasoning, and other overarching constructs provides educators with firm applications of cognitive science and psychology for their students’ education, self-regulation, and development.