Knowledge processes

Your experience of intelligence
  • Tell a story (a story using pseudonyms, or a hypothetical story based on your experience) of someone who does well in school in the traditional sense, but who is not intelligent in some other respects. What are the biases of conventional understandings of school intelligence? What can we do about this?

How people understand intelligence
  • Interview a family member. Get him or her to list the things he or she consider to be evidence of intelligence, or an intelligent person. Then analyse this list. To what extent could these items be attributed to nature or nurture? What are the physiological affordances in all able-bodied humans? How is intelligence socially acquired?

Brain basics (1)
  • Develop a class wiki or glossary of key terminology describing brain structure and functioning. Each person could contribute several concepts.

Brain basics (2)
  • Using concepts from the wiki or glossary, write in summary form a theory of the role of the brain in learning.

The behaviourist learning mechanism

  • For Pavlov’s dogs, how did learning occur? What are the similarities and differences between animal and human learning?

Connecting culture and language with learning
  • How is Yolngu learning different from learning in English-speaking environments? Why use local understandings of learning in the Yolngu school? What lessons could be learnt beyond this school?
  • How can our language have us mean different things? Interview a bilingual. (Or, if you are bilingual, interview a bilingual with a different second language). What are some of the unique meanings conveyed in the bilingual’s second language by certain words and expressions? What are the implications for education?

Testing the tests

  • Critically examine Test 6 of the US Army Alpha examination presented in the ‘Yerkes’ Intelligence Test’ box in this chapter. How well did you do within the three minutes allowed for the test? These are Yerkes’ grading instructions:
      Item 4.—Any spoon at any angle in right hand receives credit. Left hand, or unattached spoon, no credit.
      Item 5.—Chimney must be in the right place. No credit for smoke.
      Item 8.—Plain square, cross etc., in proper location for stamp, receives credit.
      Item 10.—Missing part is the rivet. Line of the ‘ear’ may be omitted.
      Item 15.—Ball should be in the hand of the man. If represented in hand of woman, or in motion, no credit.
      Item 16.—Single line indicating net receives credit.
      Item 18.—Any representation intended for horn, pointing in any direction, receives credit.
      Item 19.—Hand and powder puff must be put on proper side.
      Item 20.—Diamond is the missing part. Failure to complete hilt on sword is not an error.

    Imagine some ways in which you could get the ‘wrong’ to answers that were in other senses right. Remember, this test was designed for people who were not literate, many of whom were new immigrants to the United States. What language, cultural and educational assumptions are there in the test? What kinds of examinees are likely to fare better or worse in this testing environment? To what extent do the answers to the questions depend on knowledge rather than intelligence? Can knowledge and intelligence be meaningfully separated?
  • Intelligence: nature versus nurture? Debate the alternative points of view. What are the implications of each view for education?

Theory to practice (1)

  • Take a learning theorist other than the ones mentioned in this chapter. Locate him or her in terms of the three understandings of the nature of learning introduced in this chapter. (His or her position may be a hybrid of more than one of these approaches.) Explain your reasons for locating this learning theory in the way you do.

Theory to practice (2)

  • What are the practical implications of the learning theory you have been examining in the previous activity for the practice of teaching and learning? Give some examples of the kinds of things a teacher may do.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton. p. 210.

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