Unlearning through Cognitive Dissonance

"To learn requires facing and embracing differences .... between deeply held ideas and beliefs and new ideas".

(Kolb and Kolb 2005; p207) 

Builders demolish old buildings and clear the site before starting to
build something new.
It is a little more difficult with learning.

Builders demolish old buildings and clear the ground before building something new. It is a little more complicated with learning. First we have to persuade the learner that their previous understanding was inadequate. 

Watson and Kopnicek (1990) describe pupils in a primary science class believed that warm clothes create heat. Repeated experimentation was used to confront a class with evidence that this belief was wrong. The aim was to destabilise the pupils' naive beliefs so that new ideas could be taught.

Kuhn (1996; pp52-53) describes the same phenomenon in the history of science: “Discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly."

The idea is to set up a cognitive dissonance which will create a mental tension and motivate the pupil to resolve the differences. But the most common way of dealing with such a tension is to either deny the new evidence, or to downplay it; or to select those features of the new evidence that confirm the previous beliefs whilst ignoring contradictory evidence. For example, some students fixate on the word "theory" used to describe  Darwinian evolution to preserve their beliefs in the biblical accounts of creation.

Furthermore, as  Atherton (1999) points out, confrontation and destabilisation have a significant cost: they entail "a drop in morale which comes from temporarily diminished competence." This transforms the implied incrementalism of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development into a roller-coaster of a learning journey.

Learning has been described as a journey from one state to another:

For example, before you start learning to drive a car you have no real understanding of the skills that will be required. The first phase of learning is to find out! You clutch the steering wheel ferociously and stare at the road immediately ahead of you as you kangaroo hop forward inch by inch. You are blindingly aware of your own incompetence. Slowly you learn new skills. Now you can drive smoothly although you are still concentrating furiously on the next few metres. This is the stage of careful and conscious competence. When you change gear the shift in your attention can cause you to swerve. Hours of practice makes your actions more fluent. Now you change gear automatically. You are tuned in to the car. You look much further ahead, anticipating potential hazards. You have reached the stage of unconscious competence. You might even pass the test!

But that first stage is hard. Moving from blissful ignorance to a stark awareness of your lack of skills and knowledge can crush confidence. You may indulge in defence mechanisms to protect your own self-esteem. This is why people deny evidence and ignore new ideas.

Confronting students with evidence that their old ideas are wrong implicitly devalues their prior knowledge (Smith et al 1993). It is also likely to change the learner's identity from competent to incompetent which is likely to damage self-esteem at the very point that extra motivation is needed.

However, the trough suggests that there must be unlearning of the old mental models before the new ones can be learnt. Lee (2002) believes unlearning is a "critical element in the learning process." "Before the new ... backhand can emerge," she suggests, "the older, less effective one must wither and die." But the history of Science suggests that before scientists must have an alternative  before they reject an existing theory: "The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another" (Kuhn, 1996; p77; my italics). The class that Watson and Kopnicek (1990) observed were clearly destabilised and confused by the experimental results that refuted their schemata but it was not until the teacher offered an alternative paradigm that (some of) the students were able to learn the new ideas.

Meyer and Land (2005) see the significant moments of learning as akin to a rites of passage ceremony in some tribes. This can be "often problematic, troubling and frequently involves the humbling of the participant .... the transformation can be protracted, over considerable periods of time, and involve oscillation between states, often with temporary regression to earlier status." (p376). Those who pass through such a learning threshold have their perspectives irreversibly transformed. It is worth it but it is a difficult and destabilising journey.

How can we help a pupil to cope with such a difficult journey? Guy Claxton (2002; p19) emphasises that powerful learners are resilient. This is more than just having good self-esteem. (For a start, it is much more specific to learning; a student who has incredible social self-confidence may still lack resilience. Self-esteem can be a double edged sword; too much becomes arrogance and that seems likely to get in the way of learning. There is a surprising lack of evidence that having a high self-esteem helps people learn but perhaps this is because it is not well defined with respect to learning.)

But resilience as a concept merely begs the question: what is the best way to encourage resilience?

Carol Dweck's work on theories of intelligence suggests that students who believe that intelligence is malleable are better motivated when challenged than those who believe that intelligence is fixed. The latter are more likely to "display mastery-oriented strategies (effort escalation or strategy change) versus helpless strategies (effort withdrawal or strategy perseveration) in the face of setbacks" (Blackwell et al 2007; p247). Presumably, those learners more likely to change strategies will also be more likely to change mental models when challenged. 

Bandura  (reported in Bruning et al (1999; pp112-2) believes that self-efficacy ("a judgement of one's ability to perform a task within a specific domain") will make a student more likely to "persevere in the face of disconfirming evidence and poor performance".

We can try improving the resilience or self-efficacy of our pupils. Alternatively (or as well as) we can create a learning environment which threatens as little as possible.

In my next post I want to consider how e-learning can facilitate the process of unlearning through cognitive dissonance.

References

 Atherton J S (2009) Learning and Teaching; Resistance to Learning [On-line] UK: Available: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/resistan.htm

Accessed: 5th December 2009

Blackwell L, Trzesniewski K, and Dweck C (2007) Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention in Child Development 78: 1: 246-263

Bruning, R. H., G. J. Schraw and R. R. Ronning (1999) Cognitive psychology and instruction . Upper Saddle River, N.J., Merrill.

Claxton G, (2002) Building Learning Power, TLO Limited, Bristol 978-1-901219-43-2

Kolb A and Kolb D (2005) Learning Styles and Learning Spaces: Enhancing Experiential Learning in Higher Education  Academy of Management Learning & Education 2005, Vol. 4, No. 2, 193–212

Kuhn T, (1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 3rd edn University of Chicago Press, London

Lee, V.S. (2002). Unlearning: a critical element in the learning process. Essays on Teaching Excellence, 14(2). Fort Collins, CO: POD Network in Higher Education. avaliable at http://www.elearning.tcu.edu/onlineresources/docs/Newsletter1Unlearning.doc Accessed 5th December 2009

  

Meyer J, and Land R (2003) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines Occasional Report #4 ETL Project School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh

Meyer J and Land R (2005) Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning in Higher Education 49: 373-388

Smith JP III, diSessa A, Roschelle J (1993) Misconceptions Reconceived: A Constructivist Analysis of Knowledge in Transition in Journal of the Learning Sciences, Vol. 3;  http://ctl.sri.com/publications/downloads/MisconceptionsReconceived.pdf   Accessed 22nd November 2009 

Watson B, and Kopnicek R (1990) Teaching for Conceptual Change: Confronting Children's Experience in Phi Delta Kappan May 1990, pp. 680-684 available at http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/workshops/teachingforconcept.html (accessed 10th November 2009)