Learning complex historical knowledge at high school: The role of working memory

García-Madruga, Juan A.; Fernández-Corte, Teresa

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/5868

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Authors

García-Madruga, Juan A.

Fernández-Corte, Teresa

Abstract(s)

Learning History implies the acquisition of historical and social concepts, analyzing its mutual relationships in the explanation of historical change. The comprehension of Industrial Revolution in England requires the use of at least four main concepts: Agrarian Revolution, Demographic Increase, Technological Innovations and the need of Accumulated Capital. The understanding of these concepts and the establishment of its relationships is a quite demanding cognitive task. Therefore, the crucial role of working memory in these cognitive processes is hypothesized. This paper presents a study on the teaching and learning of this subject matter by first-grade of high school subjects. The main objective of this study was to analyze the process of understanding and acquisition of this complex subject, testing the influence of three variables: working memory capacity, prior knowledge and attitude for meaningful learning. Pretest examined subject’s knowledge of some basic concepts and their ability to describe and explain the phenomenon, as well as to summarize and comment a text and to represent their knowledge by means of a concept map. Differences in working memory capacity were controlled by means of the reading span test. Finally, subject’s attitude for meaningful learning was tested on line using an observation record. Teaching was developed during 6 classes following the usual scheme and methodology focused on reaching a gradual and overall understanding of the phenomenon. Learning results were checked in a post-test where we used the same test than before. There was a highly significant increase in all the post-test measures. Students with higher reading span learnt more and better than students with lower reading span. Therefore, working memory seems to play a crucial role when our subjects are building up historical knowledge as to Industrial Revolution. The significant correlation between knowledge in pretest and post-test showed that pretest scores are a quite good predictor of posttest ones, as all the cognitive theories held. As to the attitude, its high correlation with both knowledge measures (pre and post-test) bears out our prediction about the relevant role of this variable. Finally the analysis of subjects concept maps in pretest and posttest confirmed an improvement on subjects’ organization of knowledge, increasing its levels of depth and connectivity.