Newsletter 004: Conceptual Models and Learning

In the previous newsletter, I discussed schema and working memory. Schema are small parts of knowledge and skills; working memory is a part of your brain that processes information.

Here is Belcher’s Model for Learning (yes, I’m continuing to send this image in every email — returning to the same image with more information is how we create strong memories!)

Belcher’s “Model for Learning” [Image by Belcher]

Ideas

One major theory of learning is known as Constructivism. This theory argues that learning happens as we build — or construct! — knowledge and skills, taking small parts of the knowledge and skills and attaching the small parts into bigger and bigger parts.

As a reminder, the small parts of knowledge and skills are known as schema; a schema can be defined as the “basic unit of knowledge or skill that relates to any aspect of the world.”

An individual schema is a tiny slice in a part of knowledge and skills. Even if you are a novice at a certain topic, most of what you know is many individual schema combined into larger schema. By the time you are an expert in a topic, you have an incredibly high number and densely-connected network of schema stored in your long-term memory.

Sets of schema that combine are given a new name; this name is conceptual model. A conceptual model can…