Understanding the Development of Memory: The Role of the Classroom Context

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed work will provide information about the development of memory and academic skills in the context of the elementary school math and language arts classrooms. The project is focusing on the possibility that the kind of mnemonic language used by teachers will affect the kinds of memory strategies used by students which, in term, will influence their STEM learning. By using a combination of longitudinal and experimental methods, the PI will be able to chart the development of memory within individual children across the key first two years of elementary school and to make statements about aspects of the classroom context that serve as mediators of developmental change. The resulting dataset will be unique in the literature. This ongoing experiment represents an important first step in taking basic research outcomes into the schools, but it is essential to expand the extant knowledge base in five critical ways before large-scale interventions can be undertaken profitably. First, given that children's deliberate memory skills most likely build on their earlier competence in autobiographical memory, the project assesses their abilities at school entry to talk with their parents about past events. Second, because of the importance of the initial year of schooling, the project must gauge the impact of instruction in kindergarten on children developing skills. Third, in order to understand more precisely key aspects of teacher's conversations that are associated with children's skill acquisition, the project must expand observations to include small-group as well as whole-group instruction. Fourth, they must replicate the findings obtained to date because they had been derived from a relatively small number of classes. Fifth, they will launch a small-scale intervention study, based on longitudinal and experimental findings, in which a sample of teachers is trained in instructional techniques that are associated with skilled remembering. The students will be assessed on an array of measures of memory skill as well as STEM content learning.