Schema Development

A schema is a concept typically associated with cognitive psychology. Arguably it has some roots in (or at least is similar to) the work of Piaget. Piaget (1971) makes a distinction between two types of knowledge development: assimilation and accommodation. He describes the process of assimilation as that of gradually integrating new knowledge into a learner’s existing knowledge base. In general, assimilation involves making linkages between old knowledge and new knowledge. Multiple exposur...

 Schemata

Not only does background knowledge grow in the brains of our students through their experiences, but the vocabulary words that are stored as a result of such experiences provide avenues to comprehend the curriculum from the text, as well as lecture and discussion. We can look at the work of Piaget (1970), who concluded that we organize information in our brains in the form of a schema, a representation of concepts, ideas, and actions that are related. Schemata (the plural of schema) are form...

 Conceptual Schemes are Never Abandoned

A conceptual scheme is never discarded merely because of a few stubborn facts with which it cannot be reconciled; a conceptual scheme is either modified or replaced by a better one, never abandoned with nothing left to take its place.