Cognitive acceleration

Cognitive acceleration or CA is an approach to teaching designed to develop students' thinking ability, developed by Michael Shayer and Philip Adey from 1981 at King's College London . The approach builds on work by Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky and takes a constructivist approach. Cognitive acceleration or CA is an approach to teaching designed to develop students' thinking ability, developed by Michael Shayer and Philip Adey from 1981 at King's College London . The approach builds on work by Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky and takes a constructivist approach. From Piaget, CA recognises there are stages in intellectual development. At school the most important transition is from concrete thinking - which deals with facts and descriptions, to abstract thinking - any thinking which involves a mental process. From Vygotsky, CA takes the concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): the difference between what a learner can do with and without help. The CA method requires a mediator to ask questions that allow 'guided self-discovery'. Mediation is effective between peers and promotes the idea of pupils working in groups to solve a problem. The first teaching materials, written for Years 7 and 8 (ages 11–13) science lessons, were called Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE). After three years the results of intervening in science teaching in a dozen classes were compared with control classes which were taught in the usual way. The CASE learners not only scored about one grade better in their GCSE science, but Maths and English GCSE grades were improved by about the same amount. It is rare to see such ‘transfer’ of learning to other subjects in educational research. Using the CA approach in teaching primary and secondary maths, known as CAME, produced similar results. Later development extended the range of lesson activities in primary science from the Foundation Stage through to year 5. Currently under development are activities for English at Key Stage 3. Several articles highlighting the effectiveness of CASE and CAME have appeared in the Times Educational Supplement (TES). Let's Think Forum (LT) produces CA packages for core subjects in primary and secondary education. CA acknowledges a set of subskills which underpin abstract thinking and shares with constructivism the view that concepts cannot be learned in the same way as facts and descriptions. Learners need to 'construct' meaning for themselves. Lessons centre on a challenge which can only be mastered by using an abstract idea. Early CASE lessons focus on: classification, scale, ratio, proportion, probability, variables, fair testing.