James G Greeno
Biographic Data
| ID | 141367 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James G Greeno |
| GIVEN NAMES | James G |
| FAMILY NAME | Greeno |
| SIGNATURE | GREENO J G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 287 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1965 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Theoretical and Practical Advances Through Research on Learning
Concepts in Activities and Discourses
The articles in this special issue make valuable contributions toward a scientific understanding of concepts that is broader than the traditional view that has focused on categorizing by individuals. I propose considering concepts for categorization as a special case of concepts. At their clearest, they can be referred to as formal concepts, or concepts used formally,which have explicit definitions and are used in formal deductive reasoning and a…
Constructing competence
Commentary on the Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) excludes the view of students learning the social practices of mathematical reasoning and the use of mathematics in understanding and modeling situations. The authors argue that by filtering research to only “statistically significant individual effects, significant positive mean effect size, or equivalent consistent positive findings,” the report misrepre…
Conceptual Growth in Children and in the Learning Sciences
In Giyoo Hatano’s passing, we have lost an esteemed colleague and a treasured friend. Among his many contributions to our field, our work, and our lives, we honor and build on his and his colleagues’ work on conceptual growth. We liken the view developed by Hatano and his colleagues to Toulmin’s evolutionary scheme for understanding conceptual growth in intellectual disciplines, and we briefly sketch recent studies and discussions in which our me…
Perspectives on Learning, Thinking, and Activity
We continue the discussion of cognitive and situative perspectives by identifying several important points on which we judge the perspectives to be in agreement: (a) Individual and social perspectives on activity are both fundamentally important in education; (b) Learning can be general, and abstractions can be efficacious, but they sometimes aren't; (c) Situative and cognitive approaches can cast light on different aspects of the educational pro…
The situativity of knowing, learning, and research
The term intact activity systems is analogous to intact organisms.The components of an intact activity system include individual cognitive agents, just as the components of an intact organism include the parts of its nervous system.We argue that functional analyses of intact activity systems are needed to frame the questions of research about individual cognition and behavior, so the results of that research can explain how those mechanisms suppo…
Theories and Practices of Thinking and Learning to Think
One of the persisting aims in mathematics education is that students become more able in mathematical thinking. This article discusses relations between research about processes of learning and thinking, and educational practices that attempt to achieve that aim. We discuss three research perspectives that characterize thinking and learning to think differently. The associationist/behaviorist perspective views learning to think as acquisition of …
On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions
Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1996) contested four propositions that they incorrectly called “claims of situated learning.” This response argues that the important differences between situative and cognitive perspectives are not addressed by discussion of these imputed claims. Instead, there are significant differences in the framing assumptions of the two perspectives. I clarify these differences by inferring questions to which Anderson et al.'s d…
Gibson's affordances
Gibson developed an interactionist view of perception and action that focused on information that is available in the environment. He thereby rejected the still-prevalent framing assumption of factoring external-physical and internal-mental processes. The interactionist alternative, which focuses on processes of agent-situation interactions, is taken in ecological psychology as well as in recent research on conversational communication, research …
A perspective on thinking
A perspective on thinking
The cognitive skill of teaching.
Understanding and solving word arithmetic problems.
Response to "The hegemony of natural scientific conceptions of learning."
Response to "The hegemony of natural scientific conceptions of learning."
Obituary
Psychology of learning, 1960-1980
Psychology of learning, 1960–1980
By 1960 there was a strongly developed theory of learning in which learning was considered as change of behavior. Neobehaviorist theories and then formal stochastic models analyzed processes in which probabilities of responses are altered. In the 1960's we began to analyze learning as discrete change between states of knowledge or stages of processing that differ in qualitative characteristics; stochastic models were used to represent these state…
Evaluation of Statistical Hypotheses Using Information Transmitted
The main argument of this paper is that an evaluation of the overall explanatory power of a theory is less problematic and more relevant as an assessment of the state of knowledge than evaluation of statistical explanations of single occurrences in terms of likelihoods that are assigned to explananda
Associative Effects vs Differentiation
The addition of distinctive colors to verbal stimuli can facilitate learning. The question is whether this is due to color serving as an additional associative cue or because color aids in differentiation in some other way. Saltz and Wickey (1967) failed to find positive correlations between the order of difficulty of items in a list with colors as stimuli and other lists where the colors were combined with verbal components. An example is constr…
Reply to Saltz and Ager
Some Decision Factors in Scientific Investigation
An empirical law or evidence which supports a theory tends to have the greatest scientific value when it seemed improbable before it was investigated. Evidence which falsifies a theory tends to have the greatest value when it seemed probable that the investigation would confirm the theory. A scientist who wishes to optimize his contribution to knowledge probably will investigate most frequently hypotheses which seem neither very probable nor very…
Verbal Fluency, Free Recall, and Paired-Associate Learning Speed
This study investigated the relation between performance in paired-associate learning and other verbal skills (verbal fluency to word and nonsense stimuli, recall of a word list). Ss learned two lists of word-CVC pairs. Significant positive correlations were found between fluency measures and learning of both lists. Recall scores were similarly correlated with second-list, but not first-list, learning
The situativity of knowing, learning, and research
The term intact activity systems is analogous to intact organisms.The components of an intact activity system include individual cognitive agents, just as the components of an intact organism include the parts of its nervous system.We argue that functional analyses of intact activity systems are needed to frame the questions of research about individual cognition and behavior, so the results of that research can explain how those mechanisms suppo…
Gibson's affordances
Gibson developed an interactionist view of perception and action that focused on information that is available in the environment. He thereby rejected the still-prevalent framing assumption of factoring external-physical and internal-mental processes. The interactionist alternative, which focuses on processes of agent-situation interactions, is taken in ecological psychology as well as in recent research on conversational communication, research …
On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions
Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1996) contested four propositions that they incorrectly called “claims of situated learning.” This response argues that the important differences between situative and cognitive perspectives are not addressed by discussion of these imputed claims. Instead, there are significant differences in the framing assumptions of the two perspectives. I clarify these differences by inferring questions to which Anderson et al.'s d…
Perspectives on Learning, Thinking, and Activity
We continue the discussion of cognitive and situative perspectives by identifying several important points on which we judge the perspectives to be in agreement: (a) Individual and social perspectives on activity are both fundamentally important in education; (b) Learning can be general, and abstractions can be efficacious, but they sometimes aren't; (c) Situative and cognitive approaches can cast light on different aspects of the educational pro…
Evaluation of Statistical Hypotheses Using Information Transmitted
The main argument of this paper is that an evaluation of the overall explanatory power of a theory is less problematic and more relevant as an assessment of the state of knowledge than evaluation of statistical explanations of single occurrences in terms of likelihoods that are assigned to explananda
Commentary on the Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) excludes the view of students learning the social practices of mathematical reasoning and the use of mathematics in understanding and modeling situations. The authors argue that by filtering research to only “statistically significant individual effects, significant positive mean effect size, or equivalent consistent positive findings,” the report misrepre…
Theories and Practices of Thinking and Learning to Think
One of the persisting aims in mathematics education is that students become more able in mathematical thinking. This article discusses relations between research about processes of learning and thinking, and educational practices that attempt to achieve that aim. We discuss three research perspectives that characterize thinking and learning to think differently. The associationist/behaviorist perspective views learning to think as acquisition of …
Psychology of learning, 1960–1980
By 1960 there was a strongly developed theory of learning in which learning was considered as change of behavior. Neobehaviorist theories and then formal stochastic models analyzed processes in which probabilities of responses are altered. In the 1960's we began to analyze learning as discrete change between states of knowledge or stages of processing that differ in qualitative characteristics; stochastic models were used to represent these state…
Psychology of learning, 1960-1980
Some Decision Factors in Scientific Investigation
An empirical law or evidence which supports a theory tends to have the greatest scientific value when it seemed improbable before it was investigated. Evidence which falsifies a theory tends to have the greatest value when it seemed probable that the investigation would confirm the theory. A scientist who wishes to optimize his contribution to knowledge probably will investigate most frequently hypotheses which seem neither very probable nor very…
Verbal Fluency, Free Recall, and Paired-Associate Learning Speed
This study investigated the relation between performance in paired-associate learning and other verbal skills (verbal fluency to word and nonsense stimuli, recall of a word list). Ss learned two lists of word-CVC pairs. Significant positive correlations were found between fluency measures and learning of both lists. Recall scores were similarly correlated with second-list, but not first-list, learning
Some Decision Factors in Scientific Investigation
An empirical law or evidence which supports a theory tends to have the greatest scientific value when it seemed improbable before it was investigated. Evidence which falsifies a theory tends to have the greatest value when it seemed probable that the investigation would confirm the theory. A scientist who wishes to optimize his contribution to knowledge probably will investigate most frequently hypotheses which seem neither very probable nor very…
Associative Effects vs Differentiation
The addition of distinctive colors to verbal stimuli can facilitate learning. The question is whether this is due to color serving as an additional associative cue or because color aids in differentiation in some other way. Saltz and Wickey (1967) failed to find positive correlations between the order of difficulty of items in a list with colors as stimuli and other lists where the colors were combined with verbal components. An example is constr…
Reply to Saltz and Ager
Evaluation of Statistical Hypotheses Using Information Transmitted
The main argument of this paper is that an evaluation of the overall explanatory power of a theory is less problematic and more relevant as an assessment of the state of knowledge than evaluation of statistical explanations of single occurrences in terms of likelihoods that are assigned to explananda
Psychology of learning, 1960-1980
Psychology of learning, 1960–1980
By 1960 there was a strongly developed theory of learning in which learning was considered as change of behavior. Neobehaviorist theories and then formal stochastic models analyzed processes in which probabilities of responses are altered. In the 1960's we began to analyze learning as discrete change between states of knowledge or stages of processing that differ in qualitative characteristics; stochastic models were used to represent these state…
Response to "The hegemony of natural scientific conceptions of learning."
Response to "The hegemony of natural scientific conceptions of learning."
Obituary
Understanding and solving word arithmetic problems.
The cognitive skill of teaching.
A perspective on thinking
A perspective on thinking
Gibson's affordances
Gibson developed an interactionist view of perception and action that focused on information that is available in the environment. He thereby rejected the still-prevalent framing assumption of factoring external-physical and internal-mental processes. The interactionist alternative, which focuses on processes of agent-situation interactions, is taken in ecological psychology as well as in recent research on conversational communication, research …
Theories and Practices of Thinking and Learning to Think
One of the persisting aims in mathematics education is that students become more able in mathematical thinking. This article discusses relations between research about processes of learning and thinking, and educational practices that attempt to achieve that aim. We discuss three research perspectives that characterize thinking and learning to think differently. The associationist/behaviorist perspective views learning to think as acquisition of …
On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions
Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1996) contested four propositions that they incorrectly called “claims of situated learning.” This response argues that the important differences between situative and cognitive perspectives are not addressed by discussion of these imputed claims. Instead, there are significant differences in the framing assumptions of the two perspectives. I clarify these differences by inferring questions to which Anderson et al.'s d…
The situativity of knowing, learning, and research
The term intact activity systems is analogous to intact organisms.The components of an intact activity system include individual cognitive agents, just as the components of an intact organism include the parts of its nervous system.We argue that functional analyses of intact activity systems are needed to frame the questions of research about individual cognition and behavior, so the results of that research can explain how those mechanisms suppo…
Perspectives on Learning, Thinking, and Activity
We continue the discussion of cognitive and situative perspectives by identifying several important points on which we judge the perspectives to be in agreement: (a) Individual and social perspectives on activity are both fundamentally important in education; (b) Learning can be general, and abstractions can be efficacious, but they sometimes aren't; (c) Situative and cognitive approaches can cast light on different aspects of the educational pro…
Conceptual Growth in Children and in the Learning Sciences
In Giyoo Hatano’s passing, we have lost an esteemed colleague and a treasured friend. Among his many contributions to our field, our work, and our lives, we honor and build on his and his colleagues’ work on conceptual growth. We liken the view developed by Hatano and his colleagues to Toulmin’s evolutionary scheme for understanding conceptual growth in intellectual disciplines, and we briefly sketch recent studies and discussions in which our me…
Commentary on the Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) excludes the view of students learning the social practices of mathematical reasoning and the use of mathematics in understanding and modeling situations. The authors argue that by filtering research to only “statistically significant individual effects, significant positive mean effect size, or equivalent consistent positive findings,” the report misrepre…
Constructing competence
Theoretical and Practical Advances Through Research on Learning
Concepts in Activities and Discourses
The articles in this special issue make valuable contributions toward a scientific understanding of concepts that is broader than the traditional view that has focused on categorizing by individuals. I propose considering concepts for categorization as a special case of concepts. At their clearest, they can be referred to as formal concepts, or concepts used formally,which have explicit definitions and are used in formal deductive reasoning and a…
Psychology (19 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods (8 works) · Mathematics education (7 works) · Cognition (5 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Education and Critical Thinking Development (4 works)