What Is Meant by Cognitive Structures? How Does It Influence Teaching –Learning of Psychology?

Abstract

Cognitive structures are the basic mental pattern people use to process any information. Metaphorical thinking being one of the mental tool present innate in human beings which when practiced consciously could help developing cognitive structures in turn help to process information. According to Jean Piaget and William Perry learning is facilitated by the mechanism comprising symbolic representations of the mental processes that is actively constructed by the learners based on the existing cognitive structures. Therefore, teaching/learning process should focus on the development of existing intellectual framework. Unlike the behaviourist approach, knowledge is acquired by the learner through intentional mental representations derived from past learning experiences. Teacher’s role is to facilitate the learners with resources to build new knowledge to old and to modify the old to accommodate the new. The present paper focuses on how cognitive structures help in processing information by implementing metaphorical thinking statements in teaching/leaning process.