Talk:Knowledge component

It would be good to integrate (or reference) the following nice quote (which pre-dates PSLC and is representative of the intellectual atmosphere in which PSLC was created):

“This implies that there is a real value for an effort that takes a target domain, analyzes it into its underlying knowledge components, find examples that utilize these components, communicates these components, and monitors their learning. Unfortunately, cognitive task analysis receives relatively little institutional support. In psychology, there is little professional reward for such efforts beyond those concerned with basic reading and mathematics. The argument (which has been received from many a journal editor) is that such task analyses are studies of characteristics of specific task domains and not of psychological interest. For experts in the various target domains (e.g., mathematics), the reward is for doing advanced work in that domain, not for analyzing the cognitive structures underlying beginning competence. In education, such componential analyses have come to have a bad name based on the mistaken belief that it is not possible to identify the components of a complex skill. In part, this is a mistaken generalization from the failures of behaviorist efforts to analyze competences into a set of behavior objectives. Thus, there is a situation today where detailed cognitive analyses of various critical educational domains are largely ignored by psychologists, domain experts and educators.”

Anderson, J. R., & Schunn, C. D. (2000). Implications of the ACT-R learning theory: No magic bullets. In R. Glaser (Ed), Advances in instructional psychology: 5. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (1-34).

--Koedinger 12:48, 23 October 2009 (EDT)