A Study On The Distributed Cognition Theory And Practice

Education reform is one of the foundations of knowledge for learning. How do people learn? For over a century scholars of different disciplines have committed to revealing the nature of learning and hope this can help change the school learning and education. Especially since 1990s, the development of learning theories in western academic community is leading to revolutionary change in ideas and practices. Learning has become the object of interdisciplinary research, and many different schools of learning theories, among which is distributed cognition theory have appeared. Research of learning from cognitive science, anthropology, cultural psychology, sociology, computer science and other disciplines related to cognitive studies, proposes a new picture of human cognition through researching natural scene of cognition. Distributed cognition theory suggests that human knowledge and cognition is not limited to individuals, but on the contrary, is distributed in the individual, other people, artifacts and the environment; cognitive activity is not only dependent on the cognitive subject, but also other cognitive individual, cognitive object, cognitive tools, cognitive and environmental factors. Distributed cognition theory as a revolution of modern learning theory is another theoretical basis and the framework of learning. Therefore, the theory of distributed cognition research and development plays an important role to change traditional education and learning.This paper is divided into five parts. The first chapter describes the background, and explained the research questions, methods, purpose and significance. The second chapter briefly reviews the theory of distributed cognition and development, so that readers can have concise understanding of the theory. Chapter 3 systematically expounds the theory of distributed cognition and the main features and makes a comparison and analysis to other related learning theories. Chapter 4 selects and analyses cases of educational practice based on distributed cognition theory from two different perspectives. The final chapter analyses the implication of distributed cognition theory to educational practice of the past from the changing role of teachers and students as well as improved use of information technology.