“An active organization of past reactions, or past experience”
It is basically referring to background knowledge or information. And each individual certainly have different background information. One’s schema may be more elaborated than the other. For example, a firefighter has a more elaborated schema on fire safety and regulation than someone who rarely or never deals with it. Without existing schemas, one may find it difficult to grasp new information on a topic.
Nonetheless, schema can expand through accretation, tuning and restructuring. This is done by taking in new information; modify existing schema to fit in new information and abandoning old irrelevant schema for a much more relevant one.
Application of schema theory on ‘fire safety and prevention for kids’.
I remembered when I was a kid; other than looking forward to receiving presents, I was always excited to blow out the candles. I was so fascinated by the yellow glowing flames that I tried to touch it with my bare hands - fortunately, my parents stopped me. Then again, I kept doing it year after year after year, until I was old enough (prolly 7 years old) to realize that it was dangerous – when I finally had a taste of it - and from then on, I became fearful. Once fear is incorporated in one self, it’s hard to subdue it.
This children literature book is based on a dragon named Sparks who, strangely as it sound, is afraid of fire. In order to overcome his fear of fire, he joined the fire department and went through all the training. In the end, it paid off as he conquered his fear and became a firefighter himself. (Hatfield, 2009)
The reason why I chose this photo is because I believed that children work better with meaningful visual images as we link them with words and expression. According to Jerome Bruner, educational psychologist of New York University , he carried out cites studies that showed people only remembered 10% of what they hear, 30% of what they read, but 80% of what they see or do. Thus, visual images aid the improvement of the memory of an individual. (Improve memory: Helping your children develop memory skills)
Although we are highly aware the importance of fire safety, putting fear into their system isn’t always a great idea. - They might end up freaked out. Different children learn differently. I think raising the awareness on what to do in case of a fire in a non-threatening way help prepare the children better. Hence, I believe the schema chosen is highly congruous.
Works Cited
Works Cited
Bruner, J. A brave new (visual) world . In P. Paul Martin Lester, Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication. Fullerton California.
Hatfield, J. (2009, october 6). Fire Prevention Week: Storybooks with Fire Safety Tips. Retrieved september 6, 2010, from stop, drop and blog.: http://stopdropandblog.com/2009/10/06/fire-prevention-week-storybooks-with-fire-safety-tips/
Improve memory: Helping your children develop memory skills. (n.d.). Retrieved september 6, 2010, from Brainy-Child: http://www.brainy-child.com/articles/improving-child-memory.shtml
Pearson., & Anderson. (1984). Lenses on reading. In D. H. Tracey, & L. M. Morrow, An introduction to Theories and Models (p. 52). New York, NY, USA: Guilford Press.
