Beyond Symbolic Processing: Expanding Horizons for Educational Psychology.

Mayer (1992) believes that fractionation in educational research is now giving way to a unified cognitive approach based on subject-matter psychologies, the study of learning strategies, and the learning-as-knowledge construction metaphor. Yet, the paradigm described by Mayer is now being strongly challenged by a number of educational research communities, as different forms of the knowledge construction metaphor vie with one another for dominance. Challengers argue that schools must focus on preparing students for participation in complex multidisciplinary thinking activities that characterize life outside of school and that the dominant U.S. cognitive paradigm has been inadequate for examining those kinds of processes