Graham Cooper
Graham Cooper is the co-author, with John Sweller, of a 1985 paper in Cognition and Instruction on the use of worked examples as a substitute for problem solving in learning algebra. The paper reported five experiments and is one of the early sources of the worked example effect in cognitive load research.
Who they are
Cooper appears in this site's material as the second author of the 1985 algebra paper, written with John Sweller. His affiliation and wider body of work have not been verified for this site, so this page does not describe them.
Key papers
Sweller, J., & Cooper, G. A. (1985). The use of worked examples as a substitute for problem solving in learning algebra. Cognition and Instruction, 2(1), 59-89. doi:10.1207/s1532690xci0201_3
The paper reports five experiments. The first compared Year 9, Year 11 and university mathematics students on recalling equations and distinguishing equations that look alike but need different solution methods. The other four tested worked examples against conventional problem solving. The examples took less time to process, and students who then met similar problems solved them faster and made fewer mathematical errors, on problems with the same structure as the examples.
Key ideas
The paper proposed that novices store general algebra rules as a limited set of problem-specific schemas, and that turning these into broader general rules probably takes sustained practice across a wider range of problem types.
The experiments are the starting point for what later literature calls the worked example effect, described on its own page on this site.
Sources
- Sweller, J., & Cooper, G. A. (1985). “The use of worked examples as a substitute for problem solving in learning algebra.” Cognition and Instruction, 2(1), 59-89. doi:10.1207/s1532690xci0201_3