Cognitive Flexibility Theory & Multiple Representations

After reading Clark's comment on my posting from yesterday, I've been looking into Cognitive Flexibility Theory (Spiro), trying to better understand the notion of "multiple representations." (You can read more about CFT here and here and here, or just Google it like I did and see what you find....)

I had been thinking of multiple representations as meaning you show the graph on one screen with audio, then on the next screen have a video of someone talking about that concept. Use multiple representations to provide the learner with multiple ways of accessing the information: visual or auditory. Not quite.

From the CFT vantage, multiple representations is not about providing the same information in a different format (the learning styles approach), but rather presenting different perspectives on that information. Provide a variety of examples or case studies that get to the concept in different ways. This allows the learner to be more flexible in her understanding of the material, so that she can effectively apply it to concepts in the real world (knowledge transfer).

Got it. Makes sense. Provide lots of examples as a way of beating that path through the woods; helping the learner make connections to ensure successful transfer of knowledge to a real-world situation.