On occasions when we encounter a new situation, we attempt to make sense of it by filtering new experiences through prior frames of reference or schemas. A schema is a mental codification of experiences and it is a useful concept to understand how we learn. It comprises a specifically-ordered sequence of cognitive perceptions and responses to a complex situation. As we interact with the world, we develop concepts or schemas about the way we construe or make sense of our experiences. Society’s collective understanding, values and norms greatly influence these frames of reference. Examining the learning process from this paradigm provides an opportunity to understand how students learn and practice what they have learned in the classroom and in their everyday lives.

A class activity (‘A Case on Conflict Management’) in HR 2002 “Understanding Human Relations in the New Economy” specifically illustrates the use of schema to understand how students learn. It investigates an interpersonal conflict between two members working in the same project team beginning with an exploration of students’ early schemas of handling interpersonal differences in the case study. When probed, students tend to focus more on their co-worker’s disagreeable personal characteristics (e.g. “She is loud, highly competitive and never seems to be considerate of others”).

The students embark on the exercise with a simple concept or schema of the case that involves working with a potentially ‘difficult’ co-worker and a feeling of anxiety. As students discover more details, their simple schema expands and evolves to include other characteristics of their co-workers. For instance, the supervisor appoints a co-worker from the group as team leader. At this point, the exercise provides ample time for students to raise and analyse case details (e.g. how others feel about the team leader), thus encouraging them to engage in cognitive thought (e.g. the rationale for the supervisor’s choice of leader and team members’ reactions to the appointment).

In this manner, students’ schemas continue to expand as they discuss these core concepts with group members. The group-based learning exercise challenges them to analyse their own underlying personal beliefs, attitudes, goals and assumptions, consider alternative responses and acknowledge others’ input, thus fostering more elaborate student discussions. Frequently, these group discussions help students arrive at a more realistic appraisal of themselves. In some cases, whilst they admit that they believe themselves to be as competent as their team leaders, and as such, deserve the leadership position, they also realise, for example, that their counterpart is not as ‘difficult’ as they have originally assumed. More often than not, they would share their frustrations, caused not so much by the choice of the team leader, but rather, by the lack of information or participation in the decision-making process of the leadership appointment.

As the case illustrates, the original simple frames of reference are enlarged, revised, connected, forming more complex schemas of students’ learning journeys. Through integrating information and core ideas and sharing meanings through personal experiences, the process of modifying, creating and integrating these schemas creates a complex web of knowledge and beliefs that guides thinking in the particular community of practice among students in the classroom and everyday life.

Subsequently, when students encounter a similar conflict situation in the future, their schemas will expand further. Faced with a new scenario, students project their own cluster of schemas onto the situation, structuring it around what they have learned in previous encounters both in the classroom and everyday settings. The process enables them to relate new information to the old and generate better quality inferences and decisions.
The paradigm of learning in schematic form is both a product and a process. On the one hand, the product is a change in understanding schemas, and in this case, students may realise that the difficulty may in fact lie with themselves rather than their co-workers. On the other hand, the process of learning involves examining, revising and integrating schemas within a particular context of application. For instance, students’ earlier encounters, in which a confrontation or cooperative approach proves successful, may justify their handling the situation in a similar way in the future.

We can see that schemas developed within a setting are dependent on the context in which core concepts are learned. Students’ evolving schemas on conflict management are both the outcome of their own experiences acquired in a structured classroom setting as well as constructed within the social context of interaction. This in turn generates the foundation for students’ learning journeys.