Creating Your Learning Philosophy (5313)

Learning Philosophy

Students learn by connecting new knowledge with knowledge and concepts that they already know, most effectively in active social classrooms where they negotiate understanding through interaction and varied approaches. But there is no single definition of learning, there are learning theories that talk about how students learn, and each one has its own characteristic of how to create the best learning environment.

Peggy A. Ertmer and Timothy J. Newby defines three of the most accurate learning theories to conceptualize learning and its characteristics, "Behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism from a critical perspective of educational design".

An attempt to familiarize with the three relevant positions on learning (behavioral, cognitive and constructivist) that provide structured bases for planning and carrying out instructional design activities. I analyze each learning perspective in terms of specific interpretation within the learning process and developing professional instructional outcomes for the education of my students.

Who am I as a learner?

Mentioning my passion for learning new things and the ability to quickly understand them and then generate examples has been very challenging after having a gap of 9 years from leaving my last classroom as a student, different language and different assessment modalities. Emphasize adjusting to a new workplace. Being able to learn almost from scratch means that my brain will probably feel like it is collapsing but no, I could integrate faster and I could. As a student I am responsible for attending class and completing assignments as directed by the teacher. Although in my first role within the process I need to be a very passive listener, listen and pay attention during class and that this leads to a broader understanding, I need to drive well and carefully to achieve the objective.

Behaviorist.

Behaviorism equates learning with change in either the form or frequency of observable performance.

Peggy A. Ertmer and Timothy J. Newby (1993)

Behaviorism focuses on the idea that all behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment. This learning theory states that behaviors are learned from the environment, and says that innate or inherited factors have very little influence on behavior.

My behavioral tendencies are focused within the classroom area. When my students have difficulty returning to the focus of the class, I start counting to three, before finishing they are already silent and with the correct position. This fact corresponds to the epitome of Pavlov's classical conditioning. As young children, they were conditioned to refocus when their parents counted to three in order to avoid negative consequences. I have been able to see my former students continue to respond to this encouragement.

Behaviorism lends itself to memorizing facts (Bates, 2014). What I look for in my students is always good communication, I call it excellent learning experiences, behaviorism is an effective tool for memorization when students see new concepts for the first time.

Cognotivist.

Learning is possible if you base the more complex structure on simpler structures, that is, when there is a natural relationship and development of structures and not simply an external reinforcement.

Jean Piaget (1964)

The ability of the brain’s mental processes to absorb and retain information through experience, senses, and thought is known as cognition. It makes it easier for you to connect new information with existing ideas hence deepening your memory and retention capacity.

All my classes are cognitivist theory. I begin with an introduction and explanation of the material that we will use as support for the development of our class and I end with practical examples that facilitate the use of the taught structures (Ertmer and Newby, 1993). My students practice the given content and then feedback. I use simplification, and I build the learning tools simpler so that the compression is faster (Ertmer and Newby, 1993), Piaget (1964).

Every year I am faced with the question of how to improve my goal of stimulating each student to think about how to learn better, that they see the learning experience as their need and that they develop it in a more personalized way, that they become aware of how they learn, which is an important element of cognitivism.

Constructivist.

constructivist learning encourages the learner to engage in the active process of meaning – construction in real-authentic problems and situations, and where learners are able to socially construct knowledge with others.

Seng Chee Tan and David Hung (2003)

Based on the idea that each person has to actively build our own knowledge, and through experiences as learners. Directing it, the students of the form use their previous knowledge as a base and build on it the new things to learn.

Knowledge is built. This is the basic principle, which means that knowledge is built on top of other knowledge. My students take pieces and put them together in a unique way, building something different from what another student will build. We base the knowledge, with the experiences that we live around the classroom, the construction and the previous perceptions of each one and we make it an important basis for their continuous learning.

People learn to learn, as they learn. Learning involves the construction of meanings and systems of meanings. For example, my students are learning the chronology of the dates of a series of historical events, at the same time they are learning the meaning of the chronology. If one of my students is writing about a story, they are also learning principles of grammar and writing. Each thing we learn in our class gives us a better understanding of other things in the future.

As part of my INNOVATION PLAN for my classroom blended learning environment, I will focus less on emphasizing traditional assessments that are more behavioral in favor of performance assessments where students have the opportunity to engage in authentic real world situations.

Social Constructivist.

…one learns first through a social setting of person to person interactions and then personally through an internalization process that leads to deep understanding

Interpretation of Lev Vigotsky by Robin Fogarty (1999)

As Ertmer and Newby explain, "if learning is decontextualized, there is little hope of transfer" (1993).

Learning is a social activity. Learning is directly associated with our connection with other people. Our teachers, our family, or peers, and our acquaintances impact our learning.

Educators are more likely to be successful as they understand that peer involvement is key in learning. Isolating learning isn’t the best way to help students learn and grow ogether.Progressive education recognizes that social interaction is key to learning and they use conversation, interaction, and group applications to help students retain their knowledge.

Conclusion.

The way we define learning and what we believe about the way learning occurs has important implications for situations in which we want to facilitate changes in what people know and or do. Learning theories provide verified instructional strategies and techniques for facilitating learning as well as a foundation for intelligent strategy selection. Yet many designers are operating under the constraints of a limited theoretical background.

Action learning principles may be applied to many content areas; however, the highly complementary nature of this specific methodology to the teaching and practice of instructional design may have the potential to greatly improve our preparation of professionals in the complex work environments characteristic of this and related disciplines. As a valuable component of performance technology skills, training in instructional design methods based on an action learning approach may have broad implications for both the preparation of instructional designers and performance technologists.

The relationship between behaviorism, constructivism and Socratic pedagogy. Specifically, the question is whether a Socratic educator can be a constructivist or a behaviorist. In principle, each learning theory is explained in relation to the Socratic project. In the last one, it is addressed whether or not a Socratic teacher can subscribe to a constructivist or behavioral theory of learning. It concludes by stating that while Socratic pedagogy shares some similarities with each learning theory, it is ultimately fundamentally incompatible with both.

References.

Ertmer, P.A. & Newby, T.J. (1993). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparison of Critical Features from an Instructional Design Perspective. HKU

Learning Project Team. (2018). What teachers need to know about learning theories. Retrieved June 15, 2019, from https://kb.edu.hku.hk/learning_theory_history/

Piaget, J. (1964). Part I: Cognitive development in children: Piaget. Journal of Research in Science Education, 2, 176-186.

https://www.wgu.edu/blog/what-constructivism2005.html#close

https://northweststate.edu/wp-content/uploads/files/21143_ftp.pdf