Week #1: Engagement Activity 2
A Brief Overview of Learning Theory
Two posts in one
day! I am a motivated learner today so I thought it best to stick at it while
the information is successfully travelling through my RAS and Amygdala to my
“thinking brain”.
In the second part of
our Week 1 learning material we have been been asked to reflect on what
learning theory is best for successful learning based on what we have learned
about the brain and learning (see my first post to see what epiphanies I had
there). I don’t know about you (I’ll
have to check your blogs out!) but for me this is a no brainer; of course all
the theories are appropriate and effective, it just depends on the learner, the
content and the desired learning outcome.
If I were trying to
foster higher order thinking, I definitely would not use methods based on Behavioural
theory. I would use a combination of
Constructivism and Connectivism to encourage my learners to creatively think
about a problem, what it means and how they might solve it, rather than just
memorising information.
However, if I were
trying to help my learners learn the naming conventions in organic chemistry, I
would use methods based in Behavioural theory for the basics, and then Cognitive
as the naming conventions got a little more complicated.
Do you agree with
those two approaches? Or would you do it differently?
- Isabel -
Hi Isabel,
ReplyDeleteI had the same thoughts about how the learning theories apply to a science classroom. I can see that constructivism is popular, but I think there's a lot to be said for behaviourism and rote learning for the basics.
In fact, I had a quick go at mocking up a constructivist lesson plan for teaching mitosis. As hard as I tried to make it really student-centered and give the students time to build their own knowledge through looking at cells in the different stages down a microscope etc, I kept coming back to the point that for a concept like mitosis, I think at some point, I would want to have a teacher explain the nitty gritty to me. And I think you're ideas about teaching organic chem are spot on too.
Hi Jaime!! I've been looking for your blog, is it on the blog address wiki? I think we will have similar "preferred" teaching styles. I'm a very structured person and I like to both learn and explain things in a structured format. In high school I hated it when I felt that a teacher didn't have a "plan"!! I'm struggling a bit with how i'm going to teach maths in a creative way. Math just is what it is to me!!
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