Week of March 25

Week of March 25
This week we were given two assignments to work on: Learning Theories (behaviorism, congitivism, constructivism, and social constructivism) and lesson plans for each coordinating theory. I studied the theories extensively in my language development class last semester. My professor explained that that in undergraduate you learn more about “how” to be a teacher, in the masters program you learn more about the “why” of how you teach, and at the doctorate level you create your own theories or contribute to them. I thought that was interesting. I focused more on the constructivism and social constructivism theories last semester because they were more in line with what I believe. Therefore it was good for me to learn more about the cognitivism theory, my theory for this assignment. I particularly liked Gage’s learning model called the nine events of instruction:

Events /Process of Learning
1. Stimulation to gain attention /to ensure the reception of stimuli
2. Informing the learner of the learning objective/ to establish appropriate expectancies
3. Reminding learners of previously learned content /for retrieval from long-term memory
4. Clear and distinctive presentation of material /to ensure selective perception
5. Guidance of learning /by suitable semantic encoding
6. Eliciting performance /involving response generation
7. Providing feedback/ about performance
8. Assessing the performance /involving additional response feedback occasions
9. Arranging variety of practice /to aid future retrieval and transfer

“The above events can be translated into specific instructional tactics that can be implemented in any teaching-learning environment"
Copied from: http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/cognitivism.html

I had seen this before, but it reinforced again my beliefs that no single theory is the only answerer to teaching. I agree with the article that Dr. Wang had us read Instructional Design & Learning Theory (Mergel,1998,http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/mergel/brenda.htm) when the author discusses the “eclectic approach to theory in instructional design”. She states that “we must allow circumstances surrounding the learning situation to help us decide which approach to learning is most appropriate”. I believe that learners need different types of learning strategies depending on the stage of learning they are currently involved in. I like out or textbook, Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (Roblyer, 2006), divides up the major theories into directed and constructivist models. During different times in the learning process a more directed approach is needed while other times a more constructivist approach is more appropriate. Figures 2.9 (Roblyer, p 48) and 2.12 (Roblyer, p.51) are excellent examples of how to pull the major learning theories together. Sometimes learners are building on previous knowledge and skills and the directed approach is more appropriate. However when new knowledge or skills are being introduced the constructivist approach is a more appropriate to help motivate the learners and let them have more involvement in their learning. I believe a blended method of the theories would work best for the different situations and different learners style.