Personal Learning Theory

What?
The quiz said that I was mostly a behaviorist but I don't think it is very accurate because when we were learning about behaviorism in class I disagreed with a lot of what the theory says. I know that for educational purposes their needs to be a way to show that the student has learned it, but I do not think that learning is always visible.

* Piaget's Cognitive Development: I really like Piaget's ideas of Assimilation and Accommodation. I think it's important to get students to experience disequilibrium so they can assimilate or accommodate the new ideas into new or existing schemas. I don't entirely agree with all of the ages the Piaget put on his stages of cognitive development.

* Vygotsky's Cognitive Development: I really like the idea of Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development. I like the idea of using a scaffolding system to build up the child to the point where they can accomplish the task on their own. I like that the ZPD takes each students abilities into consideration and helps them work on things that are challenging to them but not to difficult to do with some guidance. I don't like the idea of Cognitive Apprenticeship if it is overused and the more competent peer is always paired with a student less competent.

* Erikson's Psychosocial Development: I like Erikson's different stages and I think they really apply to kids as they develop. I think that children need to have each stage satisfied or they will have problems developing in the next stage, but I also think they they are capable of developing a later stage even if a previous stage was not fully met.

* Kohlberg's Moral Development: I disagree with some of the ages that go along with Kohberg's stages of moral development. I also disagree with Kohlberg's gender gender stereotypes. I do agree that people go through these different stages of moral development throughout life.

* Goleman's Emotional Intelligence: I like Goleman's idea of emotional coaching and teaching children how to recognize their emotions and to respond appropriately by helping them see their options.

* Information Processing: I like the idea of using different rehearsal techniques in order to get information from the sensory memory to the working memory and then into the long term memory and ways to bring it back to working memory when you need to use that information.

* Knowledge Construction and Higher-order thinking: I agree with the idea of constructivism and discovery learning. I like the idea of giving students guidelines and having them discover on their own how something works instead of just telling them how it works. I like the idea of having a community of learners where the students can ask questions and learn from each rather than just learning from the teacher. I think that the idea of group work can be overused though and the students can get burned out with always getting stuck doing the work in their group or watching students that didn't work as hard get the same grade as everyone else.

* Behaviorism: I like the idea of using a token economy to help train students to behave in the classroom and to follow the rules. I also like the idea of using contingency contracts that the students help you come up with ideas of how and what they can do to improve their behavior in the classroom. I disagree with the idea that learning has only occurred if there is some physical evidence of that learning. I think that a lot of things can be learned without the person showing that is has been learned.

* Social Cognitivism: I think that the definition of learning for social cognitivism is too general, though I do agree that some learning does not result in a change of behavior. I really like the idea of self-regulated learning where the student helps come up with goals and evaluates how he or she is doing on those goals. I think a student must be taught how to be a self-regulated learner.

* Group and Individual Differences: I agree that in general girls are more sociable and have more intense emotions and that boys generally have higher self-esteems, etc., but I also think that gender differences are becoming less and less. I think a lot of it has to do with culture but I think some of it nature, that boys and girls really are generally different.

* Motivation: I think that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation need to work together in students to help them want to learn. Intrinsic helps the student to be motivated and interested to learn what they want to learn and to remember it but extrinsic helps motivate them to do well on the tests in order to achieve a good grade. Some people wouldn't agree with situational interest, but I think situational interest can be a good thing because it is something the teacher can use to create interest in a topic the students are learning. It helps motivate them to learn a topic that they might otherwise find dull or uninteresting.

So What?
I think that students learn best in environments where they are not afraid to ask questions and where they are able to use their classmates help and ideas as well. I think they learn best when they are able to work with a group to discover the answers to questions and come up with their own theories of how the world works. I think that each person learns differently and there are some kids that do learn better by simply watching and not participating, but in general, students learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process. I believe that students learn more by having been exposed to a new idea a number of times over time then by repeating it 10 times the first time they learn it. If they hear the idea, then hear it again a month later, then hear it again, before they are required to actually know and learn it, they aren't as afraid of the new information because it is something they have seen before and it isn't so scary.

Now What?
1) When I am a teacher I will use a variety of different teaching techniques in order to try to best suit each of my students learning styles. I will use of variety of different cooperative learning activities so my students have the opportunity to work together and learn from each other. I will set up different discovery learning activities for my students to discover answers for themselves, even though it will take more class time. For example, when teaching math, I would have them work together to figure out how to measure a circumference rather than telling them the formula first. I will also have individual activities sometimes in order to help students that learn better on their own.

2) I would like to find out more about the difference between cooperative learning and simply group work. I don't want to overuse group work in my classroom to the point where the kids hate it or where some kids are getting by without doing hardly any work. I also need to research more about Piaget and Vygotsky because I get their two theories mixed up. Another thing I would like to learn more about would be strategies to help get students who are more shy involved in classroom activities. I would like them to feel like they can participate and be themselves in a non-threatening environment.