Week 1 Reflection - Learning Theory

This week in the GDLT program has proved very exciting. With a large workload to start the year plus an enormous amount of information to process from the Residential School, I feel like I may soon be overwhelmed with it all. I have resigned myself to the fact that this year will be challenging, and the hard work nose-to-the-grindstone approach is probably the only way I'll make it to November.

I feel I work best if I get proactive about the material and work hard earlier, so I get better work. This development in my work ethic has taken a long time to achieve, but I believe it has helped me immensely through my undergraduate study and will hold me in good stead through this program and hopefully into the teaching workforce. Work practices and ethics such as these are essential for all students to have and should always be a part of learning design - focused on in the Dimensions of Learning dimension one - attitudes and perceptions. This part of learning isn't something taught directly, I believe, but through prior planning, reinforced throughout all learning experiences.

This week has been a whirlwind for me personally, moving into a more 'academic' focussed degree has been a welcome change for me, and I am thoroughly enjoying my experience so far, enjoying learning how to teach.

Investigating my learning style was quite insightful, though fairly self explanatory. I feel stongly that students should be aware of how they learn best so they can achieve appropriately. Teachers should be able to identify this. My thoughts on learning style can be found here.

Learning Theory Models

This week's ICT for Learning Design covered an introduction to Learning Theory. Three main ideas were discussed, and as I read through each one, I saw how these directly impacted the way I have learnt in time. These ideas are not exactly exclusive of each other when used in the classroom, but actively work together in ways that benefit students without them even noticing these functions. I feel though, that if I am aware of these models, I can subtly affect my students' ability to learn without making such a radical change in teaching styles.

The idea that practice, practice, practice and repeat are related to behaviorism heralds back to the days of my undergraduate piano study (only 6 months ago). I would usually spend my day training my body to do the same thing over and over again until it wasn't a series of cognitive functions, but as a singular brain map functioning in one process at great speed. The idea that we can use our learning experience  to shape the mind of our students and use repetition and mimicking as a way to achieve curriculum outcomes is very helpful, particularly for procedural knowledge. This is also the same as students practicing the same mathematic function again and again until they can do it without thinking.  

Cognitivism, I believe is a theory that explains how we learn from a very very young age, and therefore don't realise that we are using it. The idea that sensory memory interacts with long term and thinking memory is a very good one: I still remember places I've been simply from their smell. The way these memory banks interact is second nature to all of us but the theory explains very well how our brains work from day to day, and this is a very effective model for unintentional learning, or accidental learning experiences.

Social Constructivism is a somewhat very much focussed on body of work. In a world connected more and more everyday, from a world scale to a social group scale, the way we interact with the people around us is having more and more influence on the way we see things, and in effect how we perceive certain knowledge before we internalise it for application in life. This model makes us more aware of how social perceptions affect our learning, and I intend to make sure of the situations in my classrooms before presenting materials, so that students can achieve in a way that reflects curriculum goals.

Of course, these teaching models work in some way with ICT's in the classroom. However, while these theories can somehow relate to the world we live in today, the idea of Connectivism is more applicable, though some debate occurs as to whether this is a valid learning theory. I believe it is the the most viable learning theory we have in our 21st century world today. Read my reflection on Connectivism here.

Please add your insights in the comments, the more ideas I have the better educator I can become!