Learning Theories

Learning Theories
Three Main Categories
- Behaviorsit Theories
- Cognitive Theories
- Constructive Theories

BEHAVIORIST THEORY
Behaviorism was mostly developed by B.F Skinner
For behavirosts, control of learning lies in the enviorment.
Can you put behaviorism into simpler terms?
Discussion

Three basic assumptions
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COGNITIVISM
Robert Mills Gagne
-The centerpiece of Gagne's Contribution is the "Nine Events of Instruction"

The Nine Events of Instruction
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Event Process of Learning
- Stimulation to gain attention To ensure the reception of stimuli
- Informing the learner of the To establish appropriate expectancies learning objective
- Reminding learners of previous For retrevial from long-term memory learned content
- Clear and distinctive presentation To ensure selective perception of material.
- Guidance of learning By suitable semantic encoding
- Elicting performance Involving response generation
- Providing Feedback About performance
- Assessing the performance Involving additional response feedback accassions.
-Arranging variety of practice To did future retrevial and transfer

Cognitivism vs. Behaviorsim
People are not "programmed animals" that merely respond to enviormental stimuli;
- People are rational beings that require active participation in order to learn, and whose actions are a consequence of thinking.
-Changes in behavior are observed as an indication of what is occuring in the learner's head.
Cognitivism uses the metaphor of the mind as a computer: Information comes in, is being processed and leads to certain....
Cognitivism in education has its roots in two sources:
-cognitive psychology and
- the Information Processing Theory
Cognitive psychology is a discipline within psychology that investigates the internal mental processes of though such as, visiual processing, memory,, problem solving, and language.
Information Processing Theory
THe Information Processing Theory emphasizes the identification of the internal processes of learning and concentrates on how the learner comes to know rather than respond in an instructional situation.
Two key assumptions underlie the cognitive approach:
- that the memory ssystem is an active organized processor of information and
- that prior knowledge plays an important role in learning
Cognitivists consider how human memory works to promote learning
The physiological processes of sorting and encoding information and events into:
-short term memory -(about 4 to 9 items for a duration of about 18 seconds) and
- long term memory (as little as a few days to decades) are important to educators working under the cognitive theory.

CONSTRUCTIVISM
-Constructivism: A process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts based upon current and past knowledge or experience.
- Each of us generates our own "rules" and "mental models", which we use to make sense of our experiences.
-Learning is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences.

Principles:
- Learning is a search for meaning.
-Learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning.
- Meaning requires understanding wholes as well as ports. And ports must be understood in the context of wholes.
- The learning process focuses on primary isolated facts.

We must understand the mental models that students use to perceive the world and the assumptions they make to support those models.

- The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own meaning, not just memorize the "right" answers and regurgitate someone else's meaning.
- The only valuable way to measure learning is to make the assesment part of the learning process.

Knowledge
The teacher becomes a guide and allows students to take over a significant portion of the responsibility for their own learning, including planning, execution and evaluation.

Constructivism's impact on learning
Constructivism calls for the elimination of a standarized curriculum
- It promots using curricular costomized to the students proir knowledge. It emphasizes hands-on problem solving.
-Educators focus on making connections between facts and fostering new understanding in students.

Instruction
-Instructors tailor their teaching strategies to student responses and encourage students to analyze, interpret, and predict information.
-Teachers rely heavily on open-ended questiosn and promot extensive dialogue among students.
Assesment
-Constructivism calls for the elimination of grades and standarized testing
-Assesment becomes part of the learning process so that students play a larger role in judging their own progress.
Constructivism Fini
-Locus of control over learning lies with the individual learning.

Active Learner
-In this, learners work in pairs, discuss materials while role-playing, debate, engage in case study, take part in cooperative learning.
While active learning makes some sense as a "follow up exercise or an application of known principles it may not make sense to use the techniques to introduce material.
-Propnents argue these thechniques may be confusing to those with no prior knowledge.
-Degree of instructor guidance may vary according to the task and its place in the unit.

Discovery Learning
- Takes place in problem solving situations where the learner draws on his own experience and prior knowledge.
- Duscovery Learning students interact with their enviorment by exploring and manipulating objects for performing experiences.
-Takes place most notably in problems solving sitations where the learner draws on his own experience and prior knowledge to be learned. It is a personal, internal learning enviorment.

Knowledge Building
- Involves making a collective inquiry into a specific topic, and coming to a deeper understanding through interactive questioning, dialogue and continuing impovement of ideas.
-Ideas are the medium of operation.