What Is Learning?

 Hi Everyone!! 

I hope you had a restful reading week and was able to get work done while having time to relax. What were some activities you did that involved STEM?

This blog post is going to focus on a lesson we had several weeks ago on learning and the various educational learning theories. Being in Concurrent Education, I have already learned so much about what it means to learn and create meaningful experiences inside and outside of a classroom. As a future educator, I know that I want to promote learning and continuously enhance what I know. I love to learn! 

“Learning is acquiring, discovering, journeying, or constructing”

(Davis, Francis, & Friesen, 2019, p. 20).

Learning can be difficult to define as everyone has their own meanings of what it means to learn. To me, learning is the act or acquisition of knowledge or skills through the act of studying, experiencing, or being taught. There are various educational learning theories including behaviourism, constructivism, socio-cultural, and cognitive. This is not the first time I have learned about these types of educational learning theories. I love when I can enhance my knowledge of certain subjects, as this is something I have previously learned in other classes. These educational learning theories have positives and negatives in their ideas and implications for teaching. 

Firstly, a behaviourist perspective, one that theorists like Pavlov, Thorndike, Warson, and Skinner would agree on focuses on how a student can learn through interactions within an environment. Behaviours are learned from the environment. This type of perspective is crucial for educators as it impacts how a student can and will react and behave in a classroom, suggesting how teachers can influence how their students behave. This theory surmises that human and animal behaviors can be explained by conditioning (Speaks, 2022). For example, if a child misbehaves, you would keep them inside during recess. Learning is linking stimulus and response, leading to observable changes in behaviours (Lecture 3, Slide 11). This is an indication of a behaviourist perspective. 

The second theory is a constructivist educational learning theory. Theorists Dewey, Piaget, Inhelder, Vygotsky, Gagne, and Bruner support this theory. Constructivism is a theory that says learners can construct their knowledge rather than take in information. It is an ongoing process of sense-making, not a matter of “building internal edifices of objective knowledge but construing and imposing webs on subjective sense” (Davis, Francis, & Friesen, 2019, p. 27). In a traditional classroom, for example, learning is based on repetition. Whereas a constructivist classroom is interactive. The knowledge is built on what the student already knows. 

Thirdly, a socio-cultural perspective on learning and teaching is supported by Vygotsky. In this, a student is recognized as a “learning system” (Lecture 3, Slide 17). This theory believes that learning happens first through social interactions, and then through individual internalization of social behaviours. A healthy student-teacher relationship helps to facilitate social interactions and active participation in a learning task. Students can learn through various observations, listening, and talking. Vygotsky created the Zone of Proximal Development which is the space between what a learner is capable of doing/ completing with help from a teacher and what they can do with adult guidance or when collaborating with peers (Cherry, 2021).

Lastly, the cognitivist perspective which is supported by Piaget and Bruner focuses on helping an individual learn how to maximize their brain’s potential. Doing so makes it easier for someone to connect old information with new (Lecture 3, Slide 13). This type of learning is active, constructive, and long-lasting. Some cognitive learning strategies can be asking students to reflect on their experiences, encouraging discussions throughout lessons, or asking students to explain their thinking on certain subjects.

As a future educator, I need to understand that every student will not be the same and that each learns differently. It always blows my mind how elementary teachers especially do this. Teaching a class of tiny humans who really do differ, must be so challenging! I hope that when I am an educator I will implement various techniques into my pedagogy to help all types of students. What types of methods might not work with everyone, and that’s okay! Trial and error are super important. We all need to take a step back and realize the potential we each have to help our students thrive. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the Learning segment in our class. It was very informative as I was able to think of my past learning experiences and enhance what I already know. I hope you all learned something too!

Anyways, happy almost Halloween! Looking forward to writing to you all shortly.

Talk soon,

Victoria

📓📝😇

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References

Cherry, K. (2021). What is the zone of proximal development? verywell mind.

    https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-zone-of-proximal-development-2796034

Davis, B., Francis, K., & Frieson, S. (2019). Stem education by design: Opening horizons

    of possibility. Routledge

Speaks, S. (2022). Watson, Pablov, Thorndike, Skinner and the development of

    behaviorism.  Owlcation. https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Cognitive-

    Development-in-Children-from-Watson-to-Kohlberg