ETEC-512 Learning Theories
November 23, 2012
I have been immensley impressed by how our instructor has formulated each week of this course. As such, it would be an excellent reference and I’ve decided to include a copy of a basic page here for reflection:
Fabulous Way to Organize a course
November 20, 2012
Classmates contributions to our online conference
All about online learning:
http://etec512olc.wordpress.com/
Educating with constructivism
http://educatingwithconstructivism.weebly.com/
Information processing
http://wordpress.viu.ca/informationprocessing/
November 12, 2012
Thought Paper No.4
October 28, 2012
Thought Paper No. 3
The quotes from Von Glasersfeld reflect the essence of the constructivist paradigm in that learning needs to be collaborative
October 3, 2012
Now including new blog posts where they belong:] Not on this page –
Completion of thought papers 1 & 2 executed: Place under assignments for ETEC 512
PC
September 20, 2012
I thought it would be a straight forward process to link the scientific method to long term memory formation and the retrieval process. This is simply due to the fact that I have taught the sci. method to somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 separate classes. But as I really digest the implications I can see just how integrally linked the sci. method (that I have kind of taken for granted) is to the learning process.
From what I can garner, the sci. method allows for the formation of long term memories because of the sensory perceptions stimulated by the actual experimentation. The readings highlighted the idea that we can’t directly say what smell and taste have as an effect on forming memories but auditory and visual stimuli have an immense role to play in formulating LTM. This is also reflective of the Piaget theory that the learner has to be an active participant in the construction of new knowledge. Piagians also place heavy emphasis on the sensory experience of the learner as impacting the new knowledge uptake.
Reflecting on how the sci. method stimulates memory retrieval is where things get really dynamic.
The information retrieval process being exhibited by this gr.2 class comes to light initially when we see them accessing their short term memories regarding the hypothesis that they had formed and even what a hypothesis is. I was thinking as well, that they seemed quite comfortable writing out their mini lab reports and perhaps had been exposed to the process in a previous lesson. Writing out future lab reports would further involve more LT information retrieval. Further to this, when they first propose their hypothesis they would be accessing memories that might have involved these simple substances before (most of us have seen sugar dissolve). And are using previous knowledge from LTM in an attempt to formulate new hypothesis…. something most of us do every day unconsciously.
As a final thought, when I teach the scientific method I always include a step sometimes not seen in other classroom situations. This is that after you have rejected or validated your hypothesis you share your findings with the scientific community. This struck me as having parallels to the idea that you know you really have learned something when you can teach it to others. As depicted by the experts involved in leading the groups, relying on their previous experiences stored for retrieval in LTM.
PC
Teacher as Facilitator
I would like to start out this discussion by highlighting the benefits of a great experiment/lab to anyone that’s not a science teacher. It’s almost like a field trip inside your classroom – the learning that takes place can be incredible. And it’s all done by the students individually and for each other (ignoring the huge prep time involved for a successful lab). There is no “sage on the stage”. You just get to fade into the background and share in the excitement of watching the students discover for themselves.
If the goal of education, as pointed out in our discussion topic, is to help students formulate long term and short term memories about knowledge then the scientific method and activities similar (case-based studies and project-based learning) allow the sensory stimulation and community dialogue to allow this to unfold. However, it is important to note that there are limitations to this process.
Really hard-line supporters of this process believe that experimentation and “playing field” type activities are all that is necessary for learning to occur and that’s what good teaching should focus around. I agree to a point. There are, however, some basic facts and processes that students need to have cemented correctly into their understanding and unfortunately experimentation just isn’t going to do the job. For example – understanding the difference between nuclear fission and fusion… probably not going to be conducting experiments on these topics in my classroom. And let’s further complicate this scenario with budget restraints and time limitations. I have approximately 74 teaching blocks, give or take a few assemblies, to get students prepped for a provincial exam.
Given these unfortunate realities, I have to rely on a few other classroom activities outside of experimentation. And coming to mind are a few other strategies that I employ like; virtual labs and virtual zoo-visits/teacher demo’s/ and great video clips from discovery.com or mythbusters. It might be a downgraded version of what experimentation aims to do but it takes less time and is more cost effective.
PC
September 14, 2012
It was great to have the opportunity to tie the video into our readings this week. As I had completed the readings before watching the video – it actually answered some of the questions that kept coming into my mind about how behaviourism strategies would incorporate themselves into a more senior classroom. There was plenty of evidence for how Ms. M brought about a combination of group and individual rewards, with the individual awards being praise and positive attention from both her and the class.
I questioned something from the beginning portion of the class – where she asked the students to self identify if they wanted to be involved in the participation portion of events. Could this have been a combination of positive and negative reinforcement? Would the teacher’s simple withdrawal of attention from those students who wished to not be involved count as negative reinforcement? Or would it have been positively reinforcing a negative behavior? I don’t want to be involved and I didn’t do my essay but she’ll leave me alone to zone out all class if I want……. just a thought.
I was also curious about the effectiveness of group based awards with older students – up to adults. As mentioned before in one of my comments, I had previously worked at a high school where there was a school wide positive support program and it really seemed lost on the older kids. In fact, they kindof joked about how long it had been since their name had been put into the Monday morning prize draw. The older the students got the more it appeared that they were a tad resentful about having their behavior so overtly manipulated. It also brought to mind a book I had read several years ago from Dr. Neufeld and Dr. Mate “Why parents need to matter more”. In essence it identified the significant impact of peer group attention/rewards over the other adults, teachers and parents if allowed to foster unchecked. As we see in many of our students, often the reality is they are not concerned about reinforcement from adults – positive or negative – it’s only their peer group that they care about.
So what we see in the video does seem like some good ideas generating successful behaviors from students in a specific time and place. Is this a reality that I have witnessed in the schools that I have been in? Not as much.
PC
I decided to focus my thoughts this week onto the question regarding group rewards being motivational and the link to the behaviorist perspective after completing the readings and watching the video. As I understand the behaviorist perspective thus far, it appears that all of a person’s learned behavior actually comes from external stimuli – both positive and negative. Right from the get go I have to say that I cannot fully support this idea. And it has to do with songbirds not humans so maybe it doesn’t apply. I’ll have to let you decide for yourself.
One of my proff’s from undergrad completed his doctoral thesis on the behavior of songbirds. His study was focused around the nature vs. nurture debate and involved placing unhatched eggs from one songbird species into another songbirds nest and monitoring the resulting song of the bird. Well, as many probably predicted the bird did not totally inherit the song of either it’s biological or adoptive parents. It displayed instead a strange combination of the two songs showing that their must be elements of genetics and environmental stimuli in the production of song bird’s warbles.
Okay – bare with me please I’m not trying to get you off track just some background into why I think the behaviorist approach is too overly simplified to fully explain the complexities of human behavior.
So, the group rewards on the surface do seem to be motivating the youth positively and as such this seems to fall directly into the behaviorism perspective that any positive stimulus would be directing the students to demonstrate the target behaviors that the teacher desires. However, human behavior is so much more complex and complicated then what this picture paints that I cannot help but feel it is an inadequate explanation for what is really happening. Where is the intrinsic factor?
Has anyone else worked with a young person who has oppositional defiance spectrum or has exhibited behavior that just doesn’t conform with what you would expect. I admit that youth with ODD demonstrate the extreme to this situation but it does necessitate thinking about. I know too many youth that would swear the sky was red if you said it was blue just to be teenagers – a group reward would be meaningless to them and they turn the behaviorist perspective on it’s ear.
Does anyone else know these types of youth? I had a sister that fit this mold when I was growing up
PC