LESSON 2: FEELINGS

I keep thinking:

Does the  Constructivist learning theory  delineate all the other learning theories or  is there a relationship among them?

 I will  compare with the Behaviourist and the cognitivist theories.

BEHAVIOURIST CONCEPTS

1.  Learners are not just passive entities who react to environmental stimuli. Learners  learn by doing, experiencing, and engaging in trial and error. 
2. What has been learned, under what conditions, and the consequences that support or maintain the learned behavior all work together, and must be observable and measurable.
3.  Learning is a change in behavior due to experience and a function of building associations between the occasion on which the behavior occurs (stimulus event) and the behavior itself (response event).
4.  Repeated continuous pairing of the stimulus with the response strengthens learning. To change behavior in an educational setting, learners must be assessed for their needs and capabilities so that instruction is appropriate and meaningful.
5.  Observable goals can then be written.
6.  Learning tasks are ordered logically according to a hierarchy. Learners' performance of tasks is measured against objective criteria for mastery and correctness.
7. Reinforcement, which is contingent on successful achievement at each stage, maintains previously learned behaviors (Burton et al., 1996).

COGNITIVE CONCEPTS

1. Prior knowledge and mental processes intervene between a stimulus and response that operate to reduce the predictability of human behavior (response) given a stimulus.
2.  Mechanisms, such as chunking or grouping like items and interactive mental imagery, intervene between a stimulus and response to promote memory.
3. People learn meaningful material by generating relationships among new information and knowledge already stored in long-term memory. 
4. Three kinds of learning based on  Norman's schema-based theory of long-term memory: Accretion, associated with memorization, involves acquisition of factual information. Schema creation occurs as a result of encountering examples, analogies, metaphors, and tutorial interactions. Tuning or schema evolution involves gradual refinement of existing schema as a result of task practice or concept use (Shuell, 1986). 

Behaviorists look at learning as an aspect of conditioning and will advocate a system of rewards and targets in education and that human behavior is predictable; cognitive approaches consider the role of unobservable mental states and introspection, which are part of human behavior (Winn & Snyder, 1996).

CONSTRUCTIVIST  CONCEPTS

1. Learning is a constructive process in which the learner is building an internal illustration of knowledge, a personal interpretation of experience.
2.  This representation is continually open to modification, its structure and linkages forming the ground to which other knowledge structures are attached. 
3.  Learning is an active process in which meaning is accomplished on the basis of experience. Reality places constrains on the concepts that are, but contends that all we know of the world are human interpretations of our experience of the world. 
4.  Conceptual growth comes from the sharing of various perspectives and the simultaneous changing of our internal representations in response to those perspectives as well as through cumulative experience (Bednar, Cunnigham, Duffy, Perry, 1999
5. The locus of  control over learning is the student not  the teacher. Objectives should be negotiated with students based on their own felt needs
6.  The nature of learning  is (situated, interactive) and  the nature of knowledge is (perspectival, conventional, tentative, evolutionary).  
7.  Programmed activities emerge from within the contexts of their lived worlds, that students should work together with peers in the social construction of personally significant meaning
8. Evaluation is a personalised ongoing, shared analysis of progress (Hanckbarth,S., 1996, p.11).
9.  Learning is placed in a rich context, reflective of real world context, for this constructive process to happen and transfer to environments beyond the school or training classroom (Scaffolding) . 
10.  Learning is through cognitive apprenticeship, mirroring the collaboration of real world problem solving, and using the tools available in problem solving situations.
11.   How effectual or instrumental the learner’s knowledge structure is in facilitating thinking in the content field is the measure of learning  (Bednar, Cunnigham, Duffy, Perry, 1995: 103-104.)

Need the teachers disregard the earlier approaches to learning?

No! There is a clear continuum of one theory as the building block of the other:

1. Constructivism builds upon behaviorism and cognitivism in the sense that it accepts multiple perspectives and maintains that learning is a personal interpretation of the world. Behavioral strategies can be part of a constructivist learning situation, if that learner choses and finds that type of learning suitable to their experiences and learning style.
2.  Cognitive approaches have a place in constructivism also, since constructivism recognises the concept of schema and building upon prior knowledge and experience.
3.  Behaviorist,cognitive and constructivist  approaches value meaningful learning and realistic contexts for application of knowledge and skills.
4. The  greatest difference is that of evaluation. In behaviorism and cognitivism, evaluation is based on meeting specific objectives, whereas in constructivism, evaluation is much more subjective. Of course, what if I, as a learner, negotiate my evaluation and wish to include objective evaluation? Then isn't behavioral and cognitive strategy a part of constructivism?

What does this mean to me as a teacher today?

1. I have to be open minded and conscientious  in my class especially regarding the emerging situations there in, keeping in mind that no one learning theory is inferior/superior  to the other and neither must i take one theory as the absolute thus risking stifling my learners.
2. I need to be flexible, creative and innovative in order to bring out the most conducive  learning environment which will make learning a scaffolding experience.
3. The focus should always be on the learner...in all respects.

These pictures are a summary of what I envision as what learning is. 

T        T

The teacher's role-modified  , the learner in charge of his/her learning                  

What about assessment in our Ugandan Education System?