A duo response to the prompts of “What is one idea from the readings or videos that you disagree with and why? and “Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behaviourist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples?
Learning theories… why do they exist? Is it because of human nature to produce a reasoning/answer for every question? Or is it because we as a society are scared of what we do not understand? Rather, is the reason “we” have devised these theories because of our constant need to organize, sort, and label everything into neat categories? As someone who is strong-minded, opinionated, and an advocate for individualism, the idea of there being defined “divisions” of how one chooses to believe in how humans learn, irritates me. Understandably, the purpose of said “learning theories’ ‘ is to provide information about instructional components to provide specific technical and strategic suggestions to best meet the needs of the learner (Ertmer & Newby, 2018). That is logical. What is incomprehensible to me and my unique philosophies as an educator, is the need to simplify the complex, heavily individual-oriented task of teaching and organize it bluntly.
Contrarily, I will give credit to a statement in our reading restating my thoughts on the faults of defining the ways people learn. We don’t have the luxury to restrict ourselves as educators to abide by the philosophy, techniques, approaches, and strategies of a singular learning theory (Ertmer & Newby, 2018). If we did, society would be producing very contrasting educated citizens. Instead, educators must select principles and conceptions based on the individual educational situation. Now hold up… this is sounding very similar to a few key buzzwords in our current educational field including personalized learning, differentiation in the classroom, student-centered learning, and learning principles taken from The First Peoples Principles of Learning… The creation of learning theories, in my understanding of their development, must have been to
It is unrealistic to think that there are educators in the field who believe that they solely teach to one category of theory, I can tell you now that if that were the case, we would have a multitude of insufficient teachers in our educational communities. To teach effectively, following the idea that we believe in said “learning theories,” teachers must continuously adjust their teaching styles to meet the needs of their individual students and the need to stay relevant to current educational trends. With this in mind, teachers can not exclusively follow the methodologies of a singular learning theory, they must devote their careers to experimenting, searching, and even failing to find their own unique pedagogies that will give them success as an educator.
Circling back to the above statement to “if we believe in said learning theories” I would like to leave with a comment about my thoughts on the given classification of learning theories alongside my own opinions to where I could fall in the three categories of a teaching teaching under the influence of behaviorism, cognitivisim, or constructivism. As I am putting thought into my answer I am puzzled of how easily my teaching philosophies can be lenient to each of the three learning theories. Continuously throughout a learning period (whether that be a day or a month) I find myself reflecting on the effectiveness of a learning experiences of each student, this including what form of learning mode (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic etc.) each student is drawn and motivated to, this relating to signs of behaviourism. I am also a teaching who believes in learning as a holistic, exploratory, and reflexive, process where the student should be at the centre of the learning, and their interests are factors in the creation of lessons, a cognitivist view point aligning with the idea of constructivism and its devotion to the learners participation in contextual real-world experiences. Like I said, through my teaching practice I show signs of all three learning theories and their defining “traits”.
On that note, I think a summary statement and conclusion are necessary. My chosen blog prompt was “what is one idea from the readings or videos that you disagree with and why? with a subtopic prompt being “based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behaviourist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples? The idea I chose to contradict was the entirety of creating the categorization of learning theories, and my argument for this chosen dispute can be summarized as learning theories being a gross simplification of the extremely complex practice of teaching, with margin notes stating that to be an effective teacher one’s teaching practice must stem from elements of all learning theories.
References
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. (2018) Behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design persepctive. In R. E. West, Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: The Past, Present, and Future of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. EdTechBooks. https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/behaviorism_cognitivism_constructivism
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