What is learning?

Link

Your thoughts

http://www.flickr.com/photos/91903883@N00/2385264019

What is your learning (and

teaching) philosophy?

How do you think people learn?

- 40 minute reflection/writing

Reading of texts:

Reading 1: Carlile, O., & Jordan, A. (2012).

Learning. In J. Arthur & A. Peterson (Eds.), The

Routledge Companion to Education (pp. 97-106).

London: Routledge

Reading 2: Hewitt, D. (2010). How do people learn?

In J. Arthur & I. Davies (Eds.), Education Studies

Textbook (pp. 107-120). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge

Some thoughts on learning…

From transmission

http://www.flickr.com/photos/00015/5172592913/

To construction

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65315936@N00/11229262523

Behaviourism

?

Classical conditioning

Behaviourism focuses on observable behaviours

Learning is an acquisition of new behaviour through

conditioning.

Stimulus-response

Learner is passive - clean slate

Uses reinforcement techniques (positive and negative;

withdrawal or application of stimuli)

Behaviourism

Learning is a change

in behaviour;

A part of one’s

cognitive development

Skinner

Piaget:

cognitive constructivism :

How learning occurs

rather than what

influences it.

Piaget:

cognitive constructivism

• Learning through schemas

• Assimilation (organising)

• Accommodation (transforming)

• Equilibrium (environment)

Adaptation

Piaget: cognitive constructivism

Discovery

Learners construct knowledge meaningful to

them based on their experiences

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Piaget:

stages of cognitive development

Vygotsky: social constructivism

Learning and

development happen

in tandem.

Vygotsky

Vygotsky: socio-constructivism

Shares its roots with cognitive constructivism,

places emphasis on the social context

Meanings and understandings

social encounters

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Vygotsky: socio-constructivism

Culture gives the child the cognitive tools needed

for development

Learning/ development is a social, collaborative

activity

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Vygotsky: socio-constructivism

The learner is an active meaning-maker

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The zone of proximal

development

Current achievements ZPD

Future

The zone of proximal development is the

distance between the actual development

level as determined by independent problem

solving and the level of potential

development as determined through problem

solving under adult guidance or in

collaboration with more capable peers.

(Vygotsky, 1978)

an essential part of the learning

process.

Peer interaction

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Socio-constructivism

Emphasis on the

place of

experience in

learning

John Dewey

(Deep) learning

…education consist in the formation of wide-awake, careful,

thorough habits of thinking. Of course, intellectual learning

includes the amassing and retention of information. But information is an undigested burden unless it is

understood. (…). And understanding, comprehension, means

that the various parts of the information acquired are grasped

in their relations to one another – a result that is attained only

when acquisition is accompanied by constant reflection upon

the meaning of what is studied.

Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin

Company

environment

Social

experience

–

situation learners

Other points of interest

Dewey

democracy and education

learners’ rights

Paulo Freire

Critical pedagogy

Dialogical learning

Praxis (informed learning, lived experience

linked to values (cultural capital)

Social Capital (learning with others)

learning as a form of

empowerment

Jean Lave

Situated learning

Learning embedded in practice,

context and culture

Authentic

Cognitive apprenticeship

Legitimate peripheral

participation

Wenger

Communal learning

Learning embedded in

communities of practice

Social capital connected by a

concern, interest, passion

Domain (topic)

Community (learning relationship)

Practice (practitioners)

References

Lave, Jean (1988). Cognition in practice: mind, mathematics

and culture in everyday life. New York: Cambridge University

Press

Wenger, Etienne and Richard McDermott, and William

Snyder (2002) Cultivating communities of practice: a guide to

managing knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business

School Press.

Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning,

Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.