Learning Theories for Teachers

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Learning Theories for Teachers

• Morris L. Bigge
• S. Samuel Shermis
• Chapter 1
• Why Is Classroom Learning a Problem?

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Why Is Classroom Learning a Problem?

• Lasting changes in a person occur within the
  process of maturation, learning, or a combination
  of the two.
• Maturation is a developmental process within
  which a person from time to time manifests traits
  that have been carried in the persons cells from
  the time of conception.
• Learning is an enduring change in a living
  individual that is not heralded by genetic
  inheritance.

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What is a Learning Theory?

• A theory is designed plan for development of a
  pattern of ideas accompanied by a planned
  procedure for carrying it out.
• A learning theory is a systematic integrated
  outlook in regard to the nature of the process
  whereby people relate to their environments in
  such a way as to enhance their ability to use
  both themselves and their environments in the
  most effective way.

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Why Are There Theories of Learning?

• Psychology is an area of knowledge characterized
  by the presence of several schools of thought.
• Everything teachers do is colored by the
  psychological theory they hold.
• Teachers who are well grounded in psychological
  theory have a basis for making decisions that are
  much more likely to lead to effectual results in
  classrooms.

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How Are Learning Theories Evaluated?

• Teachers can develop learning theories of their
  own because of their internal harmony and
  data-based adequacy, they can support.
• The quality of teaching will be enhanced by their
  thinking through the question of the nature of
  the learning process that teachers want to
  promote in students.

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What Learning Theories are Reflected in School
Practices?

• There are at least 11 different theories used in
  schools
• Theistic mental discipline
• Humanistic mental discipline
• Natural unfoldment
• Apperception or herbartianism
• S-R (stimulus response) bond
• Conditioning with no reinforcement
• Conditioning through reinforcement
• Goal insight
• Narrative-centered cultural interaction
• Sequential-linear cognitive interaction
• Cognitive-field situational interaction

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What leading learning theories originated before
the twentieth century?

• The two mental discipline, natural unfoldment and
  apperception were developed before the twentieth
  century.
• Mental discipline means tat learning consists of
  students minds being disciplined or trained.
• Natural unfoldment is a procedure within which a
  child unfolds what either Nature or a Creator has
  enfolded within that child.
• Apperception is a process of new ideas
  associating themselves with old ones that already
  constitute a mind.

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What are the two leading twentieth-century
learning theories?

• S-R conditioning theories of the behavioristic
  family and interactionist theories of the
  cognitive family.
• S-R conditioning theorists interpret learning in
  terms of changes in strength of S-R connections,
  associations, habits, or behavioral tendencies.
• Cognitive interactionists define learning in
  terms of reorganization of perceptual or
  cognitive fields so as to gain understanding.

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How may teachers picture the innate moral and
actional nature of students?

• There are five different ways in which teachers
  may view their students
• Innately bad individuals in need of discipline
• Neutral-active rational animals
• Active, innately planned personalities that
  develop through unfoldment of their native
  instincts, needs, abilities, and talents.
• Passive/reactive minds or organisms whose
  development depends upon their being conditioned
  by outside forces.
• Purposive persons who develop through their
  interaction with their respective psychological
  environments.

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What is the Psychological basis of transfer of
learning to new situations?

• Transfer of learning is the relationship
  betweens ones learning process and ones ability
  to use what one has learned in future learning
  and life situations.
• Schools should attempt to teach students in such
  a way that they not only accumulate many
  significant learning applicable to lifes
  situations but that they also develop a technique
  for acquiring new insights or understandings
  independently.

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How is Piagets genetic epistemology related to
learning theory?

• Piagets genetic epistemology is devoted to a
  study of the innate developmental stages of
  children as they relate to their acquisition of
  knowledge.
• Three stages or periods namely, sensorimotor,
  symbolic or preconcrete operational, and
  concrete-operational.

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How do Gagne Conditions of Learning Constitute
More a Methode of Instruction than a theory of
Learning?

• Gagnes five major categories of learning
  capabilities or educational outcomes are
  intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, verbal
  information, motor skills, and attitudes.

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Learning Theories for TeachersChapter 5

• How Does Skinnerian Operant Conditioning Work

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Introduction

• B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
• Work focused on the Learning Process
• Radical Behaviorist
• Purpose of psychology is to be predicting and
  controlling the behavior of individual organisms
• Used Operant Conditioning

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Operant Conditioning

• Learning process where a response is made more
  probably or more frequent.
• Operant is a set of acts that constitutes an
  organisms doing something
• Reinforcement means that the probability that the
  act or behavior will happen again
  

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How Did Skinner Use Animals in the Study of
Operant Reinforcement?

• Skinners thesis since an organism tends in the
  future to do what it was doing at the time or
  reinforcement, one can, by rewarding each step of
  the way, lead it to do very much what the
  experimenter wishes it to do.
• Skinner Box

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