6 Education Theorists
The 6 Education Theorists That All Teachers Should Know If you’re not asleep during staff meetings, you’ve probably heard the phrase “research-based practices” thrown around a lot. Do you silently ask yourself, “Sooo, which practices are research-based anyway?”. Written to inform students of the main principles, concepts, and research findings of key theories of learning–especially as they relate to education–and to provide applications of principles and concepts in settings where teaching and learning occur, this revised text blends theory, research, and applications throughout, providing its readers with a coherent and unified perspective on. For example, a review of primary education by the UK government in 1966 was based strongly on Piaget’s theory. The result of this review led to the publication of the Plowden report (1967). Discovery learning – the idea that children learn best through doing and actively exploring - was seen as central to the transformation of the primary. The 6 Education Theorists All Teachers Should Know present 6 people that did some of the major research in education.
Albert Bandura’s “Social Learning Theory” and Its Impact on Teachers and Learning
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Think back to your childhood. Do you remember learning to ride a bike, how to play checkers, and do simple addition problems? I bet you learned these skills by watching someone else ride their bike, play a game of checkers, and solve addition problems. That is what Albert Bandura, a social cognitive psychologist, believed.
Bandura is known for his social learning theory. He is quite different from other learning theorists who look at learning as a direct result of conditioning, reinforcement, and punishment. Bandura asserts that most human behavior is learned through observation, imitation, and modeling.
Let’s look more closely at Bandura’s Social Learning Theory and the implications of this theory on teaching and student learning.
See also: Flipped Classroom
Learning Through Observation: Live, Verbal, and Symbolic
Bandura is famous for his studies of children observing adults who acted aggressively toward a doll. After the children viewed this behavior, they were given dolls to play with. Can you guess how they interacted with the dolls? You’re right. They imitated the aggressive actions that they observed earlier.
But Bandura took the meaning of “observation” even further. In addition to a “live” model, he explored a “verbal” instructional model, whereby if certain explanations and descriptions were presented, then learning was enhanced. I am sure you can think of an example of when someone patiently explained something to you in a way that helped you to learn it. That’s the perfect example of a verbal instructional model.
He also studied “symbolic” models, where characters (fiction/non-fiction) in movies, television programs, online media, and books could lead to learning. This means that students could learn from watching a movie or television program, listening to any number of online media sources (e.g., podcasts), or from reading a book. They envisioned how the characters reacted and how they felt, etc. This, in turn, taught them how to react and feel in similar life situations.
The Importance of Motivation and Mental State
Bandura claims that observation alone may not be sufficient enough to incur maximal learning; a person’s motivation and their mental state also influence learning. Bandura agreed with the behavioral theorists who noted that external reinforcement shapes learning, but he also acknowledged that learning is not always a result of external reinforcement. He claimed that learning is a result of intrinsic reinforcement as well. For example, a student might learn something because of their pride, for a sense of satisfaction, or to fulfill a feeling of accomplishment. This factor of learning intrinsically connects Bandura’s learning theory to those of other cognitive-developmental theories.
See also: Inclusive Teaching Strategies
Learning Doesn’t Always Lead to a Behavioral Change
Behaviorists argue that learning leads to a permanent change in behavior. However, Bandura showed that observational learning can occur without the learner demonstrating any new behavior. In other words, you can observe, imitate, or model something but you might not learn it. He explored the question of what needs to happen for an observable behavior to be learned (in addition to observation) and cited four necessary steps: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.
Observation + 4 Necessary Steps = Learning
Attention: First off, the learner needs to pay attention. If they are distracted, this will influence the amount or quality of learning that occurs. I don’t think anyone disagrees with this statement. We have all gotten distracted and know that it affects our learning and quality of work. Additionally, the more interesting or unique the model or situation is, the more fully the learner will attend to the learning. This explains why you might not be able to put down a good book or give up on any one of your passions no matter the obstacles you encounter.
Retention: How you can to store the information learned (i.e., retention) is important. Let’s face it. We have all learned so much content throughout our years of schooling, but how much do we retain? Maybe you can remember the more significant learning in a certain way through any number of memory techniques (e.g., mnemonic devices, writing it down, repetition, etc.). Or maybe you applied the learning to a real-life situation which aids in retention.
Reproduction: Reproduction relies on the first two steps: attention and retention. After completing these steps, you move toward performing the observable behavior. Then with further practice, you will undoubtedly improve and sharpen your skills. The adage “Practice Makes Perfect” applies here.
Motivation: The last step is motivation. To have the most success for any observational learning, you need to be motivated enough to imitate the behavior that was modeled. In this step, both reinforcement and punishment impact motivation. If a student sees someone being rewarded, they are more likely to continue the behavior. Likewise, if they see someone punished or ignored, they may extinguish the behavior.
What are the implications for Social Learning Theory on teachers and student learning?
See also: TPACK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework
Certainly, this theory can be used to teach positive behaviors to students. Teachers can use positive role models to increase desired behaviors and thus change the culture of a school. Not only will individual students benefit from positive role models in and out of the classroom, but the entire class and student body will do so.
Other classroom strategies such as encouraging children and building self-efficacy are rooted in social learning theory. For example, if a teacher is positive with their students and they encourage them, this positive energy and verbal encouragement, in turn, helps build self-efficacy, the belief in one’s abilities to succeed in various situations. Bandura found that a person’s self-efficacy impacts how their tasks, goals, and challenges are approached. Those individuals with strong self-efficacy view challenges as tasks to master, develop deep interests in the activities they participate in, form a strong sense of commitment to activities and interests, and bounce back from disappointments and setbacks easily. However, those with a weaker sense of self-efficacy tend to avoid challenges, think difficult tasks and situations are beyond their abilities, think negatively about their failures and outcomes, and lose confidence easily in their abilities.
Furthermore, Bandura states that learning every single thing from personal experience is hard and could be potentially dangerous. He claims that much of a person’s life is rooted in social experiences, thus observing others is naturally advantageous to gaining knowledge and skills.
In conclusion, observation plays a very powerful role in learning. It not only helps teach students but helps them to successfully understand, retain, and apply their learning to their lives so they can learn and achieve even more. For this, we thank Albert Bandura for his Social Learning Theory contribution.
See also: Bloom’s Taxonomy
6 Education Theorists In The Bible
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Constructivism and Learning Math
Situated Learning and Learning Math
Other Learning Theories and Learning Math
Overview of This Topic
How do students learn math? Are there learning theories that are especially relevant to the teaching and learning of math?
Progress is occurring in providing answers to these sorts of questions. However, the prevailing teaching situation is summarized by the following quote:
For example, I've been in enough high school math classes over the last five years to know that there is no developmental theory of how students learn algebra. The kids who don't make it and don't respond to the kind of instruction they're receiving are simply not included in the instructional model. And teachers in the classrooms I've observed take no responsibility for the lowest-performing students. That's because the prevailing a theory of learning suggests that teaching mathematics is not a developmental problem but a problem of aptitude. Some people get it, some don't.Elmore, Richard F. (2002). The Limits of Change [Online]. Accessed 2/18/02: http://www.edletter.org/current/
limitsofchange.shtml
This quotation captures the essence of a need for understanding of mathematics developmental theory and a need for understanding of learning theories appropriate to the teaching and learning of math. Both are missing in many math education environments.
There are many different learning theories. For many years, the behaviorist theory of B. F. Skinner was dominant. In more recent years, a number of new theories have been developed.
6 Education Theorists Without
Some are called cognitive learning theories, because they take into consideration the conscious thinking abilities of a human being. These theories posit that human learners are much more than pigeons and rats where a stimulus/response approach can be used to condition certain behaviors.
Much of this workshop is built on constructivism. This is a learning theory that says that people build (construct) new knowledge upon their previous knowledge. In recent years, there has been considerable research that supports constructivism. It is a theory that can help guide curriculum, instruction, and assessment across all disciplines covered in our formal educational system. It is particularly applicable in mathematics education.
Humans and many other animals have a modest amount of innate ability to deal with numbers. Many different species can perceive the difference between two small numbers -- such as three offspring are present versus only one is present. But, the human innate capacity to count -- 1, 2, 3, 4, many -- is certainly limited relative to needs in our contemporary society. Thus, throughout recorded human history we find evidence of humans developing aids to the innate mathematical abilities of their brains. A baboon bone with 29 incised notches has been dated at 37,000 years old. A 20,000 year old bone has been discovered that has 11 groups of five marks incised on it. More recent example include the counting board, abacus, math tables, mechanical calculators, logarithms, electrical and electronic calculators, and electronic digital computers.
Mathematics is much more than counting and simple arithmetic. It is a cumulative science in which new results are built upon and depend on earlier results. We have a 5,000 year history of formal mathematical development. Humans have accumulated (discovered, developed) a huge amount of mathematical knowledge -- far far more than a person can learn in a lifetime, even if the person spent all of their time studying mathematics.
During these 5,000 years we have developed many aids to learning and 'doing' (using, applying) mathematics. Thus, our educational system is faced by:
- The need to decide what mathematical knowledge and skills should be included in the curriculum
- How to effectively and efficiently help students to gain the mathematical knowledge and skills that are incorporated into the curriculum.
- How to teach (learn) for transfer and retention -- so that the mathematical knowledge and skills that students gain in school are available for use throughout the curriculum, work, and play of their lifetime.
Constructivism and Learning Mathematics
Howard Gardner has identified Logical/mathematical as one of the eight (or more) intelligences that people have. As with the other intelligences in Gardner's classification system, people vary considerably in the innate levels of mathematical intelligence that they are born with.
People like to argue nature versus nurture in terms of both general intelligence and intelligence within specific domains such as those that Gardner lists. We know that the brain has great plasticity, that there is a lot of brain growth after a person is born, that the brain continues to grow new neurons and new connections among neurons throughout life, that certain drugs can damage brain cells, that proper nutrition is needed for proper brain growth, and so on.
A certain amount of math knowledge and skill is innate--genetic in origin. The great majority of a person's math knowledge and skills comes from learning--learning to use parts of the brain that can learn to do math, but were not genetically designed specifically for this purpose.
Math is a cumulative, vertically structured discipline. One learns math by building on the math that one has previously learned. That, of course, sounds like Constructivism.
In brief summary, here is a constructivist approach to thinking about mathematics education.
- People are born with an innate ability to deal with small integers (such as 1, 2, 3, 4) and to make comparative estimates of larger numbers (the herd of buffalo that we saw this morning is much smaller than the herd that we are looking at now.)
- The human brain has components that can adapt to learning and using mathematics.
- Humans vary considerably in their innate mathematical abilities or intelligence.
- The mathematical environments that children grow up in vary tremendously.
- Thus, when we combine nature and nature, by the time children enter kindergarten, they have tremendously varying levels of mathematical knowledge, skills, and interests.
- Even though we offer a somewhat standardized curriculum to young students, that actual curriculum, instruction, assessment, engagement of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and so on varies considerably.
- Thus, the are huge differences among the mathematical knowledge and skill levels of students at any particular grade level or in any particular math course. In addition, there are considerable differences in their ability to learn mathematics.
- Thus, mathematics curriculum, instruction, and assessment needs to appropriately take into consideration these differences. One way to do this is through appropriate use of constructivist teaching and learning principles.
It is interesting to note that many researchers and practitioners in ICT have come to the same conclusion about teaching and learning ICT. They recommend a constructivist approach.
Journaling, Project-based Learning, and Problem-based Learning are all standard components of a constructivist teaching/learning environment. (Note that both project-based and problem-based learning are abbreviated PBL.) One of the strands of this workshop is devoted to ICT-Assisted PBL
Situated Learning and Learning Mathematics
Situated Learning is emerging as a learning theory that is particularly relevant to teaching. Thus, this topic needs to be presented in some detail here. My current bibliography on the topic is given at:
Situated learning tends to have characteristics of Project-Based Learning and Problem-Based Learning. It also appears to tie in closely with general ideas of Problem Solving. Thus, in Problem Solving we talk about domain specificity and domain independence. The argument is that one needs a lot of domain specific knowledge to solve problems within a domain. Situated Learning tends to be within a domain (a situation). Thus one might call it a Domain Specific Learning Theory.
6 Education Theorists Examples
Other Learning Theories
Famous Theorists In Education
See: http://otec.uoregon.edu/learning_theory.htm
6 Education Theorists
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