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MY NOTES on 'Understanding & Using Educational Theories'

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 21 Apr 2021, 16:41

Understanding & Using Educational Theories 

Karl Aubrey & Alison Riley (2nd Edition) London, Sage (2019)

Harvard Reference

Aubrey. K & Riley. A (2019) Understanding & Using Educational Theories:  (2nd Edition) London, Sage

  • Benjamin Bloom: Learning through taxonomies
  • Albert Bandura. Learning through observation.
  • David Kolb: Experiential Learning Theory
  • Guy Claxton: Learning Power
  • Dylan Wiliam: Assessment for Learning
  • Carol Dweck: Mindsets and Motivation

+ Three new chapters which follow the same format as the same edition:

  • Albert Bandura
  • Dylan Wiliam
  • Carol Dweck

Teaching … 'a complex and messy phenomenon, with a multitude of contrasting facets to take into account which need a reflective and professional approach, involving ‘not just knowing what you do and how to do it. It is also about why you do it’. (p xiii Wiliams, 2008) (p.2) 

Behaviourism, constructivism, and humanism. 

There are three main psychological schools of thought which are of relevance to education and learning theory: behaviourism, constructivism, and humanism. 

Learning is simply a matter of stimulus and response (Wallace, 2008:32) (p.2)

Constructivists 

The constructivists believe that meaningful knowledge and understanding are actively constructed by learners … which builds on what they already know, causing them to change and adapt and invent ideas’. (Wallace, 2008:61)

Humanists

The humanism school of thought argues that education should focus on the needs of the individual learner, and that what is important are the aspects of personal and emotional growth. (p.3)

Humanists contend that the purpose of schools is to ‘meet the needs of the individual learner not the other way around’. (Petty, 1998:8)

John Dewey contended that learning should focus on practical life experiences and social interaction c/p8

For genuine learning to take place learners needed to make independent evaluations based on their interests.

Facilitating learning by encouraging and channelling individual curiosity and motivation so that they can develop intellectually. 

Learning as a cycle of experience where lessons are planned and executed based on observation and reflection from their own and their learners’ previous experiences and interests (Woods, 2008)

Wanted schools to accept pupils from different classes, cultures and abilities, schools would lay the foundations for building notions of democracy for children.

Opportunistic for action experience (p.11)

Skills and processes to solve problems.

Hegel - learning, developing through creative and active experience.

Kolb - active experience the groundwork for starting knowledge building process (Elkjaer, 2009)

Subject- Specific Facts and the Basis of Theory are necessary for learning to be created and built; it cannot take place just by active experience.

  • Steiner
  • Montessori

Plowden Report (1967)

2014 National Curriculum in England was a return to a subject-based approach (p.16)

England-results driven environment teachers as facilitator and co-collaborator calls into question the role of the teacher and their responsibility in terms of achievement and attainment of the learner.

Get your students to think like real scientists or historians. (p.16)

Like a sports coach it is the students who do the practice, provide the effort and create the gains. 

Dewey - his standpoint on inclusivity came from him witnessing the damage done by privilege and elitism.

  • Reflection
  • Effort
  • Courage
  • Differentiation
  • Diversity
  • Democracy

The teachers have to know the child very well. (p.18)

The teachers must be knowledgeable of cultural inheritance.

Identify the problem.

Experiential learning

Lifelong learning

Vocational education

C2 Montessori 

  • Tap into thor individual needs.
  • Respect
  • Respond to their needs.

NOTE :> Intrinsic motivation (Roopnanine and Johnson, 2005)

C3 Piaget

  • Constructors of their own knowledge.
  • Making meaning from experiences.

Vygotsky - social interactions are essential for learning to take place. (p.46)

Earlier physical and intellectual maturity (p.47)

Less formality - children learning in groups + some are more knowledgeable.

@ Secondary - activity which involves abstract reasoning, allowing pupils to demonstrate their concrete thinking.

Adaptation - learning through adjusting to new information and experiences, and can proceed through either assimilation or accommodation.

Lev Vygotsky - (p58)

Social background and construction of … knowledge … which is in tune with the culture within which they mature (Keenon, 2002)

Scaffolding - assistance.

C5 Skipper (p.77)

Vs extrinsic motivation to moderate behaviour.

‘Learning students to find their own pleasure and satisfaction in learning activity proper’. (Richelle, 1993:173)

‘Feedback should be given instantaneously given in order that children are aware of where they went wrong and can rectify this immediately’. (p.79)

C6 Benjamin Bloom 

Six hierarchical levels from simple to more complex

The cognitive domain taxonomy

  1. Knowledge
  2. Comprehension
  3. Application
  4. Analysis
  5. Synthesis
  6. Evaluation
  7. Receiving
  8. Responding
  9. Valuing
  10. Organising
  11. Conceptualising
  12. Characterising by value or value concept

The psychomotor domain taxonomy

  • Reflex moments 
  • Perceptual abilities 
  • Physical abilities 

A valuable aid for the planning of lessons, assessments and programmes of study (p.90)

What’s their level of ability at the start of the assignment?

Counter early disappointments.

Modify teaching and learning resources to the individual needs and interests of the student (Husen, 2001)

Develop talent (Bloom, 1976)

Most disadvantaged children … spend less time in direct interaction with their parents than middle-class children do.

Mavlow : Food, Shelter, Safety

Formative Learning 

Teaching and assessment so they can all achieve in an already crowded curriculum. (p.93)

Mastery learning in practice takes a huge amount of time and groundwork to prepare resources, plan sessions, organise the classroom environment and give summative feedback to learners (O'Donnell, 2007)

The terms are used to set learning objectives in short-term planning for lessons and medium/long schemes of work. (p94)

Learning objectives (Petty 1998: 347)

  • Comprehension
  • Application
  • Analysis
  • Synthesis
  • Evaluate

Cognitive : reproductive tasks or reasoning tasks.

Reproduction tasks: knowledge, comprehension, application.

Require low cognitive effort (p.95)

Reasoning Tasks:

Analysis, synthesis and evaluation - involve a deeper learning experience for a student.

Bloom’s taxonomies five teachers a framework to check that their planning and teaching help progress children’s learning. (p.95)

As pupils gain knowledge of their subject, their behaviour and awareness develop, which allows them to use and value the skills attained. (Huddleston and Unwin, 2002)

REF: Bloom, B., Hastings, J. and Madans, G. (eds) Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning. New York. McGraw-Hill.

C7 Malcolm S.Knowles 

Contextualising Adult Learning - building on existing experiences.,

Internal gratification from the learning process or the desire to pass exams (p.105)

  • Self-concept
  • Role of experience
  • Readiness to learn
  • Orientation for learning
  • Internal motivation
  • Need to know

Classroom layout withdraws vulnerability predisposes the learner to believe that the delivery style will be one of knowledge transition and possibly reinforce their preconceptions of what constitutes a learning environment. (p.110)

Chairs in circles = collaboration or like the AA to ‘share’.

Away from subject-centeredness to one of problem-centredness.

REF: Knowles, M.S. (1950) Informal Adult Education. New York. Assoc. Press.

C8 Jerome Bruner

‘A Spiral Curriculum’ initial presentation, revisited later on to reinforce understanding and give added vigour.

Three ways children convert experiences: through action, imagery and symbols. (p.118)

Structure of learning and how to make it central to teaching.

Readiness for learning.

Intuitive and analytical thinking.

Motives for learning.

Enactive mode: children do things for themselves.

Iconic mode: comprehend images

Symbolic mode: understand abstract language

REF: Bruner - ‘A scaffold to support the efforts of the learner to construct his or her own understanding’ (Olson, 2007:45)

Olson - margins of a complex task to mastery (2007:46)

Blights of poverty, racism and the inequities of social life. (p.127)

C9 Albert Bandura 

> observation of cues by others.

  1. Pay attention

  2. Retention

  3. Reproduce

  4. Motivation to perform an action

‘Most of the behaviours that people display are learned either deliberately through the influence of example’. (Bandura, 1971:5) (p.139) 

Pupils achieving success bring others with them.

Behaviour is learned through observing others as rewards for that behaviour. (p.145)

REF: Bandura. A (1977) Social Learning Theory

C10 Urie Bronfenbrenner

Human development was influenced by the social structure that the individual was part of.

People learn from one another:

  • Observation
  • Replication
  • Modelling

C11 Paulo Freire Oppression

Dialogue based on mutual respect curiosity (p.166)

Students keep journals and read out what they write to each other. (p.175)

Interests, cultures, history of 17 year olds.

C12 Donald Schön (1987:31)

  • Recalling events
  • Feelings
  • Evaluating the experience
  • Integrating new knowledge

TASK

Make a list of the theories and values that you believe underpin your work in your own setting, then ask a colleague to observe you in practice.

Each student has a fascinating story to tell. (p.91)

Reflective Practice

REF: Boud,. D Keogh, R and Walker, D (eds) 1985

Reflection. 

Turning experience into learning.

C13 David Kolb (p.196)

Experiential Learning Theory

What, how and why you do a thing

People learn best when they are engaged in first-hand experiences which can later be reflected as through thinking about the details of the experience alongside the feelings and perceptions which emerged during the experience (Hankin et al, 2001) (p.198)

  • Concrete experience 
  • Reflective observation
  • Abstract conceptualisation
  • Active experimentation 

Fig.13.1 Kolb’s Learning Cycle

REF: Moon, J (1999) Reflection in Learning and Professional Development. London. Kogan Page.

REF: Scön. D (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in practice.

C14 Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger

Learners not passive receivers of knowledge

Wenger’s communities of practice

Wenger (1998) 

  • Communities of practice
  • Mutual engagement
  • Joint enterprise
  • Shared repertoire

Components:

  • Meaning
  • Practice
  • Community
  • Identity

NB. Excessive power interactions hinder admissions and participation.

Blogging

Blogs offer an informal method of writing and give a write the option to air an individual commentary (Rai, 2008:96)

Change layout of the classroom

C15 Guy Claxton

Building student confidence and character.

Process not content 

Competence not comprehension 

Engagement not ability 

Habits of thinking

Reciprocating the behaviour of those they know and trust such as family members and carers.

If children have positive and reasoned experiences which are modelled by these significant others they are more likely to have the emotional intelligence to enable them to work under pressure. (p.231)

Experience in childhood at home and at school is particularly important because these early belief systems whether functional or dysfunctional can be carried through into people’s lives as adults (Claxton, 2002 :122) (p.231) 

  • Resilient
  • Resourceful
  • Reflective 
  • Reciprocal

Teachers need to ‘split-screen’ to retain a dual focus on the content of the lesson and the learning dispositions that are currently being expanded’. (p.237)

Soft creativity

Keep your notes / workings

Keep a blog

Teachers as fallible, inquisitive not know it alls (p.238)

REF: Claxton G & Lucas, B (2004) Being Creative: Essential steps to revitalize your work and life. London. BBC Books.

REF: Gabbert. I. (2002) Essential Motivation in the Classroom. London.

C16 Dylan Wiliam (p.244)

The need for students to assess themselves and understand how to improve.

Students should be involved in the choice of tasks. 

Assess each others work

Provide helpful

Comments which would help pupils improve.

By requiring all pupils to respond to questions also increases inclusivity in the classroom (p.253)

Peer assessment was found to be ‘motivating force for pupils, with pupils applying more care to their work knowing that their peers would be assessing it.’ (p.255)

Pupils should be ‘beneficiaries’ rather than victims of testing’. (p.256)

C17 Carol Dweck

Fixed mindset or growth mindset

Dweck promotes the idea that knowing about how the brain works can foster a love of learning and enhance resilience (Pound, 2009)

Praise that celebrates perseverance, effort, study, hard work and the use of learning strategies (Dweck, 2012) (p.267) Brainology

Real learning comes from a lot of hard work (Matthews and Folsom, 2009:22)

“You really tried hard, that was a good way to do it.”

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Design Museum

Take Your Teaching Online Week 8 : The Power of Analytics

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 6 Dec 2020, 11:29

Professor Bart Rienties of the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University

January 2018 > https://youtu.be/GIWrygqmOIs 

Creative Commons Attribution licence (reuse allowed)

45 minutes? This is how long 'Take Your Teaching Online' gives to undertake the activity. It is far, far too little time to do justice to it. 

That's 35 minutes viewing to begin with add taking notes and 10 minutes to construct a reply. I gave it two hours.

This is worth this amount of effort and more; I will be going back to it. 

There are two reasons why is essential viewing for anyone venturing into teachign online:

1) This is an excellent lesson in how to deliver a lecture

  • The pace, variety, personal story telling, top and tailing (literally) with dogs and then heavy duty data expressed in tables and charts. All the while having the audience to feed in with a poll. 

2) The conclusions that Prof. Bart Rienties draws are profound 

  • Just in the period since the OU changed its fee structure (much more expensive) what students look for has shifted increasingly towards the relevance of the materials and qualifications to their job

The data blows away past perceptions and methods while reinforcing what had been an indicator of excellence vs failure all along. 

  • Student satisfaction surveys bear no relation at all to peformance. 
  • Giving students nothing to do can result in the most activity - it becomes at chance for those 60% of more who are a little behind, or a long way behind, to catch up. 
  • Those who are always leaving it to the last minute and think that they can catch up in a last minute splurge of activity are likely to be those who just pass or fail. 

The best approach all along, and an indicator of excellence, is to get ahead of the curve. 

Not least it gives you breathing space to go back to something when you've had time to think about it, or to hunt down and check through alternative insights. As well as engaging on the subject if you wish outside the class. 

Wzq9IBOoFAgYpmx2qi_LtaqcCLLE1_oe1kOZ0EZYAYjIZICk61M_G3PKYUKNdd4JL4fVLqosVnUHsLGB7yzaQn0TJ0UJox4v4j1FRcW8IROGscZIk9p5xSblUVRFAEtOi5iDYIZwYXpQTcBzHtH7920bOAlcmZ_FdKkeTmUVPA1_8UqVaT8nTbf1mzeS4aNvaZav4Q0F-XR1N6PxPE5qqjD4ugFoKnxMaJW3bzBKZZ2ypO4afSIYvF6nNbD5uHfk_L_s78MLYCzLLUfw

I ask myself, 'these are adults, they are academics, they are Profs and PHDs, and yet some use their phones to give quiz answers answer before they've been given the question. What does this say about us humans? Is it the gambler's gambit?' 

Prof. Bart Rienties was using PollEV.com 

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Bart gets our immediate attention with a puppy. We are introduced to Tabatha from Canine Partners > https://caninepartners.org.uk/ 

By way of engaging metaphors data is first provided on three assistant dogs 

and then from the speakers competitive cycling.

These metaphors are used to indicate different kinds of data, the kind that is useful, and the kind that is not. And the need to be measuring something in the first place 

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The truth will out with the data

QQ: Can we use this data to give students what they want?

Ask them at the end of every module. 

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D_y_HpWAE5GteapfI6OYyWPu04tVi-ME9lvixhcjIQB37fLf1VW3OkwkobeuF6fy36LK5tXvPZA7KjBXxaJNGJoYQGXzo2C34U-g7pWffibFd0nWf6wa9BDcgwZfdzKUdHYY57Sz

Big data set

  • 110,000 students
  • 400 courses

QQ: What makes the course 'good' ? (As in getting results) is it: 

  • Great reachers? 

  • Links well to professional practice?

  • Links well to their career intentions?

  • Quality of the teaching materials?

  • Quality of the teaching?

This is what 40 people from the audience concluded. (40 was the limit of the licence bought from PollEV). 

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Here is the detail: 

rBqP9aIMemihD1yBuXYfHKUVc4GmnkqVwPNV8kEOEo2zUC6hA_-utFoOdsSvomZdgvvkP8nGyN6plt3pgmQeZuoyLMx1AaMr05ghG0yIbwQXeiSm_Nhyp4GRVOFDLKGTRoJVX5mq

What makes an excellent course? 

  • Really good teaching materials

  • Student approval of the assessment method. 

There has been a subtle change over the last few years

  • Perspectives changing to students expecting modules link to the qualification.

NPAr3z0biJh67-kMQLp8a1Y6NoD63seVp-Ocn9pRiseK9ursNpB6N9sAEZVjbPifZ6kU2TKR7eyeL-LQwVp1_zTZHvzd3EGrknusEKx_VgtMN7PxipAVWtFZl_xqupdtBnqBwzfH

NOTE > 

There was NO correlation between student satisfaction and student performance

Students like constructivist learning designs

This is where there is lots of stuff, we take them by the hand … providing lots of content for them to explore.

They did not like when they had to work together with a group, or talk to the teacher. 

The number predictors of passing and continuing is how teachers design the learning and how they communicate during the course.

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Starting to unpack the recipe what helps our students progress so using the social constructivist model.

  • Should we give students what they want? 

  • Students are different! 

  • Most will benefit from knowing what is coming up.

What are students doing on a week by week basis.

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Is there a link between how teachers design and how students engage?

Unpack what is really happening?

Why despite expectations of a lot of student engagement in week 20 was there not?

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Start to map out what students are doing.

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Week 4 time off to prepare … and becomes one of the highest peaks.

69% of what students do is determined by what teachers have designed for them to do.

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Excellent students study more in advance.

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Pass students start to get in the ‘catch up’ phase > they are going ‘off piste

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Fail group > starting to catch up, or never catch up. So how do we give them a chance? A pause to catch up. 

What are our take home messages?

Not all data we collect is meaningful.

What matters is actual behaviour. Big data without context is meaningless.

NOTE > Listening to student feedback is not linked to what they are doing or how they are performing. 

Our students are following the learning design, but many are not. Some diligently stick to the road, others take different routes. 

NOTE > We need to provide alternative effective pathways.

End with Canine partners and foster parents.

Organ donation 

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Design Museum

An introduction to rethinking pedagogy for a digital age.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 16 Mar 2014, 08:25

An introduction to rethinking pedagogy for a digital age

Beetham and Sharp

This is my third, possibly my fourth read of the book Rethinking Pedagogy for a digital age. Now that I am in the thick of it working on quality assurance and testing for corporate online learning it has enormous relevance and resonance.

Reading this I wonder why the OU changed the MAODL to MAODE? Around 2000-2003? From the Masters in Open and Distance Learning to the Masters in Open and Distance Education.

Beetham and Sharpe have much to say about the relevance or otherwise of pedagogy and its teaching bias.

Pedagogy = the science of teaching not the activity of learning. (L460: Kindle Reference)

The term ‘teaching; denies the active nature of learning an individuals’ unique capacities to learn (Alexander, 2002) L477

How does e-learning cater for the fact the learners differ from one another in the way that they learn? L477

Guiding others to learn is a unique, skilful, creative and demanding human activity that deserves scholarship in its own right. L477

This quote is relevant to H807 Innovations in e-learning and other MAODE modules:

'Papyrus and paper chalk and print, overhead projectors, educational toys and television, even the basics technologies of writing were innovations once'. L518

I like this too:

The networked digital computer and its more recent mobile and wireless counterparts are just the latent outcomes of human ingenuity that we have at our disposal. L518

  • Learning resources and materials
  • Learning environment
  • Tools and equipment
  • Learning activities
  • Learning programme or curriculum

Designed for:

  • Practice
  • Feedback
  • Consolidation
  • Learning Design – preparational and planning
  • Investigation
  • Application
  • Representation or modelling
  • Iteration
  • Teachers tailor to learner needs
  • Tutors can ascertain who needs what
  • Validation
  • Process
  • QA
  • Review

Are there universal patterns of learning or not?

Pedagogical Thought

Constructivism – Jonassen et al 1999

Social Constructions – Vygotsky 1986

Activity Theory – Engeström et al 1999

Experiational Learning – Kolb 1984

Instructional Design – Gagné et al 2004

Networked and collaborative work – McConnell 2000

Learning Design Jochems et al 2004

I was wondering whether, just as in a story, film or novel requires a theme, so learning asnd especially e-learning, according to Mayes and de Frietas ‘needs to be based on clear theoretical principles.

E-enhancements of existing models of learning.

Technology enables underlying processes common to all learning.

Cf Biggs 1999 Constructivist L737

Teaching for Quality Learning at University Buckingham SRHE OUP

 

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