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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

MY NOTES 'Learning Theories Simplified' by Bob Bates

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Apr 2021, 16:36

This is my teaching bible. These are my notes. Somewhat cryptic but I have my favs. These are quote ready so that as I write or reflect on my practice I have the right words and person to hand. Where I have picked out the full reference to a book it is because I plan to dig further - to get that book if I don't have it already. 

I have truly found this process transformative. All kinds of teaching in the widest sense of the word have improved - we humans are by default teachers and learners. How else have we got to where we are? Writing a blog on a distance learning website rather then sniffing about in the bushes all day for something to eat. 

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Classical Learning Theories (p.1) 

Plato ‘nature’

Aristotle 'nurture’

  • Behaviourism - react to stimuli
  • Cognitivism - individuals create, rather than receive knowledge
  • Humanism - the individual and the nature of learning

Being Socratic (p.9)

  • Never be afraid to make mistakes

  • Try to avoid giving out too many answers

  • Have the clase share their wisdom

Plato (p.10)

It is in a learner’s nature to behave in the manner that they do.

Aristotle (p.12)

Examine, interpret, self-expansive and develop self-belief.

Tips for the Class:

  • Set high expectations

  • Recognise tasks completed

  • Recognise effort

  • Look for answers themselves

  • A few early wins

Nature (p14) vs Nurture

Biologists - Behaviourists

Nietzsche (p.18)

What is personal to the student matters

What a student currently believes is important

Learning is an active process

Dewes (p20)

Learners should be provided with quality experiences that engage and build their existing experiences. 

Shared thinking and reflection should be the cornerstone of teaching.

Sartre (p22)

Education to understand who you are and your version of reality

It's a mistake when you blame it on fate and not on yourself

Freire (p.24)

Build on the language, experience and skills of the learner.

Story of Jane Elliot teaching segregation to white kids by separating them by eye colour. (p.24)

Critical consciousness

Action - Reflection - Action (p.24)

Get a rich picture of the learner’s perspective 

Have students open up about things that could be affecting their learning

Behaviourism (p.27)

Thorndike Skinner Englebaum

Pavlov Gagne

Stimulus/Response

Edison 1% inspiration / 99% perspiration (p.29)

Spell out the rules and regulations relating to how you want people to respond and the penalties for infringing them. (p.30)

Colman (p.36)

People don’t apply their learning unless they have a reason to do so.

Latent Learning

Ask the individual what experience they have of the subject matter.

Fish around and play detective

Gagné (p.38)

Gain Attention

Set out objectives (what they will be able to do!)

Stimulate prior learning

Engagement


Present content

Provide guidance

Elicit performance

Delivery


Assess performance

Provide feedback

Enhance retention

Assessment


Gagné Nine Levels (p.38-39)

  1. Get their attention

  2. What they will be able to do

  3. Test prior knowledge

  4. Organise logically

  5. Support with examples

  6. Demonstrate understanding

  7. Give feedback

  8. Final Assessment

  9. Understanding through use


Engelmann

  • Direct instruction model
  • Differentiate learner’s ability
  • Clear steps. 
  • Gradual steps

Cognitivism

Constructivism/Connectivism


Dewey-Piaget-Bandura

19115-1935-1959


Dewey (p.49)

Learning is relatable

Encourage people to have a personal interest in the subject matter

Design experiences that lead to independent learning

Research the student’s interests

Show its relevance to the modern/current world and their lives


Köhler

Gestalt (p.46)

Interacting relationships from failure through reflecting perception to insight


Encourage new ideas (p.47)

  • Use techniques
  • Reassure learners
  • Evaluate want went wrong
  • Keep on trying to find out 
  • Allow not to be bound by emphasis on ‘delivering the content’.

Vygotsky

MKO > Most Knowledgeable Other

ZPD > Zone of Proximal Development


Like ‘flow’ and Mehaly Csikszentmihalyi


Scaffolding

  • Build interest in the subject
  • Break the task into smaller sub tasks

Use MKOs


Piaget (p.50)

  • Stage of cognitive development
  • Take an active, mentoring role
  • Learn from peers
  • Learn from mistakes
  • The process of learning as well as the outcome
  • Respect limitations

Try to cater for all your learner’s needs - some flourish in a group, others on their own. (p.51)


Bandura (p.52)

Children are copycats.


Ausubel (p.54)

Link new concepts with existing understanding and knowledge

New materials should not be introduced unless it can be integrated into what is already known.


Bruner (p.56)

  • Personal participation
  • Actively in the process of knowledge acquisition
  • Design sessions that help the individual
  • Discover the relationships between bits of information

Give the students the information, but have them organise it to solve a problem.

  • Assess
  • Ask
  • Discover
  • Determine
  • Find out (assess)

Section 1.4 Humanism

People have a natural potential for learning

Most significant learning takes place when the individual can see that the subject matter is relevant to them.

Knowles (p.62)

Adult learners are more concerned with learning in order to complete tasks or solve problems than just learning subjects.

Who are you to define when or if I have become an adult?

Rogers (p.64)

Facilitating the process of individuals arriving at their own solutions.

  • Be true to yourself
  • Consider issues from the other person’s standpoint
  • Accept others for what they are

Class Facilitator

  1. Set the mood/climate

  2. Agreement on outcomes

  3. A range of resources

  4. Find out what they learnt

Maslow (p.66)

You can’t teach anyone anything unless they want to.

(You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink) JV

  • Physical
  • Psychological
  • Affiliation
  • Esteem
  • Self-fulfilment

Mezirow (p.68)

  • Experience of life
  • Critical reflection
  • Rational discourse

(What you learn at home/family or immediate community) JV

Summary of Part I (p.92)

Behaviorist theory relates to reactive

Learning and is underpinned by conditioning and reinforcement

Humanist theory is about reflective learning dependent on experience and self-efficacy.

NOTE :> Test learners’ prior knowledge of skills at the start of every lesson.

Express less objectives in terms of what the learner will know or be able to do at the end of the lesson. (p.93)

Give constant feedback on performance throughout the lesson.

Professionalism (p.100)

The seven habits of highly effective teachers:

  1. Creative in their use of materials

  2. Competent in their knowledge of the subject

  3. Caring towards learners 

  4. Communicative in the way they support learners to believe in themselves

  5. Confident and having a high sense of value of self and others

  6. Considerate in the way they approach learners

  7. Calm in being able to understand and manage difficult situations

Petty (p.102)

  1. Be Creative
  2. Solve problems
  3. Use knowledge productively
  4. Use knowledge meaningfully
  5. Increase their desire to want to learn

Inspiration - spontaneous

Clarification - intentions 

Evaluation - SWOT

Distillation - evaluation and chose 

Incubation - reflection 

Perspiration - effort 

Schneider (p.107)

Earn the respect of your learners by showing an interest in them as individuals.

Purkey (p.108) = Engagement

Teachers need to communicate effectively and invite students to participate in learning

Respect, care, trust, optimism.

Berne (p.110) = Confidence

High Self - confidence and high confidence in learners results in a harmonious situation in the classroom which will be characterised by constructive and cooperative relationships.

Dealing with conflict - focus on the issue not the person (p.115)

Learning Styles - the Debate

Coffield et al. (2004)

Should we be using learning styles?

Honey and Mumford (1986)

Manual of Learning Styles

The ‘idiosyncratic’ way in which an individual acquires, processes, comprehends and retains information. (p.117)

Neil Fleming - VARK (p.120)

(I disagree with this nonsense JV)

Kolb (p.122-123)

  • Divergers
  • Assimilations
  • Convergers
  • Accommodators

Peter Honey and Alan Mumford (p.124-125)

  • Activists - learn by doing
  • Reflectors - stand back
  • Theorists - think it through
  • Pragmatists - problem solving

Don’t teach in a way that caters for only one style of teaching (p.127)

Briggs-Myers & Cook-Briggs (p.127-129)

Myers & Briggs

  • Extrovert - Introvert
  • Sensor - Intuitor
  • Thinkers - Feelers
  • Judges - Perceivers 

ENFP (p.129)

Not having to deal with routine and uninspiring tasks. 

Understand that in a group of learners there will be a range of different personalities.

Don’t prepare learning materials that cater for only one personality type.

Sternberg (p.131)

The key to effective teaching is variety and flexibility in order to accommodate any way of thinking and learning styles, systematically varying your teaching and assessment methods to reach any learner. 

REF: Sternberg, R.J. 13 Thinking / Learning Styles

Motivation (p.133)

The thinking you do to get others to do something.

Something that happens, inside people that gets them to do something.

Do students accept:

  • They need to learn
  • They have the potential to learn
  • Learning as a priority
  • Classroom facilities
  • Student input
  • Knowledge/enthusiasm for the subject
  • Approachable but professional
  • Set realistic challenges
  • Positive and helpful

Encourage your learners to believe in themselves (p.137)

X/Y Teachers / Students (p.138-139)

Don’t let the people (learner/student) who crave power undermine your authority. (p.141)

Curzon’s Fourteen Point Plan

Show the learner how each lesson objective dovetails with long term learning intentions as set out in the course aims and scheme of work.

Set challenging but achievable tasks - aim for one level above.

Make learning materials interesting and meaningful.

Enthusiasm

Group Activities

Problems to solve (p.143)

REF: Curzon, L.B. (2013) Teaching in Further Education (7th) London: Continuum

Carol Dweck (p.144-145)

Most people are at either end of a spectrum. 

Fixed mindsets 40% - Growth mindset 40%

  • Intelligence is not fixed and can be developed through hard work and the accumulation of knowledge and understanding.
  • Potential full potential can only be reached through constant learning.
  • Validation: show the learner that they can become whoever they wish and should never try to justify themselves to others.
  • Challenge: get them to welcome the challenge and be willing to take reasonable risks to overcome this and improve. (p.144) 
  • Learning: get them to value learning for what it will do for them.

Dweck argues growth mindset learners are motivated by inner desires to improve rather than by external stimuli. In this respect, none of the above interventions will work unless the learner is intrinsically motivated to want them to work.

How to motivate your learners to have a growth mindset (p.145)

  • Praise effort as much as praise results.
  • Success comes from hard work not the individual.
  • Failure is the result of lack of effort only.
  • Use analogies, metaphors, and role models to demonstrate just what can be achieved through hard work and effort.

Get students to reflect on the effort they put in to achieve the results they got. 

Convince learners that every setback is a challenge and should be viewed as an opportunity.

NOTE :> "You really tried hard there."

Encourage the use of self-assessment and peer assessment.

REF: Dweck, C.S (2012) Mindset: How you fulfil your potential. London: Robinson.

Section 2.3 Behaviour Management

Classroom rules are in the interests of learners and teachers (p.148)

Involve learners in setting the ground rules (p.149)

Some good ideas here on managing classroom behaviour. (p.151)

Kainin, J.S. (1970)

Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms. New York: Holt, Reinhart & Wilson

Working and long-term memory (p.154)

Memory is the residue of thought.

Encourage learners to think about a subject in a way they find interesting will enhance their capacity to remember the subject. (p.154)

Critical thinking requires background knowledge.

Learning is impossible without practice - practice reinforces basic skills and protects against forgetting

NOTE :> Learning styles are futile: effective teaching focuses on the content of the lesson, not differences in the learners’ preferred style of learning.

  • Questions
  • Case studies
  • Stories
  • Analogies
  • Practice

Don’t overload your learners (p.155)

Test your learners prior knowledge of the subject and build on what they already know as a way of helping them to understand new material.

Cowley (p.156)

NOTE :> Knowledge is power: whatever system your organisation has in place for dealing with disciplinary matters, make sure you fully understand it.

If you are uncertain about what is allowed, learning will sense it and exploit it.

REF: Cowley, S (2014) Getting the Buggers to Behave (5th Edn) London: Bloomsbury Education.

Psychopaths and how to deal with them. (p.158)

Section 2:5 Coaching and Mentoring

Teachers are (    ) trained professionals who work with people on developing their understanding of an issue. (p.161)

Coaches: to develop specific skills.

Mentoring: a relationship of mutual trust.

(p.162) see diagram


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Whitmore : the ultimate goal of the coach is as a facilitator who helps the person select the best options.

Bob Bates (p.166)


C

Clarify the role

O

Organise goals and objectives

A

Act with conviction

C

Confirm that expectations are met

H

Have a strategy for setbacks

I

Inspire creative thinking

N

Never be afraid of failure

Get to know the person


Teamworking (p.173)

In order for people to find a reason to work as a member of a team, they need a common purpose and sense of identity. 

  • Forming > Storming (p.174-175)
  • Norming
  • Performing > Adjourning

NOTE :> Francis Buckley

And team teaching (p.178)

Teaching people to be competent is good but supporting them to be creative is where the added value is. (p.181)

Part 4: Planning, Delivering and Assessing Learning (p.255)

Some teachers will be given pre-set curricula and lesson plans and have little scope for variation from these. Others will be given a blank sheet of paper and total freedom in planning lessons.

Curriculum planning

All the learning experiences which are planned and delivered. (p.257)

Ralph Tyler - a behaviourist approach. (p.259)

Objectives

Content

Teaching methods 

Assessment

  • Formulate objectives (p.261)
  • Select content
  • Select teaching methods
  • Delivering teaching
  • Measuring outcomes

Hilda Taba (p.262)

Content/Objectives

Evaluation/Methods

= learning objectives

‘Grassroots’ - developed by teachers.

Daryl Wheeler (p.266)

Rational Objective Model - teacher-centred

Diagnose learner needs

  • Learning outcomes as behavioural changes
  • Content taking account of desired behavioural changes
  • Learning experiences and content interrelated 
  • Evaluation to inform diagnosis of learners needs

NOTE :> Place the interests of your learners first by diagnosing their needs.

Always express your outcomes in terms of what change in behaviours you expect from your learners as a result of the learning experience.

Jerome Bruner (p.272)

Any subject can be taught effectively in some form to learners at any stage of their development.

A logical progression from simplistic ideas to complicated ideas.

Philip Jackson (p.224)

Recall is the highest form of intellectual achievement.

Lesson Planning (p.279)

NOTE :> Why lesson plans are important: structure, logic, objectives, assessment - an aid for the teacher.

Bloom (p.280)


Knowledge

Recall/Recognise information

Comprehension

Understanding the meaning

Application

Putting ideas into action

Analysis

Interpreting and assessing practice

Synthesis

Developing new approaches

Evaluation

Assessing how well the new approaches are working


Attract learner’s attention (p.285)

REF: Bloom, B. and Krachwork/ D (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. London: Longman

Pritchard (p.288)

  • Focus - is it clear and explicit
  • Content - based on existing knowledge
  • Context - Is this appropriate 
  • Is there scope for social interaction and for activity?
  • Is there variety and choice?

  • Focus
  • Content
  • Context
  • Interaction
  • Variety
  • Challenge

George Doran (p.290) 

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Acceptable
  • Realistic
  • Time bound
  • Exciting
  • Rewarding

Make sure you can describe in a clear and unambiguous manner, what learners will be able to do by the end of the session.

Tell the learners how their progress will be monitored.

‘By the end of the session, you will be able to … “ (p.292)

Delivering learning (p.295)

If teaching is a methodical, carefully planned delivery based on research and well-structured approached ( > then self-paced digital is the future) JV

If teaching (and being taught) is a performance where the teacher (more like a standup) responds to their audience’s reaction and relies on instincts and creativity ( > then it is 1 to 1 and classroom based).

Delivering Learning

Science or art? (p.295)

  • Behaviourist - directing learners
  • Cognitivist - transferring knowledge
  • Neurologist - process info
  • Humanist - guide

John Hattie (p.296) Visible learning

Evaluate the effect of teaching on learners

Assessment is feedback about impact

Ian Reece and Stephen Walker

  • Verbal praise - for effort
  • Feedback - timely
  • Arousal - baffle/perplex
  • Unexpected - mix it up
  • Familiar - know them

Usual Context (p.300)

Games and simulation

REF: Reece, I and Walker, S (2007)

Teaching, Training and Learning (6th Ed)

Sunderland: Business Education Publishers. 

Sayer and Adey (p.301)

If teachers give the answers learners remember the facts. If learners develop the answers themselves, they will understand.

Talking to learn. Robin Alexander (p.305)
(Isn’t this an Oxbridge tutorial being described?) JV
Carol Tomlinson (pp.304-307)
Any group of learners will differ in their motivation to learn, their knowledge of the subject and their preferred styles of learning. 

Learners respond best when they are pushed slightly beyond the level where they as individuals can work without assistance.
Learners need to see the connection between what’s being taught and their own interests.

Each learner should have the opportunity to explore the subject in terms of what they want to get out of the subject.

Learners learn better in a classroom environment where they feel significant and respected.

Section 4:4 Assessment and Feedback

  • Accountability
  • Recognition
  • Certification

  • Inductive - are they right for the course?
  • Formative - ongoing throughout 
  • Summative - at the end of every lesson
  • Deductive - at the end of the course

REF: Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (p.310-311)

  • Active involvement
  • Feedback based on clear learning intentions
  • Methodologies flexible to feedback
  • Learners able to self-assess and assess others

For formative assessment to be effective teachers need to get inside their learner’s heads and to connect with their thinking and feelings.

Clarify with your learners what the planned learning outcomes are.

Agree milestones where feedback will be given.

Encourage a culture of self-assessment and peer-assessment in the class.

If the purpose of the lesson is to learn how to make an omelette then don’t engage learners in debate about what came first, the chicken or the egg. (p.313)

REF: Jim Gould and Jodi Roffey-Barentsen (pp.318-319)

A six stage model for giving feedback.

  1. Listen to what the learner has to say about their performance

  2. Confirm that you have listened to and understood what the learner had to say 

  3. Inform the learner of the thinking behind your assessment of their performance

  4. Focus on specific points in the performance.

  5. Summarise the points that have been discussed

  6. Agree what action the learner needs to take to improve performance.

QQ: “What did you feel you did well?”

To gauge their level of self-awareness (p.318)

Shute uses the analogy of feedback as being likened to a good murder, in that a learner needs a MOTIVE (a desire for it),opportunity (can do something with it) and means (the ability to use it effectively). (p.320)

Focus feedback on the task not the learner.

  • Specific
  • Clear/simple
  • Elaborate
  • Chunked
  • Unbiased/objective

Provide feedback immediately after a learner has attempted a task.

“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one who must walk through it.”

REF: Shute, V.J. (2008) Focus on formative feedback. Review of Educational Research 78(1) 153-189

Section 4.5 Evaluating Teaching and Learning

Measure the quality of teaching relative to fitness for purpose: will the teaching do what the learners want it to do?

Reflection

Evaluation (p.323)

Schön (p.326)

Reflection on action

After the event > review, describe, analyse and evaluate.

Reflection in action

Thinking-while-doing - on your feet about what to do next.

NOTE :> ‘Reflecting-in-action’ - is at the core of the ‘professional artistry’, where practitioners develop the talent to ‘think-on-their-feet’ and improvise.

Stephen Brookfield (p.328-329)

See practice through four complementary lenses or what I would call their 'point of view' (POV) 

  • Autobiographical lens (pov)
  • Learner’s lens (pov)
  • Colleagues (pov)
  • Theoretical literature (pov)

Brookfield, S (1995)

Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.


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Experiential Learning David Kolb

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I've done a lot of this of late: reading hefty tomes on education. It makes the pragmatism and evidence based practices of Dylan Wiliam all the more important. Here goes for Kolb. There are a few quotes worth citing and no doubt some theories I might, with your asssitance, get my head around. 

Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and development

  • David A. Kolb (1984)
  • New Jersey, USA
  • Prentice Hall PTR

Eight Chapters

  • Intro
  • Towards competence
  • Working knowledge
  • Pertinent jobs

C1. Adaptation and learning - this is the unique human skill

And why something like Covid-19 is a catastrophe and a catalyst for change

‘Learning is no longer ‘for the kids’ but a central lifelong task essential for personal development and career success.

Experiential learning:

  • Internships
  • Field placements
  • Work/Study Assignments
  • Structured exercises
  • Role Play

Gaming simulations (Kolb, 1984)

  • Apprenticeships
  • T Levels
  • Learning Model Cos

Online selling (2021)

E.G. Digital literacy reflection ‘adults’ learning interests are embedded in their personal histories, in their visions of who they are in the world and what they can do and want to do.’ Rita Weathersby (1978, p.19)

NOTE : > For these adults learning methods that combine work and study, theory and practice provide a more productive arena for learning. (Kolb, 1984, p.6)

Tension/Controversy conflict - brings about discussion and learning (p.10)

In and off the moment i.e. living it.

Being detached enough to see this process and context for what it is.

Open atmosphere

Formal models

Vitality and creativity

C2 The Process of Experiential Learning

The central role of that experience plays in the learning process (p.20)

Here-and-now concrete experience - observations and reflection - formation of abstract concepts and generalisations > testing implications

The Lewinian Model (p.21) 

Dewey’s Model more detailed

Knowledge obtained partly by recollection and partly from the information, advice, and warming of those who observed.

Piaget’s model and stages (p.23)

0-2 years concrete/active sensory-motor stage

Feeling, touching, handling, goal-orientated behaviour.

2-6 years - beginning to reflective orientation internalising actions and converting them to images.

7-11 years - logic of classes and relations. The child increases his independence.

12-15 years

Jerome Bruner ‘Toward a Theory of Instruction’ - makes the point that the purpose of education is to stimulate inquiry and skill in the process of knowledge getting, not to memorise a body of knowledge.

Implant new ideas (p.28)

Dispose of or modify old ones

Resistance to new ideas

Bring out examine and test the learner’s belief and themes

Integration and substitution

Wallas (1926)

Four stages:

  1. Incorporation
  2. Incubation
  3. Insight
  4. Verification

Fig.2.4

See this for elements to include in a lesson/sessions

C3 Structural Foundation of the Learning Process

A four-stage cycle: (p.40)

  1. Concrete experience 
  2. Reflective observation
  3. Abstract conceptualisation
  4. Active experimentation

How people do things regardless of it being the best approach.

Overtime, individuals develop unique possibilities - processing structures that the dialectic tensions between the pretension and transformation dimension and consistently resolved in a characteristic fashion.  (p.76)

As a result of our heredity equipment, our particular past life experience, and the demands of our present environment, most people develop learning styles that emphasize some learning abilities over others. (p.76)

Jungian Types

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

A job choice/success

A major function of education is to shape students’ attitudes and orientations toward learning.

Positive attitude

Thirst for knowledge

Not ‘learning styles’ so much as ‘lifestyle’ choice and approaches.

NOTE :> Learning styles are conceived not as fixed personality traits but as possibility-processing structures from unique individual programming of the basic but flexible structure of human learning

Orientations

Transactions with the world (pp 95-96)

C5 The Structure of Knowledge

Knowledge does not exist solely in books, mathematical formulas or philosophical systems, it requires active learners to interact with, interpret, and elaborate these symbols. (p.121)

Learning style is shaped by what is being taught, the faculty where it is taught and those teaching. Learners adapt to fit what is deemed necessary for the task with engineering, for example adapting compared to social science or the humanities.

Concrete - abstract

Archive - reflective

In his 1955 Lithograph entitled ‘lberations’ M.C. Esher captures the essence of the three stages of experiential learning:

Acquisition

Specialisation

Integrate Development (p.160)

Learning and Development in HE

Acquisition

Preparation

Basic skills

Utilise the tools of social knowledge

Specialisation

Selection

Meet social needs

Integration

Unique capabilities of the whole person toward creativity, wisdom and integrity.

Different learning environments required for different subjects and outcomes - the learner adopts. (p.198)

Affectively complex

Simulate/mirror

Current

Schedules adjust to the learners needs

Perceptually complex

Understanding something

Identify relationships

Define problems for investigation

Collect relevant info 

Research a question

Systematically complex

Solved problem with a right or best solution

Teacher as taskmaster

Behaviorally complex

A practical problem with not right or best answer

Students need to adopt the best learning approach required by a specific task - it is the successful learning of the task that dictates the learning approach or ‘style’ required NOT the students. (p.200)

Concrete experience

Best suited to:

Personalised feedback

Sharing feelings

TEachers as friendly helpers

Activities orientated toward applying skills to real-life problems

Peer feedback

Self-directed 

Autonomous vs theoretical reading

Reflective Observation

Teachers provide expert explanations

Guide discussions

Lecturing

Not task-orientated situations

Abstract Conceptualisation

Case studies

Thinking alone

Theory readings

Not group exercises

Personalised feedback

Active-experimentations tendencies

Small group discussions 

Projects, peer feedback

Homework problems

Applying skills to particular problems vs lectures, task masters evaluations right/wrong

Approaches that individualise the learning process to meet the students’ goals, learning style, pace, and life situation, will pay off handsomely in increased learning (p.202)

Teachers as coaches or managers of the learning process are not dispensers of information.

Curricula design

Content objectives

Learning style

Growth and creativity objectives

With experiential learning and once in work students take on the full range of learning approaches based on the environment and needs of what has to be learnt (p.207)

Lifelong Learning and Integrative Development

‘We seek to grow and develop because we must do so to survive - as individuals and as a world community. If there is a touch of aggressive selfishness in our search for integrity, it can perhaps be understood as a response to the sometimes overwhelming pressures on us to conform, submit, and comply, to be the object rather than the subject of our life history’. (p.209)

We are a ‘teaching species’ as well as a ‘learning species’. (p.211)

ME > Opportunities for creativity/role innovation (Schein, 1972) - the extent to which a career offers continuing challenges and opportunities for changing roles and job functions.

(p.228) Fig.8.2

Fact > Value

Relevance > Meaning

Courage, justice, love, wisdom

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P is for your Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 3 Jun 2014, 12:49

 

My personal learning environment

  • Piaget

  • Chris Pegler

  • Personas

  • Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

  • Practice-based Learning

  • Randy Pausch

  • Punk Rock People Management

  • Produsers

Across the period I have been studying MAODE modules the nature, shape, scape and emphasis of my 'personal learning environment' has changed, in part as finances have waxed and wained, I have gone from a borrowed laptop working from print outs to making considerable use of a Kindle and then an iPad, before adding to this armoury a desktop and laptop and keeping all working 'in the cloud' so that it is readily accessed from any device. THIS is how I work 'anytime, anywhere' - each device allows me to tap into a module whether I'm travelling, on the kitchen table, in bed ... in the middle of the night, in the back of the car, on a walk. Whilst I have, typically, a three hour stint when I work during the day, much is picked up at other times, in particular reading on the fly, highlighting passages and then picking these out in notes later. I swear by the mind-mapping app 'SimpleMinds' and have even taken to screen-grabbing pages of books or papers to illustrate and annotate in a graphics app called Studio.

Piaget is an historic name in education that you'll need to read.

Chris Pegler has made her presence felt across the MAODE while I've been doing it ... she may even have been an associate lecturer in 2001 when I made a hesitant start on the thing. More of a doer than many of the academics you read - she has been present as the Chair, at conferences, and online. The kind of educator who engages with students rather than being sniffy about student engagement as too many research-bound academics can be.

Personas are a vital way to visualise your students when designing learning ... or creating any form of communication. As relevant to the creation of e-learning as the creation of anything else.

Practice-based learning or applied learning, sometimes 'just in time' learning has also to be blended learning. It is about effecting direct change in situ, supportive learning in the work-place. A smartphone or tablet with access to the Internet is all it takes rather than specialist papers or books. It's been around for far longer than may be apparent; in 1996 I was working for the RAC when they launched a bespoke handheld device that combined diagnostics, instruction and car payment in a single device called the 'hard body'.

Randy Pausch was an inspirational lecturer on 3d at Carnegie-Mellon University - go see his TED lectures.

Punk Rock People Management is the brain child of an OU MBA alumnus.

Produsers is a term that has not caught on, but sums up the idea of 'user generated content' where we, as students, not only consume or use information, but generate it too. This would include curating or aggregating content to share. It puts the onus of learning in amongst the students.

REFERENCE

Piaget, J. (1970) Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child, New York: Orion Press.

Pegler, C and Littlejohn, A (2004) Preparing for Blended e-Learning, Routledge.

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Constructivism and social constructivism for learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 5 Jun 2014, 05:29

Constructivism is an epistemological belief about what "knowing" is and how one "come to know." Contructivists believe in individual interpretations of the reality, i.e. the knower and the known are interactive and inseparable.

Constructivism rejects the notions that

  1. Knowledge is an identifiable entity with absolute truth value
  2. Meaning can be passed on to learners via symbols or transmission
  3. Learners can incorporate exact copies of teacher's understanding for their own use
  4. The whole concepts can be broken into discrete sub-skills, and that concepts can be taught out of context.

Constructivism, with focus on social nature of cognition, suggests an approach that

  1. Gives learners the opportunity for concrete, contextually meaningful experience through which they can search for patterns, raise their own questions, and construct their own models.
  2. Facilitates a community of learners to engage in activity, discourse, and reflection
  3. Encourages students to take on more ownership of the ideas, and to pursue autonomy, mutual reciprocity of social relations, and empowerment to be the goals.

Who are primary contributors?
Perkins (1992) pointed out the origins of the constructivism:

"Constructivism has multiple roots in psychology and philosophy of this century: the developmental perspective of Jean Piaget, the emergence of cognitive psychology under the guidance of such figures as Jerome Bruner and Ulric Neisser, the constructivist perspective of philosophers such as Nelson Goodman."

This knowledge base will discuss particular the major influence from the field of cognitive science, i.e. the work of Piaget and Bruner, as well as from the work of socio-historical psychologists, such as Vygotsky.

Piaget (Also see Cognitivism)

Piaget's theory is fundamental to cognitivism and to constructivism. His central idea is that "knowledge proceeds neither solely from the experience of objects nor from an innate programming performed in the subject but from successive constructions." (Fosnot, 1996). Piaget (1985) proposed that the mechanism of learning is the process of equilibration, in which cognitive structure assimilates and accommodates to generate new possibilities when it is disturbed based on human's self-organizing tendency.

Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky's sociohistorical development psychology focuses on the dialectic between the individual and society, and the effect of social interaction, language, and culture on learning. To Vygosky (1978), learning is a continual movement from the current intellectual level to a higher level which more closely approximates the learner's potential. This movement occurs in the so-called "zone of proximal development" as a result of social interaction. Thus, an understanding of human thinking depends in turn on an understanding of the mechanism of social experience; the force of the cognitive process deriving from the social interaction is emphasized. Also, the role of the adult and the learners' peers as they conversed, questioned, explained, and negotiated meaning is emphasized.

Vygostky's Sociohistorical Learning Theory or Sociocultural theory

Vygotsky was disappointed with the overwhelming control of environment over human behavior that is represented in behaviorism. Vygotsky (1978) objected to any tendency to equate human beings with animals on the basis of innate reflexes and conditional reflexes. He recognized the higher psychological functions of humans, especially the distinguishing mental process of signification by which humans assign meanings to arbitrary stimuli and with which human learning is determined by the social and historical context. He believed that human development and learning occur through their interactions with the environment and the other people in it.

Three themes that form the core of Vygotsky's theoretical framework: (Wertsch, 1992)

  1. A reliance on a genetic or developmental method:

    Vygotsky (1978) recognized two basic processes operating continuously at every level of human activity: internalization and externalization. Vygotsky proposed that even though every complex mental function is first an interaction between people, it subsequently becomes a process within individuals. It is the transition from the external operation to internal development which undergoes qualitative changes. This transformation involves the mastery of external means of thinking and learning to use symbols to control and regulate one's thinking.

  2. The claim that higher mental processes in the individual have their origin in social processes.
  3. The concept of Zone of Proximal Development: to Vygosky, learning is a continual movement from the current intellectual level to a higher level which more closely approximates the learner's potential. This movement occurs in the so-called "zone of proximal development" as a result of social interaction. The zone of proximal development is the distance between the actual independent development level and the potential development level under the guidance of or in collaboration with peers (Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky believes that human mental activity is a particular case of social experience. Thus, an understanding of human thinking depends in turn on an understanding of the mechanism of social experience; the force of the cognitive process deriving from the social interaction is emphasized.

  4. Mediation: the claim is that mental processes can be understood only if we understand the tools and signs that mediate them. Changing a stimulus situation in the process of responding to it establish mediation, e.g. the gesture of pointing could not have been established as a sign without the reaction of the other person. This also implies that any higher mental function necessarily goes through an external stage in its development because it is initially a social function.

Implications to learning and instruction:

  1. Learning in authentic context: The conception of mediation gives the emphasis to the interaction between individuals and the historical and cultural development. Situate learners in an authentic context, in which learners construct via dialectical relations among people acting, the contexts of their activity, and the activity itself.
  2. Providing Scaffolding: Learning takes place in the social interaction with older, more learned members of the society: learning occurs when individual is prompted to move past current levels of performance and develop new abilities. Thus, provide external support from the instructor, peers, experts, artifacts or tools as the learners construct knowledge.

Bruner

A major theme of Bruner's construction theory is that learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current/past knowledge. The learner selects and transforms information, constructs hypotheses, and makes decisions, relying on a cognitive structure, e.g. schema and mental models, to do so. The interconnection of the new experience with the prior knowledge results in the reorganization of the cognitive structure, which creates meaning and allows the individual to "go beyond the information given".

According to TIP's (Theory Into Practice database) abstract of Bruner's theory, the principles of instruction based on Bruner include:

  1. Readiness: Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and contexts that make the student willing and able to learn
  2. Spiral organization: Instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the student
  3. Going beyond the information given: Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps

Bruner's Constructive Learning

Bruner (1986) claims that constructivism began with Kant's concepts of a priori knowledge, which focuses on the importance of prior knowledge (what we know) to what we perceive from out interactions with the environment. Jonassen (1991) described Kant's ideas of individual construction of reality: " Kant believed in the external, physical world (noumena), but we know it only through our sensation (phenomena) - how the world appears to us."

TIP (Theory Into Practice database) described that Bruner's major theoretical framework is that learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current/past knowledge. In other words, Learning is an active, social process in which students construct new ideas or concepts based on current knowledge. The student selects information, originates hypotheses, and makes decisions in the process of integrating experiences into their existing mental constructs.

What are Bruner's key concepts? (Driscoll, 2000)

Three Modes of presenting understanding
  1. Enactive representation, a mode of representing past events through appropriate motor responses
  2. Iconic representation, which enables the perceiver to "summarize events by organization of percepts and of images
  3. Symbolic representation, "a symbol system which represents things by design features that can be arbitrary and remote, e.g. language
    1. Different from a fixed sequence of developmental stages, Bruner emphasizes the influences from the environment on amplification of the internal capabilities that learners possess.
Bruner's readiness
Piaget's readiness
Ausubel's readiness
Readiness of the subject matter for the learner: how to match instruction to the child's dominant mode of thinking Cognitive readiness of the learner to understand the logical operations in a subject matter Appropriateness in terms of the child's prior knowledge, i.e. what she knows and how she structure that knowledge in memory

 

Different from Piaget's cognitive development, which proposed that the qualitative difference in thinking is a stage-like development, Bruner's concept is that whereas symbolic representation is likely to be used for learning something new in a familiar topic; learners of all ages may resort to enactive or iconic representation when they encounter unfamiliar materials. Thus, to determine what mode of representation will be optimal for instruction requires knowing something about the learner's prior knowledge and dominant modes of thinking.

  1. Schooling as an instrument of culture. Knowing is a process, not a product. Children should be accepted as members and participants in the culture and provide opportunities to make and remake the culture in each generation.

Bruner (1966) states that a theory of instruction should address four major aspects:

  1. Predisposition towards learning
  2. The ways in which a body of knowledge can be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by the learner
  3. The most effective sequences in which to present material
  4. The nature and pacing of rewards and punishments..

Bruner's influence on instruction

  • Spiral Curriculum: Translating material into children's modes of thought: presenting topics consistent with children's forms of thought at an early age and then reintroducing those topics again later in a different form
  • Interpersonal interaction is a means that enable learners to develop cognitive growth: questioning, prompting
  • Discovery learning: discovery as" all forms of obtaining knowledge for oneself by the use of one's own mind"

    Students need to determine what variables are relevant, what information should be sought about those variables, and when the information is obtained, what should be done with it.

    Discovery of a concept proceeds from a systematic comparison of instances for what distinguishes examples from non-examples. To promote concept discovery, the teacher presents the set of instances that will best help learners to develop an appropriate model of the concept.

    Contrast that lead to cognitive conflicts can set the stage for discovery

  • Variables in instruction: nature of knowledge, nature of the knower, and nature of the knowledge-getting process

  • Promote discovery in the exercise of problem solving

  • Feedback must be provided in a mode that is both meaningful and within the information-processing capacity of the learner.

  • Intrinsic pleasure of discovery promote a sense of self-reward

Von Glasersfeld

Von Glasersfeld development of the epistemological basis of the psychological variant incorporates both the Piagetian notion of assimilation and accommodation and the cybernetic concept of viability (Cobb, 1994). The value of knowledge no longer lies in its conveyance of truth, but its viability in individual experience.

Von Glasersfeld (1992) stated that "Truths are replaced by viable models, and viability is always relative to a chosen goal."

Similar to Piaget, von Glasersfeld sees learning as an active process of self-organization in which the individual eliminate 'perturbation' (disequlibrium in Piaget's term) from the interaction with others as well as an active construction of viable knowledge adapted from the interaction with others.

Individuals' construction of their ways of knowing is the focus of von Glaserfeld. But, he also recognizes the importance of social interaction as a process of meaning negotiation in this subjective construction of knowing.

What does it mean to learning?

Constructivism, applied as an explanatory framework of learning, describes how the learner constructs knowledge from experience, which makes it unique to each individual.

Points of view of constructivism bring forth two major trends of explaining how leaning occurs:

  1. cognitive constructivists, focusing on the individual cognitive construction of mental structures
  2. sociocultural constructivists, emphasizing the social interaction and cultural practice on the construction of knowledge.

Both trends believe that:

  1. Knowledge cannot exist independently from the knower; knowledge cannot be reproduced and transmitted to another person.
  2. Learning is viewed as self-regulatory process:
    • Cognitive constructivists focus on the active mental construction struggling with the conflict between existing personal models of the world, and incoming information in the environment.
    • Sociocultural constructivists emphasis the process of enculturation into a community of practice, in which learners construct their models of reality as a meaning-making undertaking with culturally developed tools and symbols (Vygotsky, 1978), and negotiate such meaning thorough cooperative social activity, discourse and debate (Von Glaserfeld, 1992)
  3. Learners are active in making sense of things instead of responding to stimuli. Unlike information processor taking in and storing up information, learners " make tentative interpretations of experience and go on to elaborate and test those interpretations"(Perkins, 1992)

Impacts on Instructional Design

Constructivism provides different views of learning. Learners are no longer passive recipients and reproducers of information.

Learners are active constructors of their own conceptual understanding, and active meaning makers interacting with the physical and social world.

The design of learning environment based on constructivist view of learning emphasizes the integration of three types of human experiences (Vygotsky, 1978):

  1. historical experience, e.g. the traditions and practices of a culture
  2. social experience
  3. adaptation experience, in which people engage in active adaptation, changing the environment.

Below are some general principles of learning derived form constructivism (Smith and Ragan, 2000; Driscoll, 2001; Duffy & Jonassen, 1992):

  1. Learning requires invention and self-organization on the part of learners
  2. Disequilibrium facilitates learning: Errors need to be perceived as a result of learners' conceptions and therefore not minimized or avoided. Thus, challenge students with open-ended investigations in realistic, meaningful contexts need to be offered; allow learners to explore and generate many possibilities, both affirming and contradictory.
  3. Reflective abstraction is the driving force of learning: As meaning-makers, humans seek to organize and generalize across experiences in a representational form
  4. Dialogue within a community engenders further thinking: the learners are responsible for defending, proving, justifying, and communicating their ideas to the classroom community.

Principles of designing learning environment

Jonassen (1996) proposed that learning environments should provide active, intentional, complex, contextualized, reflective, conversational, collaborative, and constructive learning.

Image from David Jonassen's site

Driscoll (2000) listed constructivist principles for designing learning:

  • Embed learning in complex, realistic and relevant environments
  • Provide a social negotiation as an integral part of learning
  • Support multiple perspectives and the use of multiple modes of representation
  • Encourage ownership in learning
  • Nurture self-awareness of the knowledge construction process

About design of instruction

Based on Jonassen (1992) and Driscoll (2000), constructivism has the following impacts on instructional design:

  1. Instructional goals and objectives would be negotiated not imposed
  2. Task analysis would concentrate more on considering appropriate interpretations and providing the intellectual tools that are necessary for helping learners to construct knowledge
  3. Designers would provide generative, mental construction tool kits embedded in relevant learning environments that facilitate knowledge construction by learners
  4. About evaluation:
    Since constructivism does not hold the that the function of instruction is to transmit knowledge that mirrors the reality and its structures to the learner's mind, criterion-referenced evaluation, which is based on predetermined objective standards, is not an appropriate evaluation tool to constructivistic environments (Jonassen, 1992). The focus of evaluation should be placed on the process of knowledge construction rather than the end products of learning. And even if the end results are evaluated, it should emphasize the higher order thinking of human being.
  • The evaluation of learning focus on the higher order thinking, the knowledge construction process, and the building of the awareness of such process.
  • The context of evaluation should be embedded in the authentic tasks and meaningful real-world context.
  • The criteria of evaluation should represent multiple perspectives in learning environment. From the perspective of socio-cultural constructivist, since "no objective reality is uniformly interpretable by all learners, then assessing the acquisition of such reality is not possible" (Jonassen, 1992). Thus, the evaluation should focus on the learning process rather than the product.
  • Portfolio evaluation: different student interpretation at different stages in their learning process. Learning is multifaceted and multiperspectival, so as the results of learning.
  • The function of evaluation is not in the reinforcement or behavior control tool but more of "a self-analysis and metacognitive tool".


References:

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Driscoll, M. P. (2000). Psychology of learning for instruction. 2nd ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Cobb, P. (1994). Where is the Mind? Constructivist and sociocultural perspectives on mathematic development. Educational Researcher, 23 (7), pp. 13-20

Fosnot, C. T. (1996). (Ed.) Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Jonassen, D. H. (1992). Evaluating constructivist learning. In T. M. Duffy, & D. H. Jonassen (eds), Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Association.

Piaget, J. (1985). The equilibration of cognitive structures. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Smith, P. L., & Ragan, T. J. (1999). Instructional Design. 2nd ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Von Glaserfeld (1992). Constructivism reconstruction: A reply to Suchting. Science and Education, 1, 379-384.

Vyogtsky, L. S. (1979). Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior.Soviet Psychology, 17 (4), 3-35. (Original work published in 19-24).

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychology process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original published in 1930).

Wertsch, J. V. (1992). L. S. Vygotsky and contemporary developmental psychology. Developmental Psychology, 28 *4), 548-557. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published 1962).

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Transformational Learning - with an angle on accessibility (H810)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 8 Oct 2012, 13:29

'If we were to look at the whole of contemporary culture in the West culture as a kind of school and consider adult roles as courses in which we are enrolled, most adults have a full and demanding schedule'. Kegan (2006:39)

Piaget (1954) Assimilative or accommodative processes?

  • Understand your students - don't presuppose anything.
  • Learning for knowledge and skills, everyone will be challenged to improve the repertoire of their skills.
  • Not what I want to teach, but what, after assessment, they need to learn. No longer had a flexible peg jumping through an institutional, departmental, and academic or LD designed module, but a flexible peg and an accommodating hole.

No two people can possibly be learning the same thing, no matter what common assessment students undertake – the student with a disability, or disabilities, whatever these are and how they affect or impact on this individual – will be acquiring knowledge or a skill that has or is in some way transformed or  translated, the focus diluted or pinpointed through a note–taker, reduced range,  voice of an audio–reader, missing a lecture or seeing it from only one perspective, access denied or field or lab work excluded through their choices,  risk assessment, health and safety, time, money, people and other such barriers – though sometimes enhanced if a live debate becomes an asynchronous forum or verbatim transcripts of audio and provided to all. Having a much different take on the lesson can be advantwgeous as a differentiator.

What is the disabled person's frame of reference?

  • Each learner's experience of learning and their relationship with the subject.  Kegan (2006:45)
  • Where the learner is coming from as well as where they are hoping to go in order to bridge the two – this applies to all learners whatever their circumstances.
  • Where the bridge metaphor is week is to visualise the physical person in transit rather than a myriad of billions of complex bridging actions occurring between neurones in the learner's brain. (Kegan, 2006:47) So a spider gram might be better, showing how close to a goal the learner is.
  • Not just knowing more, but knowing differently. (Ronald Heifetz, 1995)

Mezirow (2000) Transfer of authority from educator to learner. How rapidly will this transformational shift occur, which is a function of how far along they are on a particular bridge.

How do define an adult, self–directed learner?

Skill, style, self–confidence.

What if, for example, we define, say Boris Johnson by what he can do – read Latin, ride a bicycle through traffic and play whiff-whaff, not by what he cannot do, say brush his hair or swim 1000m Front crawl.

While what if I define X by what he cannot do – say, get up in the morning or speak in anything shorter than a paragraph, rather than what he can do, swim the Channel and empathise with others.

Need to read: Hegel, The phemonology of mind.

This is why:

Hegel attempts to outline the fundamental nature and conditions of human knowledge in these first three chapters. He asserts that the mind does not immediately grasp the objects in the world, concurring with Kant, who said that knowledge is not knowledge of “things-in-themselves,” or of pure inputs from the  senses. A long-standing debate raged in philosophy between those who believed that “matter” was the most important part of knowledge and those who privileged “mind.”

REFERENCE

Kegan, R (2006) 'What "form" transformstions? A constructive-developmental approach to transformative learning. An abridged version of a chapter that appeared in Jack Mezirow et al. in 'Learning as Transformation' (2000). In ‘Contemporary Theories of Learning' (2009) Knud Illeris.

Mezirow, J. (2000) "Learning to think like an adult - Core concepts of Transformational Theory." IN J.Mezirow and Associates: Learning as Transformaton: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.

Piaget, J. (1954) The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Basic Books.

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How people learn and the implications for design

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 22 Dec 2020, 20:15

Had this been the title of a post-graduate diploma in e–learning it would have been precisely what I was looking for a decade ago – the application of theory, based on research and case studies, to the design and production of interactive learning – whether DVD or online.

A few excellent, practical guides did this, but as a statement of fact, like a recipe in a cook book: do this and it’ll work, rather than suggesting actions based on research, evidence-based understanding and case studies.

Mayes and de Frietas (2004) are featured in detail in Appendix 1 of Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age (2007) Beetham and Sharpe.

Four types of learning are featured:

  • 1. associative
  • 2. constructive (individual)
  • 3. constructive (social)
  • 4. and situative.

Of these I see associative used in corporate training online – with some constructive (individual), while constructive (social) is surely the OU's approach?

Situative learning may be the most powerful – through application in a collaborative, working environment I can see that this is perhaps describes what goes on in any case, with the wiser and experienced passing on knowledge and know how to juniors, formally as trainees or apprentices, or informally by 'being there' and taking part.

Each if these approaches have their champions:

Associative – Skinner, Gagné (1985).

Constructive (individual) – Piaget (1970), Papert (1993), Kolb (1984), Biggs (1999).

Constructive (social) – Vygotsky (1978).

Situative – Wenger (1998), Cole (1993), Wertsch. (Also Cox, Seely Brown). Wertsch (1981), Engestrom (), Cole and Engeström (1993)

Beetham and Sharpe (2007:L5987) – the ‘L’ refers to the location in a Kindle Edition. I can’t figure out how to translate this into a page reference.

How people learn and the implications for design

Associative – Skinner, Gagné (1985) (in Mayes and de Frietas, 2004)

Building concepts or competences step by step.

The Theory

People learn by association through:

  • basic stimulus–response conditioning,
  • later association concepts in a chain of reasoning,
  • or associating steps in a chain of activity to build a composite skill.

Associativity leads to accuracy of reproduction. (Mnemonics are associative devices).

  • Routines of organized activity.
  • Progression through component concepts or skills.
  • Clear goals and feedback.
  • Individualized pathways matched to performance.
  • Analysis into component units.
  • Progressive sequences of component–to–composite skills or concepts.
  • Clear instructional approach for each unit.
  • Highly focused objectives.

For Assessment

  • Accurate reproduction of knowledge.
  • Component performance.
  • Clear criteria: rapid, reliable feedback.
  • Guided instruction.
  • Drill and practice.
  • Instructional design.
  • Socratic dialogue.

FURTHER READING (and viewing)

Brown, J.S. (2002) The Social Life of Information

Brown, J.S. (2007) October 2007 webcast: http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?whichevent=1063&s=31

+My notes on this:

http://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?u=jv276&time=1298439366&post=0

+The transcript of that session:

http://learn.open.ac.uk/file.php/7325/block1/H800_B1_Week2a_JSBrown_Transcript.rtf

REFERENCE

Biggs, J (1999) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Buckingham: The Society for Research in Higher Education and Open University Press.  (Constructive alignment)

Cole, M. and Engestrom, Y. (1993) ‘A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition’, in G. Salomon (ed.) Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, New Work: Cambridge University Press.

Conole, G. (2004) Report on the Effectiveness of Tools for e-Learning, Bristol: JISC (Research Study on the Effectiveness of Resources, Tools and Support Services used by Practitioners in Designing and Delivering E-Learning Activities)

Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).

Engeström, Y (1999) ‘Activity theory and individual and social transformation’, in Y. Engeström, R, Miettinen and R.-L. Punamaki (eds) Perspectives on Activity Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eraut, M (2000) ‘Non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work’, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 70:113-36

Gagné, R. (1985) The Conditions of Learning, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Gagné, R.M., Briggs, L.J. and Wagner, W.W. (1992) Principles of Instructional Design, New Work: Hoplt, Reihhart & Winston Inc.

Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as a Source of Learning and Development, (Kolb’s Learning Cycle) Englewoods Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall

Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall.

Littlejohn, A. and McGill, L. (2004) Effective Resources for E-learning, Bristol: JISC (Research Study on the Effectiveness of Resources, Tools and Support Services used by Practitioners in Designing and Delivering E-learning Activities).

Mayes, T. and de Frietas, S. (2004) 'Review of e–learning theories, frameworks and models. Stage 2 of the e–learning models disk study', Bristol. JISC. Online.

Piaget, J. (1970) Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child (Constructivist Theory of Knowledge), New Work: Orion Press.

Papert, S. (1993) Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas, New Work: Perseus.

Piaget, J. (2001) The Language and Thought of the Child, London: Routledge Modern Classics.

Seely-Brown, J.S and Duguid, P. (1991) ‘Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation’, Organizational Science, 2 (1): 40-57

Schon, D (1983) The Reflective Practioner: How Professional Think in Action, New York: Basic Books.

Sharpe, R (2004) ‘How do professionals learn and develop? In D.Baume and P.Kahn (eds) Enhancing Staff and Educational Development, London: Routledge-Flamer, pp. 132-53.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1986) Thought and Languages, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wertsch, J.V. (1981) (ed.) The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology, Armonk, N

Appendix and references largely from Beetham, H, and Sharpe, R (2007) Rethinking Pedagogy in a digital age.

See also Appendix 4: Learning activity design: a checklist

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More on 'Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age'.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 09:24

Why does the OU put the novice and expert together in the MAODE?

Although I praise this approach and after two years have been a beneficiary I wonder if the research points to the need for greater flexibility and mixing, more akin to several cohorts of students being able to move around, between their own tutor group, contributing to discussions with the newcomers while also being able to hobnob with the experts?

The learning theory that I am coming to understand does not favour a fixed approach.

It isn't simply a case of playing to the individual, though this is certainly very important as some people will favour being the teacher or the taught, or simply relish periods when they sit at the feet of the expert or stand up in front of newcomers. Rather it is apparent that people learn well within a peer group of like-minds, with people at a similar stage to themselves while having planned opportunities to hear and participate with 'great minds' while also from time to time contributing to the efforts and feeding off the enthusiasms of the 'new minds'.

Nothing is fixed, neither learning vicariously (Cox, 2006), or learning from the periphery to the centre (Seely Brown and Duguid, 1999).

Stage one of my approach to reading these days is to highlight, even share quotes and notes on Twitter as I go through a book.

I then type up my notes and add further thoughts either by cutting and pasting from the aggregates notes in my Twitter feed (eBooks don't allow you to cut and paste) or from handwritten notes I take on cards.

Then I share my notes here, tagged so that I can revisit and others can draw on my notes too or take the hint and read the chapter or book for themselves.

This too is but a stage - next step is to wrap up my developing thoughts, comments and other conversations and put a version of this entry into my external blog my mind bursts.

Sometimes an exchange here or elsewhere develops my thinking further - today I will be sitting down with a senior learning designer, one of five or six in the office of an international e-learning agency to talk learning theory and educational principles.

Chapter 2

Regarding Quality Assurance - there should be no inconsistencies between:

  • Curriculum
  • Teaching methods
  • Learning environment
  • Assessment procedures

So align assumptions:

  • Learning outcomes
  • Suitable assessment

N.B. Each outcome requires a different kind of theoretical perspective and a different pedagogical approach. L757

(Easy to say in theory, not so easy to deliver in practice?)

Three clusters of broad perspectives:

  • Associationism
  • Behaviourism
  • Connectionism

Associationist: gradual building of patterns of associations and skill components. Therefore activity followed by feedback.

Simple tasks prerequisites to more complex.

Gagné (1985 and 1992)

  • Instructional task analysis of discrimination, classifications and response sequences.
  • Simpler tasks built step by step followed by coordination to the whole structure.

Instructional Systems Design

  • Analyse the domain into a hierarchy of small units.
  • Sequence the units so that a combination of units is not taught until its component units are grasped individually.
  • Design an instructional approach for each unit in the sequence.

Then add:

  • Immediate feedback
  • Individualization of instruction

Behaviourism: active learning by design. Immediate feedback on success, careful analysis of learning outcomes, alignment of learning objectives.

The Cognitive Perspective

  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Concept Formation

Knowledge acquisition as the outcome of an interaction between new experiences and the structures for understanding that have already been created. Therefore building a framework for learning vs. learning as the strengthening of associations.

Piaget (1970) Constructivist Theory of Knowledge.

‘Conceptual development occurs through intellectual activity rather than by the absorption of information'. L819

Vygotsky (1928:1931) Importance of social interaction.

Interactions – that e-learning teams call ‘interactivities’.

The Situative Perspective

  • Learning must be personally meaningful
  • Authentic to the social context

(problem-based learning and cognitive apprenticeship). L862

The concept of community practice

Wenger (1998) identify as a learner derived from the community. (Aspires, defines, accredited).

Mayes et al (2001) learning through relating to others. E.g. Master Class

Social-anthropological belonging to the community. L882.

Beliefs, attitudes, common endeavour, also ‘activity systems’ Engestrom 1993

Learning relationships

Identify, participate, individual relations. Dependent on: context, characteristics and strength of relationships in the group (Fowler and Mayes, 1999) L902

What was exotic in 2007 in common place today?

See Appendix 1 L912

Learning as a cycle through stages.

  • J F Vernon (2011) H809 assignments and end of module assessment. The concept of riding a thermal of gently rising circles.
  • Various references L923.
  • Fitts and Posner (1968)
  • Remelhart and Norman (1978)
  • Kolb (1984)
  • Mayes and Fowler (1999)
  • Welford (1968)

If ‘as it proceeds from service to expert, the nature of learning changes profoundly and the pedagogy based on one stage will be inappropriate for another’. L923

Fowler and Mayes (1999)

Primary: preventing information

Secondary: active learning and feedback

Tertiary: dialogue and new learning.

REFERENCE

Beetham, H and Sharpe, R. (2007) Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and delivering e-learning.

Cole, M and Engestrom, Y (1993) A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In G.Salmon (ed.) Distributed cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, New York, CVP.

Cox, R. (2006) Vicarious Learning and Case-based Teaching of Clinical Reasoning Skills (2004–2006) [online], http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ esrcinfocentre/ viewawardpage.aspx?awardnumber=RES-139-25-0127 [(last accessed 10 March 2011).

Gagné, R (1985) The conditions of learning. New York. Holt, Rhinehart and Wilson.

Jonassen, D.H. and Rohrer-Murphy, L (1999) ‘Activity theory as a framework for designing constructivist learning environments’. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47 (1) 61-80

Seely-Brown, J.S and Duguid, P. (1991) ‘Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation’, Organizational Science, 2 (1): 40-57

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An exciting new way to share the learning experience

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 1 Nov 2012, 13:04

photo%2520%25286%2529.jpg

This is just me mashing it all up, but at times I've moaned about wanting to read a relevant book from cover to cover, taking and sharing notes, following references, having a chin-wag and learning by default, on the fly 'vicariously'.

This I've discovered is possible by doing the following:

Buy an eBook, I'm currently doing this to Prof Martin Weller's 'The Digital Scholar' (One of ours, from the Knowledge Media Institute)

You'll come across his name as often as those of:

  • Grainne Conole
  • Denise Kirkpartrick
  • Chris Pegler
  • Diane Laurillard et al
  • Vygotsky
  • Engestrom

on any of the Masters in Open & Distance Education modules. H807, H808, H809, H800 and H810.

As you read through Kindle (which can be on your desktop, laptop, Kindle, iPad, iPhone etcsmile when you 'highlight' something interesting click SHARE and send it to Twitter (my prefered, though it can also go to Facebook).

In this way you indicate what interests you (and where you are up to). Step away from reading mode to chat a bit, then press on or go back.

I like it.

Already done this with:

  • Steve Jobs: the exclusive biography. Walter Isaacson
  • The Blind Giant.Being Human in a Digital World. Nick Harkaway

Currently doing this with:

  • The Digital Scholar: How technology is transforming Scholarly Practice. Martin Weller.
  • All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque
  • Rethinking Pedagogy in a Digital Age. Rhona Sharpe

I'm thinking of doing the same with:

  • Educational Psychology. Vygotsky
  • Mindstorms. Piaget.
  • Flow. The classic book on how to achieve happiness. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

P.S. I'm between modules!

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B822 9.2 Conceptions of development

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 22 Nov 2011, 19:49
  • Team Forming  (Henry, 2006:189)
  • Forming and storming in which members establish their identities (Tuckman, 1965)
  • Establish group norms and practices.

'Only after people feel recognised and norms are agreed is the group likely to perform well.  (Henry, 2006:189)

A problem to solve:

  • Problem exploration
  • Idea generation
  • Implementation
  • Analyse the situation
  • Define the problem
  • Develop options
  • Select a strategy
  • Develop an action plan

Parallel and sequential activities required for new product development.

Personal development:

  • Piaget (1929) referred to often and read for the MAODE (Masters in Open and Distance Education, with the OU)
  • Erickson (1959)
  • Maslow (1962)
  • Kohlberg (1969)
  • Perry (1970)

Development of society, civilisations, agriculture, and industrial.

'It is possible to subdivide the onotogenetic and phylogenetic stages differently'. (Henry, 2006:190)

  • Ontogentic means: 'The origin and development of an individual organism from embryo to adult'.
  • Phylogenetic: 'Relating to or based on evolutionary development or history: a phylogenetic classification of species'

(See more: Henry on 'Creativity, Management and Well-Being').

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H800: 22 Reflecting on H800

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 10 Mar 2013, 00:26

How goes it?

Like a roller-coaster, merrily going along, like the C4 ident:through the loops of a roller-coaster though the shapes I see are 'H' and '800' and '807' and '808' as I pass by.

Then I switch track and venue and find myself on the Mouse-Trap. Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Here there is a rise and dip where you are convinced you will hit a girder. I just did, metaphorically speaking. (Diary entry, August 1980)

Ilness changes things

Nothing more than a rubbish cold made uncomfortable by asthma.

It is a set back of sorts. I can sleep and read. But the spark has gone (for now).

To use a different analogy, if I often think of my mind as a Catherine-wheel, this one has come off and landed in a muddy-puddle.

We're in the week of metaphors for learning.

I can draw on any notes I've taken on this here and in my eportfolio. This is more than an aide-memoire, it favours the choices I made before at the expense of anything new. So I widen my search. The OU Library offers hundreds of thousands of references in relation to 'Education' and 'Metaphor' going back to 1643.

Gathering my thoughts will take time.

There are 26 pages (nearly 12,000 words) to read (course intro, resources). Far, far more if I even start to consider ANY of the additional references or reading.

Give me three months. We have, or I have left, three days.

My approach is simple. Tackle it on the surface, drill into an author or topic that is of interest and expect to pick up on and pick through this again later this module, later this year ... or next existence. (I believe in multiple existences and flux. We are transitory and changing)

As well as tapping into the OU Blog and e-portfolio the blog I've kept since 1999 might have something to say on metaphor. If I care to I might even rummage through A'Level English Literature folders from the 1970s, just to trigger something. Engaged and enabled by Vygotsky and others in relation to memory and learning I value this ability to tap into past thoughts/studying with ease.

(Ought others to be sold the idea of a life-long blog?)

Otherwise I have gone from learn to swim in the training pool, to swimming lengths in the main pool ... to observer/coach who will participate, but has a towel over his shoulders and is looking around.

The next pool? Where is that?

I'm not the same person who set out on this journey 12 months ago.

On the other hand, having a Kindle makes me feel more like a teenager swotting for an Oxbridge examination; I like having several books on the go. I'll be through 'Educational Psychology (Vygotsky) by the end of the day and am already picking through and adding to copious notes.

Piaget next?

Then a little kite-boarding as I head away from the swimming pool that has been an MA with the OU?!

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