Motivation

It seems to me that the connection between motivation and learning is the most obvious yet. Obviously, if someone is simply going through the motions to get a grade, they aren't going to remember very much in the long run, nor will the experience be very pleasant. That has certainly happened to me in my life, especially after graduating from high school, as I've taken college classes that I was required to take in order to fulfill a requirement, but wasn't really interested in and knew I would never use. Whether it was true IN REALITY that I would never use the information I can't say at this point. What mattered was that I perceived it as useless, and therefore did just what was necessary to make it through the class, breathed a sigh when I was finally finished, and promptly buried whatever I had put in short-term memory in order to pass the test. Nobody could really call that learning.

So what can an instructor do to facilitate learning? Obviously, the readings this week gave some good techniques. What makes it difficult is when you have some principle that you really must cover and it just isn't easy to think of a way to motivate students to care about it. For example, consider the prepositional phrase. It is actually very important for people to understand what a prepositional phrase is and how to identify one. It is, perhaps, one of the most vital aspects of learning parts of speech, because without understanding what a prepositional phrase is, you will most definitely make mistakes in subject/verb agreement. For example, in the sentence "The group of diplomats makes a lot of noise," a lot of people would instead say, "The group of diplomats make a lot of noise." However, remove the phrase "of diplomats" and it becomes clear that the verb has to be "makes" rather than "make." Even though it is actually very important to know about prepositional phrases, it's pretty difficult to make them gripping and motivational :) Even the name "prepositional phrase" makes people's eyes glaze over. Any ideas?

Week 5-Human Development

What is learning from a Piagetian perspective? Learning results from operations. In other words, a child discovers information by operating on something and transforming it. What can a teacher do to facilitate this development of learning? I guess the teacher can design curriculum that provides students with the opportunity to experiment and discover new principles.

I wonder if I'm fully understanding this theory. In my opinion, this perspective seems to promote the idea of some pretty stubborn children. It seemed to me as I was reading that he is arguing that if a child doesn't interpret these operations for him or herself, but is instead told what the operations mean, that the child won't internalize the information. I do not believe that was 100% true of me when I was a child. I know that I can remember working things out for myself many times, and it was meaningful when I did that, but I also remember having trusted adults teach me things and accepting that information and definitely remembering it.

Schema Theory

Well, I loved the reading this week. Schema theory is a basic tenet of reading instruction. In fact, reading instruction was even mentioned in the article! That is the first time in a year that any acknowledgement of my subject area has been given, so it was quite a thrill for me.

Learning in terms of schema theory takes place when the appropriate background knowledge is activated and the learner is able to situate new information in the midst of what was known before. If this does not happen, then the learner is unlikely to remember or even truly comprehend the new information. They may be able to spit back discrete facts for a test, but they won't have truly internalized and "gotten" the material enough to use it in any other situation. In terms of reading, especially reading expository text, it is extremely important for learners to have the strategies in place to activate their schemata related to what they are reading. This is a huge part of reading strategy instruction. So, the best way for a teacher to facilitate learning is to help their students learn how to activate these schemata. A science or math or history teacher who will take the time to instruct students in how to read their textbooks will end up miles ahead in the long run. Yes, this is TOTALLY my soapbox!

Week 3-Meaningful Learning

The reading this week reminded me of the videos that we watched for Doug's class last fall about the graduates of the high-powered university who didn't know why the seasons changed. The article actually mentioned this video. I was also reminded of the one about the schoolgirl who couldn't believe that the eye needs light in order to see. So, I guess you could say that I had previous knowledge of this topic, and was thus able to fit the new information in.

One thing that frustrated me was the fact that the chapter completely focused on science and math. I believe that the principles being discussed were applicable to all subject matters, but mine was completely ignored. I'm getting kind of tired of that, especially since reading instruction does such a great job already of activating previous knowledge. I would never consider introducing my students to a piece of text without first making sure they were thinking about the topic, had discussed and done graphic organizers with what they already knew about the topic, and had also developed some "new" background knowledge about the topic of the text before beginning to actually read it. We already realize that students will comprehend almost nothing about a text if they do not do this. Because of the total focus on only math and science, I'm frankly not really sure of what sorts of misconceptions I might need to watch out for in my field. It would have been very helpful for me if the article had talked about this. So, I guess that's the answer to the question of how a teacher can best effectuate learning.

As to what learning is with relation to Meaningful Learning, I see some tie-ins to Cognitive Information Processing. It is vital to dig out that previous knowledge. However, in Meaningful Learning the stress is on identifying and then working to correct previous misconceptions. The article stresses the importance of the learner being motivated to do this. It seems vital that the learner be open to the possibility that they might be wrong, and willing to reject previous conceptions in order to make room for new, corrected ones. Some people certainly have a harder time doing this than others. I'm always quick to admit that I'm wrong about something, so I think that's helped me in my education to progress beyond misconceptions. It is not at all uncommon for me, even now, to realize that I've been wrong about something I've thought all along. I think it's an enlightening experience, and it doesn't bother me at all, but I believe there are those who feel that it reflects badly on them. So, ego gets in the way of learning! Students stubbornly clinging to misconceptions is a problem that teachers have a difficult time conquering.