ED 671 Unit 1.d

Tying it all together!

Read this: Learning and cognition - this is a bad, bad boy! It is a chapter from the Handbook of Educational Psychology so is written for professional educational psychologists. I don't normally give this out to students as it is very dense but... it is also the single best synthesis of learning theory that exists. After completing the behaviorism, cognitive, and situative units you will understand much of the language but still... this is the varsity team reading. Give is some time and effort but don't beat yourself up if you don't get all the way through it. It will help you immensely, however, with your Learning Theories assignment.

Consider these questions as you read (same questions in Moodle):

1. Use Moodle discussions if you have any questions or issues about how these different theories and perspectives fit together. This is your opportunity to talk with your classmates about this stuff as you move toward completing your Learning Theories assignment (see 671 home). This is not a required discussion question - use it if you want.

Review the material below before entering discussion in Moodle :

The last thing you need to understand about learning theory is where the notion of constructivism plays in. Constructivism is all the rage in education circles. Constructivism, really, is an epistemology - a theory of knowledge - which says that all knowledge is constructed - or created in our minds, through our experiences and interactions in the world. This doesn't really seem all that earth shattering but is very different from Cartesian ideals and Platonic forms (remember your Philosophy 101 class?) that says there are "true" representations of the world out there and if we get smart enough then we grow to understand these. The cool idea about constructivism is that TRUTH in the absolute sense is now up for grabs. If we're all out here in the world constructing our own understandings of things then my construction and your construction are very likely different - depending on our prior knowledge, prior experiences, and the ways in which we view the world. Philosophers call this TRUTH a God's eye view of the world - meaning that God is the only one who can see the way things really are - the rest of us are only looking from our own perspective and therefore we can only see the truth to us - not the real TRUTH. Now... when the education community got ahold of constructivism we began to distill a whole bunch of pedagogical principles including: (1) students prior knowledge matters when constructing new knowledge so we'd better engage it and take it seriously when we teach; (2) if learning is the active construction of knowledge then we'd better make sure kids are active in our classrooms - doing hands on things, manipulating tools and symbols, playing around in the world. Now... this was all great until people started to realize that if we're all constructing our own understandings of the world - from our own perspectives - then what do we do when our students' constructions are different from our own? For example, say we're studying the concept of justice in a social studies class and Johnny believes justice means seeking vengeance - in fact being entitled to it because that's how life works in his home. Ronny, on the other hand, was raised by different folks who believe justice is getting out there in the world and protesting, voting, and participating - exercising one's civil liberties. These are different perspectives on the same concept that are true to their owners viewpoints... how shall we test them and value both perspectives? Teachers began to see that constructivism is almost... dishonest. I say this because we may purport to be constructivist teachers but... in the end... my students' constructions better look like the ones in the book, on the test, and in the curriculum standards and benchmarks. See the dilemma? So... where does that leave us? Basically, constructivism has kind of run its usefulness as a theoretical idea - but not as a pedagogical idea. Most teachers still try to engage students prior knowledge and believe in active learning - we just do these things and try to gingerly string kids along toward the "right" answer - whatever that may be.

Now... as you're looking at the resources for the three perspectives on learning it may be useful to know that Piaget is often called the father of individual constructivism and Lev Vygotsky and other social psychologists are still constructivists but believe in a social constructivism. The only difference here is that rather than constructivism occuring in one's own head - knowledge is constructed between individuals and groups of people. Again, this pretty much makes sense when we think about the world. We all know what we're talking about when we speak of temperature because we've all agreed on a set of understandings about hot and cold - these are, after all, proxies for the real world phenomenon of molecular motion - more motion means more heat. We don't, however, talk about how fast the molecules are moving on a certain day... instead we talk about how hot it is - that my friend, is a social construction. If you're interested and have time, go check out Constructivist Cautions by Peter Airasian and Mary Walsh. It is a great piece on all these details - focusing mostly on social constructivism.