Discuss one question or confusion that you had about the material. Even if you think you understand everything, you must ask one question related to the material, its connection to other modules, or its implications.
- First off, I was surprised by the opening statistic saying that of the 1,000 hours spent in school per year, an average of 333 is actually spent on learning. This is so crazy and actually quite shocking. It is really unfortunate that, that much time is wasted in the classroom on non-related learning activities!
One question I had from the reading was in regards expository teaching. The definition and example the book gave for this style of teaching was not clear. Could someone better-explain this teaching method?
Choose two and explain how one or more theories may have influenced the instructional choices involved in the methods. You should be able to connect these methods with elements of development/learning/motivation theories that we have covered. It is NOT enough to say that 'Inquiry learning is clearly influenced by Piaget because he thought that kind of thing was a good idea.' Particular theories will 'match up' more or less with different theoretical assumptions. In other words, describe how what a teacher considers as LEARNING influences how they choose to teach students.
- The two learning methods I have chosen are: Mastery Learning and Direct Instruction. These methods are both based on behaviorism and the idea of operant conditioning, where a students' behavior is a result of different stimuli. The teacher creates antecedents and consequences for students to indicate expected behaviors in the classroom (antecedents) and decrease the likelihood others will occur (consequences) or that those need improvement. A teacher who uses these methods of teaching are influenced by the behaviorism theory.
In both mastery of learning and direct instruction, the teacher creates an opportunity for learning by establishing learning objectives and expectations for the students. By doing this he/she breaks down the objectives into smaller tasks where a student can learn and manage them. By learning these objectives, the student practices the new knowledge and skills through homework problems, assignments and tests. The teacher creates consequences along with these antecedents for students to strengthen their knowledge and skills, monitor their progress and provide feedback to them. By creating a fine line for learning expectations and behaviors, a teacher can 'shape' the students' learning. This mimics the idea of operant conditioning, where the teacher believes that this style of learning leads to behavior changes among students. Behavioral techniques often used by teachers who teach by these learning styles in the classroom include shaping, reinforcement, praise-and-ignore and satiation. These techniques represent the idea of behaviorism and that some behaviors related to learning are desired over others. This allows the teacher to encourage learning and develop students' skills to be more complex. The teacher has a high degree of control where he/she can easily monitor the structured environment and provide feedback to students. By having this control, it helps the students know what behaviors are expected through learning and allows the teacher to evaluate the progress of his/her students.
Overall, behaviorism and these two teaching methods go hand-in-hand. A teacher who uses these methods are believe in the idea of behaviorism and its effects on students' learning. By teaching styles influenced by behaviorism, the teacher has control of the learning environment by emphasizing desired behaviors and discouraging inappropriate ones. Feedback, shaping and reinforcement are behavioral techniques that a teacher utilizes in the classroom when using these teaching styles. Although this method is successful for some learning environments, it is not appropriate for all students and learning situations. Teachers must evaluate the best teaching methods for students based on the learning environment in the classroom.
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