Princess Catherine Ann B. Gaviola Essays - Education, Psychology

Princess Catherine Ann B. Gaviola Essays - Education, Psychology Princess Catherine Ann B. Gaviola MAEd- Social Studies LEARNING THEORIES As a teacher we have to equipped ourselves with learning theories in order to be efficient and also we have to anchor ourselves with a firm, adequate and effective theories so that we can be a caliber teacher of the 20th century. Personally I choose these three educational theories that I believe that can help me attain my goal and they are Behaviorism, Cognitivism , Connectivism. Behaviorism a learning theory that only focuses on objectively observable behaviors and discounts any independent activities of the mind. Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior based on environmental conditions. Behaviorism is a worldview that assumes a learner is essentially passive, responding to environmental stimuli. The learner starts off as a clean slate (i.e. tabula rasa) and behavior is shaped through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. Both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the probability that the antecedent behavior will happen again. In contrast, punishment (both positive and negative) decreases the likelihood that the antecedent behavior will happen again. Positive indicates the application of a stimulus; Negative indicates the withholding of a stimulus. Learning is therefore defined as a change in behavior in the learner. Lots of (early) behaviorist work was done with animals (e.g. Pavlov's dogs) and generalized to humans. This theory can be applied during class discussion if the student misbehaves in class. The teacher will reprimand him and thus he will realize his mistake and if he will repeat his actions it will be dealt with the same manner but if he behaves himself and participate during class discussion the student will receive a reward such as praise from his teacher. Thus he will noticed that certain actions will elicit a response from his teacher. Cognitivism is the study in psychology that focuses on mental processes, including how people perceive, think, remember, learn, solve problems, and direct their attention to one stimulus rather than another. Psychologists working from a cognitivist perspective, then, seek to understand cognition. Rooted in Gestalt psychology and the work of Jean Piaget, cognitivism has been prominent in psychology since the 1960s; it contrasts with behaviorism, where psychologists concentrate their studies on observable behavior. Cognitivism focuses on the inner mental activities - opening the "black box" of the human mind is valuable and necessary for understanding how people learn. Mental processes such as thinking, memory, knowing, and problem-solving need to be explored. Knowledge can be seen as schema or symbolic mental constructions. This is the reason why we let our students during class discussion especially if the subject is Araling Panlipunan memorizes dates, events for it is used as the foundation of building rationale among the students and if the topic is all about the different time zone. The student learn to compute and analyze the effect of having different time. Connectivism is a hypothesis of learning which emphasizes the role of social and cultural context. In this sense, Connectivism proposes to see knowledge's structure as a network and learning as a process of pattern recognition. Connectivism is often associated with and proposes a perspective similar to Vygotsky's 'zone of proximal development' (ZPD), an idea later transposed into Engestrom's (2001) Activity theory . The relationship between work experience, learning, and knowledge, as expressed in the concept of connectivity, is central to C onnectivism, motivating the theory's name. It is somewhat similar to Bandura's Social Learning Theory that proposes that people le arn through contact. What sets C onnectivism apart from theories such as constructivism is the view that "learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information se ts, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing". The phrase "a learning theory for the digital age" indicates the emphasis that C onnectivism gives to technology's effect on how people live, communicate and learn. This are the principles of Connectivism: Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. Learning may reside in non-human appliances. Learning is more critical than knowing. Maintaining and nurturing connections is needed to facilitate