Module 6 Reflection

This week focused on self-efficacy, confidence, and hard work, and how these factors influence students’ success in learning.  I think the ideas of social cognitive theory and self-efficacy is nicely summed up in Pajares (2006) statement that “In this social cognitive perspective, individuals are viewed as self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting, and self-regulating rather than as reactive organisms shaped by environmental forces or driven by concealed inner impulses.  Human thought and human action are viewed as the product of a dynamic interplay of personal, behavioral, and environmental influences” (p. 340).  I think that this is a great summary of the things we have learned in this class: the behaviorist theory believes that students are “reactive organisms,” and that there are “concealed inner impulses,” such as the ones we witnessed in our IAT tests, with which constructivism would disagree.  We can also see the constructivist tenets of personal and environmental (or social) influences, and how individuals organize meaning for themselves.  We can even see bits from the Information Processing metaphor in this statement, with the self-regulating forces we learned about with memory, retrieval, and executive processes.  What a great summary statement to help us wrap our minds around these robust theories and how they are all connected!

Self-efficacy is an important topic in learning, as our authors from this week point out.  It can be just as much of a factor in learning and success as that of actual ability.  Pajares (2006) explains how important these beliefs can be, and gives helpful tips for how teachers can get their students to have high beliefs in themselves.  I particularly like the idea that teachers should “Praise effort and persistence, not ability” (Pajares, 2006, p.350).  I think this plays in nicely with Dweck’s (2006) idea of the growth mindset, as well as Gladwell’s (2008) insistence on the importance of hard work.  For Dweck, great teachers and coaches should have a growth mindset, where they believe that people’s talents and abilities can grow and improve with work, rather than a fixed mindset, where these talents are within us from birth, and one can never exceed the set capacity.  Teachers and coaches should strive to imprint these ideas onto their students, as well, so that the students believe they can improve and do not get stuck in a mindset where they can never do any better and they might as well not try.  Gladwell believes success can hinge on hard work and a good attitude.  I was really struck by the TIMSS exam and how students’ exam rankings were exactly the same as the ranking they received for how many questions they filled out in the pre-exam questionnaire.  That is a great example to show how hard work and persistence really does pay off in students’ success.

I have seen firsthand how low self-efficacy beliefs can negatively impact people in school or work.  Many of my classmates from high school just believed that they were not capable of completing their schoolwork.  Most did not even try for fear of failure, or they celebrated their failure and high-fived over who had the lowest test score.  I had grown up with these people, and I knew that they were capable of much more than what they were doing.  Instead, they seemed afraid of hard work and afraid of failure.  I also see this at my job, especially with technology.  When posed with a problem to solve or a new program to learn, some people simply say “I’m not any good at technology, I won’t be able to do that,” when I know that they could if they put in the effort to try it.  I appreciate the tips that Dweck and Pajares lay out in their articles, and I look forward to putting in the effort to incorporate those into my teaching and training.

References:

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Pajares, F. (2006). Self-efficacy beliefs during adolescence: Implications for teachers and parents. In F. Pajares & T. Urdan (Eds.), Adolescence and education, Vol. 5: Self-efficacy beliefs of adolescents (pp. 339-367). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Module 5: Reflection

(Wow, was it hard to keep this to 500 words or less! I don't feel I was able to get across everything that I wanted, but here are my most pressing thoughts on the subject:)

Self-understanding seems to be a critical part of learning.  Noddings (2006) says that “The remedy, I think, is the honesty that should result from critical thinking directed at one’s own interests and work habits” (p. 22).  James (1899/1962) spoke of how teachers should know student’s native reactions and interests, but he did not mention that students should know their own.  This also reminds me of the Pashler et al. (2009) article about learning styles and the meshing theory.  We saw that this did not work for learning styles, but I wonder if there would be an increase in retention and understanding if instruction was aligned with interests and work habits.

Incubation and illumination are important topics, as both Noddings (2006) and Pretz et. al. (2003) mentioned them as parts of the problem solving process.  I remember Dr. Usher’s PowerPoints also mentioning incubation and the importance of taking a break from what you are doing in order to receive a new revelation about it and return with even more energy.  I love the “Eureka!” moment in my studies.

Mnemonics came up again in this module, with Noddings’ (2006) quote on how “Cronbach asks us to consider whether remembering the mnemonic might be harder than simply memorizing the digits” (p. 25).  This reminds me of a trend in high school where students would share the answers to the multiple choice vocabulary tests we all had to take.  Rather than learn the 15 words, they would memorize long mnemonics for the answers (e.g. “Dudley Dooright drank a bottle and Doggy came along” for dddabadca).  This was definitely an instance where it would have been much easier to learn the words rather than the cheating mnemonic.

The idea of multitasking is relevant for today.  I am constantly trying to multitask throughout the day: working on a project at the office, while simultaneously working on schoolwork, checking emails, chatting on Facebook, and eating my lunch.  I do feel like I am good at doing this, but I can see the points that Rosen (2008), Hamilton (2008), and Bregman (2010) make about how it may be impossible and inefficient. I definitely agree that multitasking is switching focus quickly rather than focusing on multiple things at once.  I notice that I can switch focus easily if I am shallowly thinking about something, but if I concentrate on reading an email in a meeting, I realize that I have no idea what was said.  It is important to make sure we put the most emphasis on the important thing and let the less important things only take up shallow attention.  I think I personally agree with Silverman’s (2010) list of why and when multitasking is important, and I do not think it can be ignored in our stressful environment.  I wonder if students can still learn while multitasking; I know Prensky (2001) explains a study where children watching Sesame Street while playing with toys still performed just as well on a test as kids who were only watching the show.

Bregman, P. (2010). How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html

Hamilton, J. (2008) Think You’re Multitasking? Think Again. NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794

Noddings, N. (2006). Critical lessons: What our schools should teach. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2009). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105-119.

Prensky, Marc. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-9.

Pretz, J. E., Naples, A. J., & Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Recognizing, defining, and representing problems. In J. E. Davidson & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The psychology of problem solving (pp. 1-30). New York: Cambridge University Press.  

Rosen, C. (2008). The myth of multitasking. The New Atlantis, 64, 105-110.  

Silverman, D. (2010). In Defense of Multitasking. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/silverman/2010/06/in-defense-of-multitasking.html

Module 5: Metaphor for Learning

Learning is like building a house.  The student is the builder, while the teacher is the foreman.  The builders are in charge of constructing their house, while the foreman can facilitate and oversee, helping along the way.  The foreman may provide the bulk of the material, but the builders may find some along the way that they decide to add in to their own house.  The house starts with a foundation, which is pretty simple, solid, and straightforward, much like the basic skills we have in school (reading, basic math, basic science, etc.).  Then many complex things can be built on top, in any way that the builders may choose.  The builders might find that some ways of structuring material are more conducive to retention, while others might fall away.  The foreman might show the builders some tools for how to create the house, but the builders might also imitate others or use their own ideas for construction. 

Every house also needs to feel like a home.  There may be decorations or certain styles, as well emotions, feelings, tendencies, etc., and these can be considered the soul or personality of the learner.  The builder constantly remodels the home, adding on more rooms as necessary.  This symbolizes the life-long learning that occurs, as students are continuously building up new knowledge. Sometimes new rooms can be added on (assimilation), while other times whole walls need to knocked down to make room for something new (accommodation).

Module 4: IP and LTM Retrieval

Memory is a very fascinating aspect of the human brain, and the more I have learned about it in this course, the more amazing and intricate it seems.  Foer’s (2001) article was incredibly interesting, as I had never heard of building memory palaces in order to remember strings of numbers or decks of cards.  I saw many connections with what he had to say with William James.  First, Foer said that “Attention, of course, is a prerequisite to memory,” an idea which James (1899/1962) posited.  Foer brought in the notion of how his memory palaces cause a deliberate sense of mindfulness, or what I think James would call voluntary attention.  Nevertheless, Foer and the other memory competitors’ tactics are mnemonic devices, which James thought “is clearly an excessively poor, trivial, and silly way of ‘thinking’ about dates (p. 63).  James would much prefer us to make meaningful connections and associations so that the memories last.  King-Friedrichs (2001) would also agree, as she cites scientific evidence that “when students are emotionally engaged with learning, certain neurotransmitters in the brain signal to the hippocampus, a vital brain structure involved with memory, to stamp this even with extra vividness (Cahill, 2000)” (p. 76).  As we saw from the memory videos this week, the hippocampus is an integral part of memory, so the fact that emotional engagement stimulates it means that the memory has a better chance of sticking.

Another interesting passage from James (1899/1962) that I was reminded of this week is his discussion of children learning the temperature of the Earth.  A visiting guest asked the class what they would find—hot or cold—if they dug into the Earth.  No one was able to answer, until the teacher asked “’In what condition is the interior of the globe?’ and received the immediate answer from half the class at once: ‘The interior of the globe is in a condition of igneous fusion’” (James, 1899/1962, p. 74).  The simple memorization of facts and phrases does nothing for us if we do not understand what it is that we are memorizing.  I think this shows that while memory is an enormous factor in the process of learning, it is not all there is; some sense of understanding is necessary so that we can transfer our learning to any situation, not simply one where the question is phrased in the correct way.

Another interesting article this week was that of Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006), that included their ideas on the ineffectiveness of constructivism.  Rather than comment on the entire article, I would like to point out some interesting connections I found.  First, Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark, in order to show that minimal guidance is not appropriate, stated that learners having “complete information will result in a more accurate representation that is also more easily acquired” (p. 78).  This may be true for later, once they have learned the material, but Marsh and Butler (in press) pointed out that while in the process of learning, it is actually beneficial to have “desirable difficulties,” which means that “instead of arranging the conditions of learning to be easier and faster for the learner, educators should introduce difficulties into the learning process in order to promote long-term retention of knowledge” (p. 5).  By this logic, constructivism could be an efficient tool for learning, as it is not always desirable to make learning as guided and easy as possible.

Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) point out that a constructivist view leads to the “rejection of instruction based on the facts, laws, principles, and theories that make up a discipline’s content accompanied by the use of discovery and inquiry methods of instruction” (p. 78).  This reminded me of something Skinner (1984) had said in The Shame of American Education.  He discusses how students

can discover only a very small part of the world. Mathematics has been discovered very slowly and painfully over thousands of years. Students discover it as they go through a program, but not in the sense of doing something for the first time in history. Trying to teach mathematics or science as if the students themselves were discovering things for the first time is not an efficient way of teaching the very skills with which, in the long run, a student may, with luck, actually make a genuine discovery. (Skinner, 1984, p. 951). 

There is so much that has been discovered by humans throughout our history that we have documented and preserved.  It seems inefficient and even wasteful to ignore the knowledge base that humans have built for thousands of years, which is now easily accessible through the internet, so that students can “discover” it all over again.  Constructivist teaching methods and minimally guided instruction can be beneficial in some instances, to gain attention or help reinforce learning (think back to Duckworth (1996) and her successful chemistry experiment with children), but it seems that some things should be taught to children directly, so that you can spend time helping them make relevant and meaningful connections, rather than forcing them to waste time and effort rediscovering it altogether. 

References:

Duckworth, E. (1996). "The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and Other Essays on Teaching and Learning.

Foer, J. (2011, February). Secrets of a mind-gamer: How I trained my brain and became a world-class memory athlete. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-secrets.html?hp.

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41, 75-86.

King-Friedrichs, J. (2001). Brain-friendly techniques for improving memory. Educational Leadership, 59(3), 76-69.

Marsh, E. J., & Butler, A. C. (in press). Memory in educational settings. In D. Reisberg (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Skinner, B. F. (1984). The shame of American education. American Psychologist, 42, 947-954.

Module 3, Activity 3: Learning Styles

I am glad that I was finally able to read a scholarly article about why learning styles are not an effective means to think about learners.  I had often been told that the idea of learning styles is not valid and should not be paid attention to, but no one had ever said why that is so.  This article clearly lays out results of a literature review, and can lend credence to why this method is not appropriate. 

It does seem that the fact that there are learning preferences is an important distinction.  Sure, I could learn something if I really put my mind to it and have the motivation for it, no matter how terrible the format.  Yet, how satisfying is this learning experience, and how likely am I as a result of this experience to want to learn more?  The authors of this review seem to have left out this idea of student satisfaction, and I would like to see a review of how having something match up to your learning preference affects your satisfaction.  It seems to be well proven that the meshing theory does not lead to better grades or assessment results, but if it does lead to more satisfied students who are more likely to transfer their new knowledge to other areas and build more of an enthusiasm for the subject matter or for learning in general, than it does seem to be worthy of the time, money, and effort required to match teaching methods to learners’ preferences. 

Another interesting item that this article brought to mind is the fact that people may have preferences and think that they will learn better with one type of teaching method, but this does not always end up being true.  I recently read an article in Face-to-Face Communication over the Internet, which is a compilation of articles about web conferencing and other ways of communicating “face-to-face” while online.  One interesting article by Walther (2011) discusses how many people think that they would prefer to collaborate and discuss in a face-to-face online environment, but it turns out that it is not as effective and they are not as satisfied.  People think that face to face discussion allows for more visual cues, facial expressions, tones of voice, etc., which would lead to more friendly feelings and better understanding.  Nevertheless, the author claims that video conferencing does not always allow us to see each other well enough to really read our visual cues, and Parkinson and Lea (2011), authors of another article, show that the delay involved with conferencing software can make communication even more difficult.   Walther (2011) claims that we should not jump to using this software just because we think we prefer face-to-face communication.  Do you agree?  Personally, I find that I really enjoy the face-to-face class sessions we have online, although I do agree that the delay and the inadvertent interruptions we make because of it can be distracting.  Nevertheless, even if I do not agree with them, they do make the point that sometimes what you prefer might not always be the best for communication or learning.

It also seems that sticking to learning styles can actually be limiting for students.  If we agree with James’ belief that associations and connections are what help us learn, and that students need to assimilate and accommodate as Piaget and Vygotsky would say, wouldn’t that mean that each student will do that differently?  Even if they are a “visual learner,” they might read something that reminds them of a song they like and connect it with something auditory.  Just because they might prefer to look at pictures rather than read or hear rather than do does not mean that they cannot make connections with all of these different channels.  As educators, we should try to provide as varied an approach as possible, even if we are in a class full of “auditory learners.”  You never know when a particular image or sound or passage in a book is going to make a deep, meaningful, long lasting connection with a student.  I think Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer and Bjork (2009) said it best when they claimed:

Given the capacity of humans to learn, it seems especially important to keep all avenues, options, and aspirations open for our students, our children, and ourselves.  Toward that end, we think the primary focus should be on identifying and introducing the experiences, activities, and challenges that enhance everybody’s learning. (p. 117).

References:

Parkinson, Brian & Lea, Martin (2011). Video-linking emotions. In Arvid Kappas & Nicole C. Kramer (Eds.), Face-to-Face Communication over the Internet (pp. 100-126). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2009). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105-119.

Walther, Joseph B. (2011). Visual cues in computer-mediated communication: sometimes less is more. In Arvid Kappas & Nicole C. Kramer (Eds.), Face-to-Face Communication over the Internet (pp. 17-37). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Module 3, Activity 1: Resource on Perception

First source here.

Second source here.

The sources that I selected are two articles written by Marc Prensky (2001a, 2001b), both of which are about Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.   Digital Natives are people who have grown up with computer for most or all of their lives, while Digital Immigrants are those who grew up reading or watching TV, and have either never had experiences with computers, or had to learn them at an older age.  He believes that there is actually a physical difference between the two categories, especially in how they process information, so this idea dovetails nicely with what we have been talking about with Information Processing and sensory registers.

Prensky (200a1) believed that because of the computer-filled environment that Digital Natives have grown up in, “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors” (p.1).  Prensky (2001b) pointed out “while cultural differences might dictate what people think about, the strategies and processes of thought . . . were assumed to be the same for everyone. However this, too, appears to be wrong (pg. 2).  He insists that Digital Natives’ brains are actually physically different than Digital Immigrants, and have changed substantially.  This brain difference changes the way that the students think and process, which changes the way that they learn.  Prensky (2001a) lists the ways that these students like to learn:

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work. (p. 2).

This is different from the step-by-step, slow, and serious way of learning that Digital Immigrants are used to and prefer.  Digital Natives are bored by this slow and methodical way of learning, since it is nothing like the fast and active way that they surf the internet, chat with their friends, or play video games.  Therefore, Digital Natives are not willing to pay attention, and Prensky (2001a) believes that content needs to be at a faster pace, more random access, etc., so that it can hold the students’ attention. 

This idea of students and their difficulty paying attention to certain things brought me back to Mayer's (1996) explanation about the literal and constructivist interpretations of the Information Processing metaphor.  The literal version compares humans to machines, and processing mean that “information is input, operators are applied to the input information resulting in the creation of new information, and the new information is output” (Mayer, 1996, p. 156).  With machines, it does not matter what kind of input you give them; they simply apply the correct procedure until they have either come to the solution or found an error that prevents them from continuing.  Therefore, Prensky’s acknowledgement that students may have difficulty paying attention when the input is not in a format they prefer shows that humans are not like machines; we will not compute whatever you put in front of us.  Affect and interest play a role in whether or not students really want to put forth the effort to process new information.

Another really interesting part that Prensky brings up is how Digital Natives are very interested in the future.  As Prensky (2001a) claims, ““future” content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological. But while it includes software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, etc. it also includes the ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things that go with them(pg. 4).  This reminded me of Vygotsky and his insistence on the important of culture, socio-history, and language.  It sounds like the Digital Natives would be even more attuned to Vygotsky’s constructivism. 

This is just a sneak peak at all that the discussion about Digital Natives vs Immigrants has in store, but I’ve always been interested in this subject and I think it ties in nicely with what we are learning about regarding Information Processing and how people think and learn.

References:

Mayer, R.E. (1996). Learners as information processors. Educational Psychologist, 31, 151-161.
Prensky, Marc. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Prensky, Marc. (2001b). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-9.

Module 2: Constructivism Q's

Q1:

Piaget contributed several things to learning theory.  First, he provided a different way to view the teacher’s role.  Previously, the teachers were sages who possessed (or at least knew how to access) all the knowledge the students need to know.  They then pass on this knowledge to the students.  In Piagetian teaching, the teacher simply understands how to help the students discover and make meaning out of the world around them.  This also changes the students’ roles; before, they were passive listeners who needed to be filled with knowledge.  In Piaget’s eyes, they are now active explorers who will discover and construct their own meaning and system of knowledge.

Piaget added in the idea of accommodation.  Before, James seemed to get stuck on the idea of assimilation.  As he said, “we always try to name a new experience in some way which will assimilate it to what we already know.  We hate anything absolutely new, anything without any name” (James, 1899/1962, p. 78).  This leads to an idea that we are stuck with our old ways of thinking, and cannot really accept anything new or diverse.  With the Piagetian theory, when assimilation will not do, accommodation steps in, allowing us to create a new schema for our world.  This provides us the ability to accept many diverse ways of thinking, which seems to be a more valuable option.

With behaviorists, learners simply reacted to a stimulus, leaving nothing up to the actual learner.  Piaget’s theory fills in the gap between stimulus and response, showing what goes on in the learners when they happen upon a stimulus.  This adds in several benefits: students have a more active role in their learning, and have the possibility of having a will.  It also allows them to have affective and cognitive aspects about themselves, instead of being machines with only a behavioral aspect.

Finally, Piaget’s theory adds in specific stages to learning. James had said that teachers need to be aware of native reactions, and had mentioned that subjects should not be taught before the student is ready, but he did not provide specific stages.  Piaget maps out the stages and aligns them with the age of the student in years, providing a rubric for the teacher to follow.

Questions that I still have:

Can reinforcement still have a place? Since it seems that Piaget fills in what happens between stimulus and response, we may still be able to have a belief in the power of reinforcement. The difference is what occurs in the mean time.

Do I agree that constructivism is not an instructional approach, as Airasian and Walsh proclaim? It seems that he does at least provide the stages.  What else is missing?  What is needed for a “well-thought-out” instructional method?  How do you turn a theory into a method?

Does constructivism have any room for truths? Most would agree that 2+2=4 is a universal truth. Sure, there are different ways of getting there, but most would agree that there is a right answer and it is a universal truth. If a child could make a compelling case for why 2+2 does not equal 4, would we grant them this? Can you say that your ways of constructing answers is wrong? Does constructivism allow us to do this? Maybe you come up with the same answer, but the way you get there is different? Could creating your own meaning sometimes mean that you have to have the same, universal truth answer (4), but you could have gotten there multiple ways (2+2, 1+1+1+1, etc.)?

Will students always react with interest to disequlibirum? I have not often seen children or even adults losing sleep over something not making sense or not being known to them.  Perhaps this only affects people who cannot stand not knowing, and it seems they already have the motivation to learn. What about people who do not seem to have that innate motivation to learn? Or is that everyone does, but most people do not have this motivation tapped in to?

Q2:

Piaget argues that there are stages where children can learn and understand certain things.  They progress through these stages at similar rates (as regarding age brackets), although some children may progress more or less quickly than others at certain things.  The teacher needs to know these stages and be able to observe the children to see if they are progressing to the next stage.  The teacher can then provide the correct activities to best address the needs of the students’ development. 

James had a similar belief about what teachers need to know about students.  He believed there were certain native reactions that all students have innately.  In order to get children to be interested in other things, the teachers need to know the native reactions of children so that they can build upon these to provoke acquired reactions.  As James (1899/1962) states, “The teacher’s art consists in bringing about the substitution or complication, and success in the art presupposes a sympathetic acquaintance with the reactive tendencies natively there” (p. 20). 

Both also emphasize the importance of not pushing the students out of their stages too quickly.  Lefrançois (2005) pointed out that with Piaget’s stages, trying to teach something in a higher stage (such as conservation) does not seem to work, and even when it does, testing has not “clearly shown that such acceleration studies have a generally beneficial effect on other aspects of child functioning” (p. 251).  Therefore, the extra effort is probably not worth it.  James (1899/1962) took a harsher stance, when he insisted that many children can be forever put off by a subject if a teacher tries to teach it too soon.

Q3:

Duckworth (1996) thought that it is important for a student “to feel confidence in their own ideas.”  Bart was not able to feel confident about anything he was doing; all the other students were discussing things that were way over his head, and the only thing he was interested in in the room (the comic book) was taken away from him and had previously been used as a prop for illiteracy.  One could assume that Duckworth would have thought that something valuable could be learned and built off from his interest in the comic book, but this teacher deemed it to be trash.  

This classroom would also seem to go against the pace that Piaget pushed, and that Duckworth somewhat believed in.  The students in the fictitious classroom were probably much further ahead than the standard age bracket, so Bart was being pushed too far out of his development stage.  This would not be beneficial for Bart’s learning.

Bart assumed it would be “easy street,” and it seems that many students and instructors both seem to think this.  Perhaps constructivism should allow learning to come easily to students, but this method did not work for Bart.  Airasian and Walsh (1997) also do not want teachers to “assume that a constructivist orientation will make the same demands on teaching time as a nonconstructivist orientation” (p. 447).  This kind of instruction might not come easily for the teacher, as they still need to closely follow and learn about each student in their classroom.  The teacher in Bart’s classroom was not closely following his learning, and therefore was not really achieving the ideal concept of constructivism. 

I do think this might be an example of a constructivist classroom, but not necessarily one with which Piaget or Vygotsky would agree.  It did have the idea of students exploring and discovering (my favorite line was when the teacher told the students: “discover your desks!”), and to make their own meaning and work at their own pace.  However, no attention seemed to be paid to the stages of development, as Bart was pushed out of his own stage.  This class was for “gifted” students, rather than every student; this idea of only gifted students needing more open instruction has not been mentioned so far in my reading of constructivism.  The teacher did not seem to have much of a role in the instruction whatsoever; the only time we see her facilitating is when she asks an open-ended question about the will, and when she allows Bart to conduct a dangerous science experiment.  This seems to be more of a caricature of a constructivist classroom rather than an actual example.

I am still developing my own opinion about constructivism, but so far, I think it has valuable tenets; nevertheless, I do not believe I would accept it wholeheartedly.  I like that it has a personal and active nature, allowing the students to discover their own meaning.  I also like the opening it leaves for us to have a will. 

I do not like that it seems to eliminate the possibility of universal truths, because I do think many of these exist and should be learned.  It is great that they may be discovered by the student rather than simply told to the student, but there does need to be some understanding by the student that 2+2 always equals 4.

I am not sure if I really trust that all students will have an innate motivation due to the disequlibrium. I think it may still only help those who naturally have a love of school and learning.  Look at Bart!  Its lack of reinforcement also bothers me; although I do not think that learning should be based solely on reinforcement, I think it has an important place.  Luckily, it seems like you can still use reinforcement and stimulus/response, as Piaget’s theory really works in the learner between the stimulus and the response.

Finally, the stages provide some concern.  Some students are slower than others, while others may be gifted or can move faster than others.  The stages and the heavy interaction with the teacher lead me to believe that some students will still be left behind while others are bored because it is not moving quickly enough.  

I think I really like the combination of constructivism and behaviorism, and I think that teaching machines could be great for the two.  The teaching machine can help lead the students on their way and let them make their own meaning, while providing the reinforcement that seems beneficial to some students.  Since the students are primarily working with the machines, this allows the instructor to spend more time with each student, listening to their explanations about how they are constructing meaning, providing scaffolding, direction, and social interactivity that they require (according to Piaget and Vygotsky) and providing lots of reinforcement (which Skinner would like).  Perhaps it is my nature to want to appease everyone, but so far my “philosophy of learning” would be a combination of the three theories. 

Q4:

Vygotsky’s contributions:

One main contribution that Vygotsky added to the theory of learning is the social, historical, and cultural aspect of learning.  Learners are a part of a larger culture, and it is important to notice how these factors affect their learning.  This emphasis on the “nurture” aspect of learning is contrasted to Piaget, who believed that there is a role that the social feature plays, but the innate “nature” of learners has more weight.  

Vygotsky also contributed the idea that language is a crucial part of learning.  Once language has been developed, the act of thinking is language, while Piaget believed that cognition is in charge of language.  For Vygotsky, language is what allows for critical thinking, and is what separates us from animals and infants. 

Vygotsky believed that learning actually results in development, and therefore happens first, which contrasts with Piaget’s insistence that development must happen before learning can occur.  Vygotsky’s theory allows for the student to perform outside of their actual developmental level, so that they are in their zone of proximal development.  Once they have learned this skill, they can add it to their zone of actual development, and have grown in the process. 

A crucial aspect of the zone of proximal development is the importance of interactivity in learning.  He thinks the teacher should have a very specific role as a teacher-student, and the student acting as a student-teacher; this interaction is known as the obuchenie.  The teacher should help build scaffolding for the student, by showing how to do something but then gradually providing less assistance, so that the student can achieve on their own.  Piaget also saw the importance of social interactivity, but for him, the teacher was supposed to help the student discover their own meaning, and other students helped to create the “optimal mismatch” that resulted in disequilibrium, so that equilibration could take over. 

Questions I still have:

Would Vygotsky believe that a student could ever learn with out assistance?  Do we believe this?

How much of the learning process is from assistance, and how much is from imitation?  Could students still learn by imitation if they were around a teacher, but were not directly assisted by that individual?  Would they learn as much?

What is the motivation for the student?  For Skinner, it was reinforcement and the desire to succeed.  For Piaget, it was the desire to get out of a state of disequilibrium.  What is it here?

What are the implications that result from the importance of culture?  Should we only learn from people who are from our culture?  Should we learn about other cultures, or will this mess up our learning?  Is absolutely everything that we do and learn in context of culture, or can anything be independent of it?  We only need one counterexample to disprove this statement… Can you think of one?

Q5:

Vygotsky saw the importance of the inner speech of which this NPR article speaks.  According to him, the third and most important type of language that children learn is the stage of self-talk.  According to Lefrançois’ (2005) interpretation of Vygotsky, our self-speech “allows us to observe and direct our thinking and, by the same token, our behavior.  Inner speech is what makes all higher mental functioning possible” (p 262).  Vygotsky noted that “a child first becomes able to subordinate her behavior to rules in group play and only later does voluntary self-regulation of behavior arise as an internal function” (p. 90).  I think he would agree that not being able to engage in open and imaginative play would inhibit the growth of the student’s self-speech, and this would harm their ability to self-regulate and gain higher mental functions.  

Interestingly, this seems to be an extreme example of Vygotsky’s idea of assistance, and shows that too much assistance could hurt a child’s development.  The toys are allowing the children to play in very particular ways, and does not allow them to create their own experiences and meaning.  Perhaps this could also happen in the classroom; if the teacher directs the class too much, they might not permit the students to develop their own thoughts.  How can teachers make sure that they are not overstepping the bounds of assistance?  What can teachers and parents do to make their children exercise their imaginations (besides just not buying the toys).  Is there another way for children to learn self-speech, besides open play?