Group post composed by Amanda Butz, Carly Germann, and Chris Daniel, except for "Personal Reflections" section, which was composed by Carly Germann.
The instructional video that we reviewed can be found at the following link: http://timssvideo.com/45. It depicts a class of 8th graders who were learning about polygons. The instructor went over what polygons are, discussed the concepts of equilateral polygons and equiangular polygons, and showed how to find the sum of the interior angles of certain polygons.
In this video, there were several concepts that stem from the theory of behaviorism. The instructor had a deck of cards with each students' assigned number. He randomly pulled a number for each question that he asked, and that student had to come to the board and answer. This acted as a motivator or reinforcement to keep the students alert and ready to answer any question.
Another Skinnerian aspect of this instructional video was the method of asking questions, which acted as stimulus and response. The teacher posed a question (the stimulus) and the students provided an answer (the response). The teacher then gave immediate reinforcement by saying whether or not the answer was correct, and provided praise such as "Very good." This reinforced the students that they were succeeding, or provided the necessary feedback for how to achieve the correct answer.
The teacher used several Piagetian concepts in this video. First, he started off the lesson by allowing the students to draw any shape that they wanted to show their understanding of a polygon. He also asked them several times throughout the video to explain how they arrived at their answer. This ability for the students to explain how they constructed meaning is crucial for Piaget.
Another method that he used was to make the students discover their answers themselves rather than just providing the answer for them. For example, he did not just tell them that the sum of the interior angles of a four-sided figure was 360 degrees, instead he showed them how to break the figure down into shapes they knew how to manage. This allowed them to construct their own meaning about the problem.
Vygotskian concepts were also present in this video. He made sure to address the social nature of learning by asking the students to turn to their neighbor and discuss the problem at hand. Since culture is such an important factor for learning according to Vygotsky, addressing this in the classroom would further enhance development; the interaction between mentor and mentee allows for learning at a pace greater than what the mentee could accomplish alone.
Scaffolding as a Vygotskian concept underscores the frequent need for more involvement on the part of the mentor as new concepts are introduced. As learners become more familiar with new material, less involvement is necessary, thus the pedagogical scaffold is slowly removed. This allows learners to take ownership of the process of assimilating concepts in a more independent manner. An example of scaffolding in the video was when the teacher showed how to solve a problem with a four-sided figure. He then asked the students to solve the same problem with a five-sided figure. They probably would not have been able to solve the second problem on their own, but the example he provided allowed them to make the connection independently.
Personal Reflection:
I thought this was a fun exercise. It was fairly easy to pick out elements that matched each theory, but sometimes it felt like we might have been stretching it a little. As Airasian and Walsh (1997) mentioned, these theories are not actual instructional methods. While we could distinguish particular features that seemed to hold up the tenets of the different theorists, the instructor did not appear to be following a behaviorist or constructivist handbook. I wonder how much this teacher, or any teacher for that matter, thinks about theory when developing their lesson plan and while actually in the act of teaching the course. I would guess that there are different levels of how strictly different people follow theories. As James (1899/1962) pointed out, teaching is an art that some people may be better at than others. One could assume that by that statement, he meant that some teachers who are not naturally gifted with that special ingenuity would have to rely more on theories and methods, while others could simply go with the flow of the class. He believed that “everywhere the teaching must agree with the psychology, but need not necessarily be the only kind of teaching that would so agree; for many diverse methods of teaching may equally well agree with psychological laws” (James, 1899/1962, p. 3).
Watching this video also made me start thinking about how, even when you are using the concepts that we can glean out of these theories, the class might not be a success for every learner. I could see valuable aspects of this polygon lesson, but I have to admit that if I were there taking the class, I would be bored to tears, and would be stressed that I would be called on at any moment. I also really did not like the idea of only being referred to as a number. This would not be a beneficial learning environment for all students, but for some it might be the most ideal. This issue seems to lend more credence to the idea that theories that suggest using a combination of learning methods in order to help as many different types of learners as possible, such as UDL, might be best.
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