Monday, November 1, 2010

Week 4

Week 4 - Learning Theories

This week's topic is ' Learning Theories'. There are 2 learning theories: Behaviourism, and Cognitism/Construtivism.

All these learning theories are vital and crucial in guiding the teacher to educate students well.

Behaviourism

Behaviorist focuses on the changes of behavior and the focuses on the product. According to behaviorist, they believe that stimulus should be given to the students because stimulus will produce reaction. The repeated reaction will then create long-term behavior.

Constructivist/ Cognitism

On the other hand, constructivist believes that learning is a process whereby it connects the prior knowledge to the new experience gained from the environment. Besides that,learning is also viewed as an active process whereby the learners are actively constructing mental models and theories of the world around them. The knowledge is constructed through logical organization, interaction among learners or teachers and from the integration of prior and new knowledge. Basically, also can be considered as Piaget's theory of cognitive development proposes that humans cannot be "given" information which they immediately understand and use. Instead, humans must "construct" their own knowledge. They build their knowledge through experience. Experiences enable them to create schemas - mental models in their heads. These schemas are changed, enlarged, and made more sophisticated through two complimentary processes: assimilation and accommodation.

Personally,I believe that all these learning theories are vital and crucial in guiding the teacher to educate students effectively. Each theory has their own significant function which can be used by the teacher in order to teach his or her students effectively. These theories will certainly help us to make the right approach in handling our young learners to learn science better. For example, the constructivist approach focus on hands on activity and independent learning. Therefore, a teacher should let the students to think and figure out the answer or the concepts on their own. As a result, it can develop the students critical and creative thinking. However, we would find some cons in using this approach whereby the students may not have the existing schemata that she or he can relate to with the new schemata (concept) that bring into their brain. Therefore,as a future teacher I believe that we should have the knowledge of this learning theories before we can really use it in the teaching and learning process.

Besides, I also found out that constructivist theory are not about making the correct decisions but it is more to the thinking process that can enhance students learning. For example, we need to choose a food that iis suitable to be brought to space based on our own interpretations and nothing to do with the knowledge about the gravity in space. So, it shows that critical thinking is crucial in the Constructivist Theory. Hence, I can also use such strategy in future too in order to impart some knowledge that will help the students to think appropriately before they can construct science concepts or knowledge regarding the subject matter.


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