I-Period 1890-1920

Behavioural approaches to learning & their application in educational settings

William James

The father of American psychology:

- Introspective View of Psychology
- Foundational ideas of functionalism, radial empiricism, and pluralism
- Emphasis on self-processes and profound belief in free will
- Mental associations’ critical role in the development of human functioning
Functionalism
 “Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him
to this world’s life” (James)  “the stream of consciousness” (it leads to knowledge + it leads to action)
 Most identifiable feature: “its claim that mental states are characterized by their interactions with and causal
relations to other mental states.”
 Emphasis on: Mental functions: look at real-world problems + How people function in, and adapt to,
different environments
Pragmatism
 James defines it: (a method) “aimed to discover the truth of an idea”
 The doctrine that the validity of idea is measured by their practical consequences
 Pragmatism: a method for appraisal of ideas
The Father of Educational Psychology:
The first American psychologist to directly address educational issues (Series of Talks to Educators)
 The Nature of the learner: a student is "a little sensitive, impulsive, associative, and reactive organism, partly
fated and partly free"
 The Nature of Learning: “We are all "mere bundles of habit... stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of
our past selves  Individuals learn by reacting to impressions.  A child's mind is there to help determine
those reactions  Learning is making rations numerous and perfect.
 The optimal conditions of instruction:
o Experienced Teachers
o Association: connecting “the child's native reactions” to new information and academic material/
“help the child to acquire new reactions”
o Interest by association “Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through
becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.”
 The nature of important learning-instructional outcomes:
o Be aware of child's native interests
o Present material in a straightforward and clear manner
o Connect the new knowledge to the existing knowledge (Material to be used)
o Competitive classroom environments: “The feeling of rivalry lies at the very basis of our being”
o Individuals’ exercise of free will

Conclusions:
 the shift in emphasis from structure to function.
 Progressive and non-traditional at the time, James’s psychology of education was child-centered, as he urged
teachers to familiarize themselves with their students’ interests and needs and use them when creating
connections and associations.
 This would lead to effective teaching practices, and therefore, effective learning.
Critique: there were criticisms of the functional psychologists’ interest in practical concerns because William James
saw Psychology as an empirically based science.
 He thought that psychology did not have the whole picture of human beings and that science probably never
would.
 He saw the teacher as having a practical wisdom. Teaching, he believed, was an art that could not in any
direct way be much touched by psychology, particularly its laboratory findings. Teachers were ethical and
concrete, and psychologists were abstract and analytic, thus making communication difficult between them
 Ongoing dispute between seeing psychology as a pure or as an applied science.

Applications and transfer of the ideas of the period to educational contexts, progressivism in education

John Dewey [Key ideas in educational Psychology]

• [The new psychology] The old psychology's underlying mechanical metaphor, drawn from Newtonian theory,
contrasted with the new psychology's metaphor of the living organism, drawn from evolutionary theory (Darwin).
Dewey and his colleagues founded the functionalist school of psychology, a way of thinking about psychology
that was strongly influenced by Darwin.
 Functionalists promoted a psychology interested in the purpose of behavior or the function of mind. That is,
instead of describing some event, say a rat's pursuit of food or a child's acquisition of fear, psychologists should ask
what would that behavior accomplish? What purpose would it serve? What is the behavior's function?
• [The Reflex Arc Criticism] In attempting to educate a child, one needs to modify the environment in a way that
goes with the child's tendencies rather than ignoring them.  more cooperative model of behavior: seeing an act as
the result of an interaction between organism and environment rather than as determined by the environment.
• [Self-Realization: Cognition, Emotion and Will] in education one needs to be sensitive to children's thinking in
relation to their emotional feelings and practical intentions and their thinking.
 Theory of Emotion: The educational implication is that one needs to introduce activities in the classroom
that students value or in which they have a stake or interest.  In this way Dewey also reconceived of
motivation in a more cooperative and interactive way.
 How We Think:
o "reflective" thinking and how it can be improved by "training" in school.
o Stages of "a complete act of thought":
 “Felt difficulty”
 Observation
 Suggestion
 Reasoning
 Experimental corroboration/ verification
 Dewey’s analysis places thinking in the context of ongoing activity. Thinking does not begin with a
well-defined problem that comes out of the blue. Rather, it begins with experienced trouble and
uncertainty.
 Will/ Democracy and Education: Democracy and Education was an attempt to reframe education in a more
interactive and open-ended way.  rethinking the function of education, human nature, and society. 
education as having the function of maintaining the continuity of social life.
Conclusions:
 Dewey, who was a former classroom teacher, respected teachers and the complexity of teaching more than did
James. Dewey held to a holistic psychology, understood the teacher as a social being, and thought that if psychology
presented its findings as truths to be applied it would necessarily put teachers in a position of servitude. He saw
laboratory psychology as limited and all psychological findings as tentative, as working hypotheses for teachers to
test.

Thorndike [teaching, and transfer]

Values:
• Scientifically-oriented: ‘‘less speculation and more experimentation’’ (Russell)
 Thorndike believed that only empirical work should guide education. His faith in experimental psychological
science and statistics was unshakable.
 He supported the scientific movement in education–an effort to base teaching practice on empirical evidence
and sound measurement. His view proved narrow as he sought laws of learning in laboratories that could be applied
to teaching without actually evaluating the applications in real classrooms.
• Quantitative data:
“...psychology must attain the certainty and exactness of the physical sciences.’’ (Jonich)
• Improving society:
Educational Psychology as one side of society.
Theories:
• Theory of Connectionism:
• Law of effect:
 Learning will be more effective if students are rewarded.
positive reinforcement is emphasized.
The emphasis of reward over punishment.
• Law of Exercise:
’Practice makes perfect’’
 Repetition and practice are essential steps in learning process
• Law of Readiness:
 learning is dependent upon the learner's readiness to act. (Motivation)
 A person can learn when physically and mentally adjusted to receive the stimuli.
• Transfer of Learning:
"One mental function or activity improves others in so far as and because they are in part identical with it, because it
contains elements common to them" (Thorndike)
 Improving one cognitive skill can lead to improving a different cognitive skill as long as the two skills share many
elements in common.
 Demolished the long-cherished belief of certain educators that the learning of Greek, Latin, and mathematics...
would strengthen the mental powers.
• Sampling Theory:
 Intellectual abilities based on knowledge acquisition (S-R interaction) not on mental factors (Intelligence)
 Intellectual ability can best be viewed as the ability to acquire knowledge from experience: the ability to learn.

Conclusions:
He had absolute certainty about the potential of a rational, scientific approach to education. For example, when
he applied his connectionist psychology to the learning of school subjects, he derived his practices from logic and
laboratory, not from the teaching of arithmetic in the field. He then claimed that this new pedagogy differed from
the old because “the newer pedagogy of arithmetic ... scrutinizes every element of knowledge and every connection
made in the mind of the learner”.
 Despite their many personal and professional differences, these three founders of general and educational
psychology had no problem agreeing that psychology had to take a major interest in education and that it was
destined to be the "master science" for pedagogy. There was still a question, however, about which view of science
was to dominate. This was the context for Edward Lee Thorndike, whose views differed from these individuals in
important ways.
 Although he often noted that schools were complex sites, he managed to ignore the difficulties inherent in
applying psychological science to school problems. He didn't seem to recognize the need for the "intermediate
inventive mind" that James did, nor did he feel the need to re-approximate psychological findings into the school, as
Dewey did. He not only ignored the unscientific musings of educators, he ridiculed them.

Skinner’s [Operant Conditioning]

Behavioral theory is based on two areas of study that took place in the 20th century: classical conditioning and
operant conditioning
 Classical conditioning developed by Ivan P.Pavlov focused on stimulus-response patterns
 Operant conditioning developed by B.F.Skinner added positive and negative reinforcement practices to the 
stimulus-responses model.
Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through
operant conditioning, an individual makes an association between a particular behavior and a consequence
(Skinner).
o Behavior Shaping: Skinner argues that the principles of operant conditioning can be used to produce
extremely complex behavior if rewards and punishments are delivered in such a way as to
encourage move an organism closer and closer to the desired behavior each time.
o Teaching Machine Movement: "A teaching machine is simply any device which arranges
contingencies of reinforcement" (Skinner). For Skinner, it became a device for delivering
programmed instruction.”
 His main contributions to it were a critique of standard educational practices.
 A simple way to shape behavior is to provide feedback on learner performance (compliments, approval,
encouragement, and affirmation.)
 Behavior is learned through motivation. The stronger the motivation, the easier to increase or reduce behavior [A
person who has been punished is not less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid
punishment]

Example: If you're teaching your students, and some are paying attention, and others aren't. When you want to find
out if they've learned what you've just taught, you look for behavioral signs of understanding, like being attentive.
You might even ask some questions, and their answers would help you figure out if they've learned what you've said.
 Psychologist B.F. Skinner was interested in learning and behavior. Like teachers who have to depend on behaviors
to tell them what's going on inside a person, Skinner believed that observing people's behavior was the best way to
figure them out.

Critique: The teaching machine movement flourished, but was not uncontroversial. 
learning Skinner's research was criticized for analyzing human knowledge and thought in "mechanistic" terms.
Students would become dependent on teaching machines, individuality would be suppressed, and grades would be
meaningless
Teaching machines would undermine and jeopardize the teacher's position in the classroom.

Period 1920-1960

Cognitive development and human learning:

Lev Vygotsky

The work of Lev Vygotsky has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development. 
Social Development Theory.

 The fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition.

 The importance of social factors in encouraging cognitive development.  Cognitive development stems
from social interactions from guided learning within the zone of proximal development as children and
their partner's co-construct knowledge.
Example: The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (often the parent or
teacher) then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate their own performance.

 The importance of culture in the development of higher mental functions (speech, reasoning).  cognitive
development varies across cultures.
Example: in our culture, we learn note-taking to aid memory, but in pre-literate societies, other strategies
must be developed, such as tying knots in a string to remember, or carrying pebbles, or repetition of the
names of ancestors until large numbers can be repeated.

 The emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development.  thought and language are initially
separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age, producing verbal thought
(inner speech): cognitive development results from an internalization of language.
o 1: It is the main means by which adults transmit information to children.
o 2: Language itself becomes a very powerful tool of intellectual adaptation.
o Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language: social speech, private speech and
inner speech.  private speech, in Vygotsky's view, was the earliest manifestation of inner speech
(the moment in development where language and thought unite to constitute verbal thinking.)

 Principles: The More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
 The More Knowledgeable Other: “...someone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than
the learner, with respect to a particular task, process, or concept.” (McLeod) Examples: Teachers, peers,
computer programs
  Zone of Proximal Development ZPD: The area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should be
given - allowing the child to develop skills they will then use on their own - developing higher mental
functions. Example: the child cannot solve the jigsaw puzzle by himself and would have taken a long time to
do so (if at all), but is able to solve it following interaction with the father, resulting in developing
competence at this skill that will be applied to future jigsaws.
 Classroom Applications: Reciprocal Teaching and Scaffolding.
 Reciprocal Teaching: used to improve students' ability to learn from text. In this method, teachers and
students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and
predicting. The teacher's role in the process is reduced over time.
 Scaffolding: Vygotsky is relevant to instructional concepts such as "scaffolding" and "apprenticeship," in
which a teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice can work on it
successfully.

Critique:
Vygotsky's work has not received the same level of intense scrutiny that Piaget's has, partly due to the time-
consuming process of translating Vygotsky's work from Russian.
Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective does not provide as many specific hypotheses to test as did Piaget's theory,
making refutation difficult, if not impossible.
the main criticism of Vygotsky's work concerns the assumption that it is relevant to all cultures.  Rogoff (1990)
dismisses the idea that Vygotsky's ideas are culturally universal and instead states the concept of scaffolding - which
is heavily dependent on verbal instruction - may not be equally useful in all cultures for all types of learning. Indeed,
in some instances, observation and practice may be more effective ways of learning certain skills.

Jean Piaget

Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development.
 Piaget's (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a mental model of the
world.
 He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development as a
process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment.

Before Piaget’s work, the common assumption in psychology was that children are merely less competent thinkers
than adults. Piaget showed that young children think in strikingly different ways compared to adults.  children are
born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and
knowledge are based.

 There Are Three Basic Components to Piaget's Cognitive Theory:

 Schemas (building blocks of knowledge)
Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent behavior
 a way of organizing knowledge.
 “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions, and abstract
(theoretical) concepts.
Example: For example, a person might have a schema about buying a meal in a restaurant. The schema is a stored
form of the pattern of behavior which includes looking at a menu, ordering food, eating it and paying the bill. This is
an example of a type of schema called a 'script.' Whenever they are in a restaurant, they retrieve this schema from
memory and apply it to the situation.
Example: babies have a sucking reflex, which is triggered by something touching the baby's lips. A baby will suck a
nipple, a comforter (dummy), or a person's finger. Piaget, therefore, assumed that the baby has a 'sucking schema.'

 Adaptation processes: equilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation

Jean Piaget viewed intellectual growth as a process of adaptation (adjustment) to the world. This happens through:
o Assimilation
It happens when using an existing schema to deal with a new object or situation.
Example: A 2-year-old child sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides. To his
father’s horror, the toddler shouts “Clown, clown”.
o Accommodation
This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new
object or situation.
Example: In the “clown” incident, the boy’s father explained to his son that the man was not a clown and that even
though his hair was like a clown’s, he wasn’t wearing a funny costume and wasn’t doing silly things to make people
laugh.  With this new knowledge, the boy was able to change his schema of “clown” and make this idea fit better
to a standard concept of “clown”.

o Equilibration
This is the force which moves development along. Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a
steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds.
Equilibrium occurs when a child's schemas can deal with most new information through assimilation. However, an
unpleasant state of disequilibrium occurs when new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas
(assimilation).

• Stages of Cognitive Development:

o Sensorimotor: Birth - 2 years

The main achievement during this stage is object permanence - knowing that an object still exists, even if it is
hidden.  It requires the ability to form a mental representation (i.e., a schema) of the object.
o Preoperational: 2-7 years
During this stage, young children can think about things symbolically. This is the ability to make one thing - a word
or an object - stand for something other than itself.  Thinking is still egocentric, and the infant has difficulty taking
the viewpoint of other
o Concrete Operational: 7-11 year
Piaget considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child's cognitive development because it marks the
beginning of logical or operational thought. This means the child can work things out internally in their head (rather
than physically try things out in the real world). Children can conserve number, mass, and weight. (Conservation is
the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes.)
o Formal Operational. 11 years onwards
The formal operational stage begins at approximately age eleven and lasts into adulthood. During this time, people
develop the ability to think about abstract concepts, and logically test hypotheses.

Educational Implications:

Piaget did not explicitly relate his theory to education, although later researchers have explained how features of
Piaget's theory can be applied to teaching and learning.

Piaget has been extremely influential in developing educational policy and teaching practice.
Example: a review of primary education by the UK government in 1966 was based strongly on Piaget’s theory. The
result of this review led to the publication of the Plowden report (1967).

 Discovery learning: the idea that children learn best through doing and actively exploring - was seen as
central to the transformation of the primary school curriculum.  Student- centered approach
 Individual learning: assimilation and accommodation require an active learner, not a passive one, because
problem-solving skills cannot be taught, they must be discovered.
 The importance of the evaluation of children's progress: teachers should 'not assume that only what is
measurable is valuable.'
 Readiness: Children should not be taught certain concepts until they have reached the appropriate stage of
cognitive development.
 The role of the teacher: is to facilitate learning, rather than direct tuition. Therefore, teachers should
encourage the following within the classroom:
o Focus on the process of learning, rather than the end product of it.
o Using active methods that require rediscovering or reconstructing "truths."
o Using collaborative, as well as individual activities (so children can learn from each other).
o Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in the child.
o Evaluate the level of the child's development so suitable tasks can be set.
  Flexibility in the curriculum

Criticism:
 Piaget concentrated on the universal stages of cognitive development and biological maturation, he failed to
consider the effect that the social setting and culture may have on cognitive development.
 Example: Dasen (1994) cites studies he conducted in remote parts of the central Australian desert with 8-14-
year-old Aborigines. He found that the ability to conserve came later in the aboriginal children, between
aged 10 and 13 (as opposed to between 5 and 7, with Piaget’s Swiss sample).
 Very Small sample composed solely of European children from families of high socio-economic status.
Researchers have therefore questioned the generalizability of his data.
 For Piaget thought precedes language. The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky argues that the development
of language and thought go together and that the origin of reasoning is more to do with our ability to
communicate with others than with our interaction with the material world.

Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory

In social learning theory, Albert Bandura (1977) agrees with the behaviorist learning theories of classical
conditioning and operant conditioning. However, he adds two important ideas:
 Mediating processes occur between stimuli & responses.
 Behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning.

Observational learning:
The Bobo Doll Experiment:
2 groups: Boys and Girls aged between 3 and 6 years old.
First group: watched adults playing with the bobo doll in an appropriate manner
Second group: watched adults performing violent acts (kicking, punching, hammering) on a Bobo doll
Result: the group who watched adults play gently, played calmly showing no sign of aggression while the other
group treated the doll violently.  when children were left alone with the Bobo doll, they performed the same
exact behaviors they had observed.

Mediational Processes:
SLT is often described as the ‘bridge’ between traditional learning theory (behaviorism) and the cognitive approach.
This is because it focuses on how mental (cognitive) factors are involved in learning.
Unlike Skinner, Bandura believes that humans are active information processors and think about the relationship
between their behavior and its consequences.
 Observational learning could not occur unless cognitive processes were at work.
 individuals do not automatically observe the behavior of a model and imitate it. There is some thought prior to
imitation, and this consideration is called mediational processes.

There are four mediational processes proposed by Bandura:

 Attentional processes: refer to student’s attending to and extracting the key elements of modeled events.
(having the learner’s attention/ mental focus or concentration)
 Representational/Retention processes: are concerned with students’ cognitive construction and rehearsal
of modeled information of the symbolic codes (where the teacher is modeling the target behavior and letting
them practice it so they retain the skill)
 Production processes: refer to students’ representational guidance and corrective adjustment of
enactments. (where the learners basically try to do everything by their own without the help or the
modeling of the teacher)
 Motivational processes: refer to various types of incentives to act on what one has learned (when the
student become vicariously rewarded in some way and they will continue the skill because they have seen it
reinforced or rewarded in someone else’s behavior)

Reciprocal determinism:
Bandura believed in ‘reciprocal determinism’, that is, the world and a person’s behavior cause each other.
He considered personality as an interaction between three components: the environment, behavior, and one’s
psychological processes
 Understanding Self-regulation: Bandura (1986) has recommended teaching students how to self-regulate
personal, behavioral, and environmental aspects of their lives through three essential self-management processes:
self-observation, judgmental process, and self-reactive influence rooted in personal standards.
 Understanding Self-Efficacy Beliefs: Bandura questioned reinforcement accounts of human motivation.
 He viewed reinforcement operations not as strengtheners of responses but as providing information for
constructing behavior patterns and performance outcome expectations.
 Bandura has analyzed how children’s perceived efficacy, teachers’ beliefs in their instructional efficacy, and
schools’ collective sense of efficacy contribute to academic achievement.
 Bandura has noted that teachers with high instructional efficacy:
o Devote more classroom time to academic activities.
o Provide students experiencing difficulties with more guidance.
o Praise their students’ accomplishments more frequently.

Contribution to Education:
The Nature of The Learner:
Bandura acknowledges the important role of biological forces in human development and functioning.
• Human functioning includes both proactive and reactive processes.
• Through proactive functioning, learners are able to increase their self-regulatory control over events that affects
the course of their lives.
• Like personal environments, human biological forces are potentialities that must be activated by specific personal
beliefs and actions (Bandura, 1999).
The Nature of The Learning Process:
Bandura has envisioned human learning as socially embedded event in which children learn about the world around
them through social transactions and media sources.
• Much of this social learning is not under control of teachers or parents, but rather, arises from contact with
siblings, peers, coworkers, and mass media sources.
• Bandura’s conception of learning entails more than the acquisition of knowledge in a cognitively reactive way. It
involves the development of self-beliefs and self- regulatory capabilities of students to educate themselves
throughout their lifetime

Criticism: although it can explain some quite complex behavior, it cannot adequately account for how we develop a
whole range of behavior including thoughts and feelings.  for this reason, that Bandura modified his theory and in
1986 renamed his Social Learning Theory, Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), as a better description of how we learn from
our social experiences.

Social learning theory is not a full explanation for all behavior. This is particularly the case when there is no apparent
role model in the person’s life to imitate for a given behavior.

It is limiting to describe behavior solely in terms of either nature or nurture and attempts to do this underestimate
the complexity of human behavior. It is more likely that behavior is due to an interaction between nature (biology)
and nurture (environment).

The importance of social context in learning (peers, parents, teachers and schools), Self-regulatory learning

Maria Montessori

The Montessori Method is an approach to learning which emphasizes active learning, independence, cooperation,
and learning in harmony with each child’s unique pace of development.

Respect for the child:

The Montessori approach allows children choices, thus preparing them to become independent learners. Children
discover the world around them through a hands-on approach, rather than the information being landed upon them
from above. This promotes enthusiasm and curiosity driven learning.

The Absorbent Mind:

Children are constantly learning in an inherent process of their everyday life. What the child absorbs depends largely
on what types of information and experiences cross their paths. Montessori classrooms allow free exploration and
learning in uninterrupted blocks of time, in order to get the most out of their learning experiences.

Sensitive periods: 
Children become ripe to learn different types of skills at specific points in their development. The age at which each
sensitive period occurs varies from one child to another. Teachers must be acutely aware of when the right time is
to introduce concepts to each individual child.

The prepared environment:  

A major factor which sets apart Montessori classrooms are their physical organization. Montessori believed that
classrooms should be filled with readily available and well-organized learning materials. The environment should be
aesthetically pleasing, and only include things that the teacher wants the child to experience.

Auto-education:
Children should educate themselves, thus developing skills necessary for life. This can occur once the teachers have
prepared an appropriate learning environment and gives choices. Autoeducation can be seen as the goal of this
method.

Montessori teachers:
Montessori teachers have quite a different role than those of classic educational methods.
 an aid in the child’s independent learning process
 decides which learning materials will be available and how they will be organized
 free exploration
 give guidance and a helping hand.
active observer, assessing when children have reached sensitive periods where new concepts may be introduced.

Cognitivism & Curriculum, Models and mentors in teaching/learning (children in difficulty, individual differences,
gender bias), dealing with children of different ages (developmentally appropriate instruction).

Gesalt Theory and perceptual reactions

Definition:
 It refers to a unified whole
 Theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s
 It a response to behaviorism  importance of sensory wholes and the dynamic nature of visual
perception
 Describes how people tend to organize visual elements into groups when certain principles are applied

Gesalt Laws of perception:

Proximity When the elements placed together are perceived as a grp
Teaching related concepts and lessons closely to each other
Similarity Things with similar visual characteristics are seen as belonging to each other
Planning lessons with the next and previous in mind + teaching topics closely related + easy to make
connections between lessons
Continuity Occurs when the eye is compelled to move through one object and continue to another object.
Revisiting points from the last lesson
Allows children to see links between what they have previously learned and what they already know +
use previous knowledge to build upon understanding
Figure & The eye differentiates an object form its surrounding area and distinguishes bn the object and the
ground background.
Focus on the important parts by highlighting or underlining them
Children need to clearly understand the important parts of a lesson
Closure When an object is incomplete or a space is not completely enclosed. If enough of the shape is indicated,
people perceive the whole by filling in the missing information.
Teachers should ensure all children have made significant progress
Active rather than passive learners + active processing of info and restructuring data to understand it +
importance of the impact of previous experiences
Cognitivism and Gesalt:
Gesalt Psychology Cognitive theories assume :
o The memory is an active organized processor
o Prior knowledge is important

Cognitivism (≠behaviorism) focus on the internal mental processes (insight, memory info processing perception)
and connections during learning
 Learning is a change of knowledge state
 Knowledge acquisition is described as a mental activity that entails internal coding and structuring by the
learner.
 Learner is viewed as an active participant in the learning process
 Emphasis is on building blocks of knowledge (e.g. identifying prerequisite relationships of content)
 Emphasis on structuring, organizing and sequencing information to facilitate optimal processing

Ausubel’s theories: (American psychologist influenced by Piaget)

Meaningful Occurs when learners actively interpret their experience using cognitive operations
Learning Prior knowledge determines new learning ways
Theory cognitive structure (memory structure) and anchoring ideas (ideas in the cognitive structure)
within the cognitive structure are the prerequisites to meaningful learning
Learning types: reception, discovery, rote, meaningful, representational, conception, and
propositional learning
Process Derivative Subsumption: existing knowledge + new knowledge
Correlative: new material = extension OR elaboration
Superordinate: from specific to general knowledge
Combinatorial: enrich both new and prior knowledge through the use of both of them
Use of advanced organisers because it is easier to connect new info with the background
knowledge + see how the new concepts are related
Types: * expository (describing new concepts)
* narrative (story form)
* graphic organising (use of visuals)
* skimming (reading thru)
Assimilation Concerned with how individuals learn large amounts of meaningful material.
New information is related to relevant prior knowledge
Principles: personal 1st then progressively differentiate and specify terms + integrate new
materials with the previously learnt ones to compare old and new concepts
Steps: Subsumption  superordinate  combinatorial
Add meaning to Synthesize ideas to Add additional background
existing concept create new concepts to reach a global
understanding
Paulo Freire: Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information

The relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed and how to reach freedom  The dehumanising
situation in dictatorships is the result of an unjust systematic oppression that favours violence and dehumanises
the oppressed
The distinction between the banking model of education vs a critical pedagogy + The importance of dialogue 
•Education as an instrument of oppression
•Education as an instrument of liberation
•Education as a mutual process, world-mediated
Education as the practice of freedom + investigation of "generative themes" and its methodology 
•Dialogics as the essence of education as the practice of freedom;
•The human-world relationship, “generative themes,” and the program content of education as the practice of
freedom
Antidialogics and dialogics as the matrices of opposing theories of cultural action 
•Antidialogics: an instrument of oppression 
•Dialogics: an instrument of liberation
•The theory of antidialogical action and its characteristics: conquest, divide and rule, manipulation, and cultural
invasion
•The theory of dialogical action and its characteristics: cooperation, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis.

Philosophical Contributions:
 Critical Pedagogy:
o Definition: “Critical pedagogy is a movement involving relationships of teaching and learning so that
students gain a critical self-consciousness and social awareness and take appropriate action against
oppressive forces.”  This idea is central to Freire’s notion of “conscientization” or the coming to
personal critical consciousness.
o Teacher-Student Relationship: Reciprocal + Democratic
o Marxism and Post Modernism: “The objective of Freirean pedagogy, like that in the Praxis Marxism,
is to transform consciousness through an increased awareness of how language enables and
circumscribes individual thoughts and social interaction”
o Critical Consciousness: critical consciousness, is the action of the oppressed by which they take
control of their situation and become critically aware of social, political, and economic oppression. It
is the power to change an existing reality into a new and improved reality.
 Liberation:
o Communion rather than freedom: Only 'men in communion liberate one another'.  The first step
must come from the pupil. The work of the educator is to make it (Instead of helping the child to
overcome the innate fear of freedom which invades the psychology of every young person,
traditional education capitalized on this fear.)
o Dialogue: “Only through the recognition of liberating both the oppressed and oppressor through
dialogue can human groups be truly able to create systems that are human”
 Dialogic Programmes:
o Mediated Education: Authentic education is not carried on by "A" for "B" or by "A" about "B," but
rather by "A" with "B," mediated by the world.
o Dialogue: The requirements of a dialogue: hope + faith in people + humility + critical thinking
“Dialogue is an encounter, a close encounter, a social encounter… Dialogue is not just conversation;
it is dialectic and reflective”

Cores of Educational Liberation: For education to be liberating, it must go through three different stages:
 The teacher should be lenient in the initial steps towards autonomy so that it can attract learners in a
positive way instead of the attraction imposed by oppression.
 Teachers should make students aware of the instruments of their own liberation process.
 Recovery from both the disease (oppression) and the treatment (liberating education)

Social Class and Education

Reasons for Unequal Education:
 Income and class:
Those who come from a higher socio-economic status are privileged with more opportunities than those of lower
status.
Higher socio-economic status  better tutors + donating money so that their children become advantaged
 Costs of education:
Prestigious schools and universities are expensive
 Tracking:
Variation in the quality of teaching and curricula between tracks  lower track = inferior resources
 Academic inequality
 Differentiated Instruction, a step towards the Inclusive Classroom?
Definition:
“Differentiation can be defined as an approach to teaching in which teachers proactively modify curricula, teaching
methods, resources, learning activities, etc. to address the diverse needs of individual students and small groups of
students to maximize the learning opportunity for each student in a classroom (Bearne).”
A mixed ability class:
A Mixed Ability Class or teaching system is one in which pupils of different abilities are taught together in the same
class.
Why Differentiate?
One size fits all makes little sense + Different learning profiles and varied needs + Wide range of levels and abilities +
Every student has something special to contribute
What to Differentiate?
Materials & input + Objectives Method, techniques Processes Tasks& activities + Assignments Pace
How to Differentiate?
 Accommodate diversity
 Make all learners feel valued
 Value linguistic and non-linguistic skills
 Provide a range of challenges for different abilities (ZPD)
 Continuous assessment & regulation Learn your learners!
For Whom to Differentiate?
Low achievers + High Achievers + Single students + A group of students

Planning: What do I want students to know and/or to be able to do? (Learner profile + Style)
Pre-assessment: Who already knows the information and/or can do it? (gaps/ levels of readiness/ motivation)
Differentiation: What can I do for them so they can make continuous progress and extend their learning?
 Identifying Intelligences (Multiple Intelligences)
Grading Tasks  Select a text to dictate to the students but give different students a different task to
Example: Dictation do.
 Give the students in the strongest group a blank piece of paper.
 Give the middle-level group a gapped version of the text to be dictated.
 Give the lowest-level group a complete version of the text to be dictated with
multiple choice options for some of the words and expressions.

Adjusting  Asking and giving instructions the advanced Mastery group (high Degree) went
Assignments online, found street maps, wrote directions and produced posters.
 The approaching Mastery group (approaching) designed something different: a
board game using the vocabulary of giving directions.
 The Beginners group worked in pairs to direct one another to various areas in the
school like the cafeteria, office, or computer lab.

 While heterogeneous instruction is attractive because it addresses equity of opportunity for a broad range of
learners, mixed-ability classrooms are likely to fall short of their promise unless teachers address the learner
variance such contexts imply (Gamorman).

Functional literacy and lifelong learning

Functional literacy:
 Def:
It means having skills that include an understanding of the ways in which texts are used in the world to achieve
social goals and purposes.
It is associated with the quality of the insertion a person can have in the social and economic life of a country
 Difference between functional and traditional literacy:
Traditional literacy Functional literacy
Isolate operation Possible to treat the illiterate
 Provides sufficient proficiency in reading and Related to precise collective and individual
writing needs
Aims at providing the illiterate with access to the Teaching of the skills and the occupational
written word training should be integrated
Diffuse and non-intensive Adopts an over-all approach related to the
technical skills
Standardised and laid down on a centralised Variable, flexible and takes into account the
basis diversity of objectives
 Functional literacy and job opportunities:
An increase in a standard deviation in the functional literacy level is associated with an increase in the probability
of being employed and an increase in the salary of workers

Lifelong learning:
 Def:
It is the development of human potential through a consciously supportive process which stimulates and
empowers individuals to acquire all the knowledge and skills they need
 Characteristics of a lifelong learner: (Knapper)
Aware of their objectives
Motivated to pursue their dreams of learning
Conscious of the relationship bn learning and real life
Vision  change should be perceived as a challenge not an obstacle
 Traditional learning vs lifelong learning:
Traditional learning Lifelong learning
Emphasis on the basic skills Education is embedded in ongoing work activities
Kldge absorption Klge construction
Topics are defined by curricula Topics arise incidentally from work situations
Probs are given Probs are constructed
Learners follow a novice model Reciprocal learning
Assessment as a basis for promotion Assessment as guide to learning strategies

 Forms of learning:
Formal learning: occurs within an organised and structured context
Non-formal learning: integrated into planned activities that contain important learning elements
Informal learning: learning from daily life activities  experiential learning
 Benefits of lifelong learning:
Leads to self-fulfilment
Helps establishing valuable relationships
Keeps people involved as active contributors to society
Opens the mind
Helps developing natural abilities
 Limitations:
The acquisition of certain skills should not be deferred until needed
Learners may have difficulties in decontextualizing knowledge

Kolb: Experiential Learning

 Introducing Experiential Learning

Creation of knowledge through the transformation of experience + knowledge results from grasping and
transforming the experience.
Experiences influence the learning process
 Ways of grasping information:
 Concrete experience
 Abstract conceptualisation
 Transforming experience through:
  Reflective observation
 Active experimentation
 The experiential learning cycle:
 1. Concrete Experience - (a new experience or situation is encountered, or a reinterpretation of existing
experience).
 2. Reflective Observation of the New Experience - (of particular importance are any inconsistencies
between experience and understanding).
 3. Abstract Conceptualization (reflection gives rise to a new idea, or a modification of an existing
abstract concept the person has learned from their experience).
 4. Active Experimentation (the learner applies their idea(s) to the world around them to see what
happens).
 Learning styles:
 Diverging 
 Assimilating
 Converging
 Accommodating
Support:
 Correlation between students’ learning styles and their own majors  success due to choosing majors that
are well-aligned to their learning style.
 Good for helping people explore their own strengths when learning new things.
 The theory addresses how learners can play to their own strengths as well as developing areas in which they
are weakest.
Criticism:
 It does not address the role of the non-reflective experience in the learning process
 It does little to look at learning that occurs in larger social grps
 No stable learning styles
 The theory is narrowly focused and restrictive

II. Period 1960-2000

Packaging instruction: The "nine events of instruction" + Gagné Instructional design model

Gangné
Conditions of learning theory:
Focus on intentional or purposeful learning  Events in the environment influence the learning process
Once the learning outcomes are identified, an analysis of the conditions that govern learning and remembering can
occur
 There is a relation between learning outcomes and the events of instruction

 Gangné’s hierarchy of learning:

 Signal learning: classical condiions + response to a signal
 Stimulus response: response to a given stimulus + operant conditioning + learning thru reinforcement
 Motor chain: linking 2 or more stimulus-response connections to form a more complex skill
 Verbal association: linking or associating 2 or more words or ideas
 Discrimination: learners differentiate stimuli in the environment
 Concept learning: concrete vs defined concepts
 Rule using: relations among concepts and rules
 Higher order and problem-solving skills: combining lower level rules to solve probs

 Taxonomy of learning outcomes:

Gangné shifted from behavioral to cognitive
Categories of human performance established by learning:
 Verbal info: state ideas or having declarative kldge of labels and facts (making a verbal response to
input) + bodies of kldge (recalling facts)
 Intellectual skills (involve the procedural kldge)
 Cognitive strategies (rehearsal, elaboration and organizing)
 Attitudes (an internal state that affects personal choices + it can be measured by observing the person’s
actions)
 Motor skills (sequences of motor responses or movements combined into complex performance)

 Conditions of learning:
Internal conditions: capabilities that exist in the learner before any new learning begins  2 kinds:
 Prerequisite kldge stored in the long-term memory
 Particular cognitive processes that bring the old and the new kldge together

External conditions: stimuli presented externally to the learner + instructional conditions provided by the teacher,
other learner or materials that facilitate the internal conditions necessary for learning.

 Instructional systems design:

Generalizable principles of learning that were used to guide the design of instruction
Deficiencies in principles derived from behaviorist theories for developing instruction aimed at the dvpt of
concepts and principles

Gangné made suggestions abt the ways in which psychological learning principles might inform curriculum dvpt
efforts
 Nine instructional events:
Gain attention Gain the attention of students so that they are alert for the reception of stimuli
Informing learners of Inform the learner of the purpose and expected outcomes of the learning material to
the objective provide the learners with an expectancy that will persist during the time learning is taking
place
Stimulate recall for Recall skills or kldge previously learnt + associate new info with prior kldge and previous
prior learning experience
Present the content In an organised and meaningful way
Provide learning Show what appropriate actions constitute correct performance, plus edditional
guidance suggestions
Elicit the performance The learner is required to practice the new skill  an opportunity for learners to confirm
(practice) their correct understanding
Provide feedback Individual and immediate feedback and guidance + feedback from other learners
Assess the Students demonstrate what they have learnt without receiving additional coaching
performance
Enhancing retention Retaining the learnt capability over a long period of time and transferring it into new
and transfer situations outside of the learning environment  practice ensures retention
 Limitations:
Hard to be both broad and comprehensive
Smith and Ragan (1999): Gangné’s insufficient for self-learning
Orey and Nelson (1997): Gagné’s systematic approach is not applicable to incidental and discovery-based learning
Lent and Van Patten (1997): following systematic prescriptions for building skills is not always effective in teaching
adult learners.

Into the 21st Century

Mastery of Learning, discovery learning, problem-solving, creativity (low-order and higher-order skills)

Bloom:

Domains of Learning:
Cognitive Domain
Affective Domain
Psychomotor Domain
 This diversity helps to create more well-rounded learning experiences and meets a number of learning styles and
modalities
The cognitive domain involves knowledge and development of intellectual skills (Bloom)
Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Cognitive Domain:
It is intended to provide for classification of the goals of our educational system. It is expected to be of general help
to all teachers, administrators, professional specialists and research workers who deal with curricular and evaluation
problems. (Bloom)
•To set learning objectives
•To plan curriculum
•To effectively align objectives to assessment
 The taxonomy was used as the basis for curriculum development, test construction and lesson planning.
Thinking Skills:
Knowledge: Learner’s ability to recall information.
Comprehension: Learner’s ability to understand information.
Application: Learner’s ability to use information in a new way.
Analysis: Learner’s ability to break down information into its essential parts.
Synthesis: Learner’s ability to create something new from different elements of information.
Evaluation: Learner’s ability to judge or criticize information.

However, after almost 6 decades of using Bloom’s original taxonomy, some educators begun to wonder whether the
taxonomy is still valid to this age, which becomes characterized of a lot of research on intellectual skills and learning
 Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
Anderson changed the taxonomy in 3 broad categories: terminology, structure and emphasis.
 Category names were revised from Nouns to Verbs
 The last two stages of Bloom’s Taxonomy were switched so that Evaluation (Evaluating) comes before Synthesis
(Creating).
 They added a new knowledge dimension: Metacognitive

Problem solving and learner engagement

 Problem solving
Problem solving: a cognitive processing directed at achieving a goal when no solution method is obvious
 Characteristics :

It is cognitive  occurs internally + can be inferred indirectly

It is a process  involves representing and manipulating knowledge
It is directed the cognitive process is guided by the goal
It is personal  the individual knowledge and skills of the problem solver determine the difficulty or ease with
obstacles
 Types :

Defined problems: clearly presented

Ill-defined problems: more complex + not all the info is presented + no legal move generator
Routine: the problem-solver possesses a ready-made solution procedure
Non-routine: the prob solver does not have previous kldge
 Concepts :

Info processing system: an adaptive system capable of modelling behaviour within wide limits
Task environment: the structure if facts and their interrelations that make up the prob
Problem space: the way the problem solver views the task environment

 Cognitive processes in problem solving:

Representing: representation of the situation

Planning/monitoring: involves devising a method for solving a prob + involves evaluating the effectiveness og the sit.
Executing: occurs when a prob solver carries out the planned operations
Self-regulation: instigating, modifying or sustaining cognitive activities
Depend on the types of knowledge:
o Factual kldge: knowing facts
o Conceptual kldge: knowing categories
o Procedural kldge: knowing procedures
o Strategic kldge: knowing general methods
o Metacognitive kldge: awareness and control of the cognitive processing
 Instructional methods that promote problem solving:

Load-reducing methods: providing practice  reduces load in working memory

Structure-based method: using concrete manipulatives
Schema-activation: advancing organisers Encourage active cognitive processing to
Generative methods: elaborating, summarising.. make connections between existing kldge
Guided discovery: guiding the learners while solving probs information + encourages learners to pay
Modelling: worked-exples and apprenticeship attention
Teaching thinking skills  curricula focuses on many component skills + instructional method focuses n prob solving
steps +students are expected to solve probs + skills are taught before automating the basic skills
 Prob solving strategies:

Analogy Adovated by Polya

The solver looks for an analoguous pob for which the solution is known
Drawing a comparison of 2 cases
 E.g: radiation prob how to use high-intensity rays to destroy an inoperable stomach tumor
 solution: apply low-intensity rays from different angles
Planning or Deviding the prob into subprobs and finding a suitable order for completing the subprob
problem heuristics
decomposition Heuristics:
 Means ends analysis:goal-based + involves reducing the differences bn the current
state and the goal of the prob
 Working forward strategy: from the given info to the problem goal by choosing the
equations necessary
 Working backward strategy: determines subgoals to set by applying the general
research strategy
Polya four  Understand the prob by asking questions
steep strategy  Devise a plan polya by finding the reasonable ways to solve probs
 Carry out the planning by being patient and discarding the plan if it doesn’t work
 Look back polya by taking time to reflect on what is done
Algorithm A logical step-by-step procedure
Trying solutions until finding the right one
Contains:
 Attempt
 Observe
 repeat

 Learner engagement:
 Def:
The degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism and passion that students show when they are learning or
being taught  extends to motivation
The ways in which school leaders and adults engage students more fully in the governance and decision-making
 Measurement:
Quantitative data Qualitative criteria
Attendance + standardised test score + graduation rates How to assess learners
track levels of achievement  answers to the gap between the teachers and the
 learners’ understanding of engagement learning
 Types:
Behavioural Students’ effort and compliance with school structures
engagement School-level changes that focus on modifying students’ behavioural engagement
Achievement as an outcome of students’ behavioural engagement as measured by teachers
E.g: a student who always works hard but struggles with learning  not cognitively
engaged
Cognitive Students’ will  how they feel abt themselves and their work
engagement The quality of students’ engagement
Distinction bn students’ effort to simply do the work or understand it
 E.g: a student who is cognitively and behaviourally engaged will attend to the task and
manage their learning
Emotional Students’ feelings of interest, anxiety..
engagement They extend to which students feel a sense of belonging to school
Distinction bn boredom and interest
E.g: a student who is emotionally engaged can recall the infor learned and apply it
 Engagement as linked to motivational variables:
Expectancy theory An indiv will behave in a certain way bcz they are motivated to select a specific behaviour
(1964) Cognitive process of how an indiv processes the different motivational elements
Vroom Emphasis on the need for orgs to relate rewards directly to performance + ensure that the
rewards given are deserved
Goal orientation Eison: Difference bn learning orientation (students learn to acquire new skills) and grade
theory (1970) orientation of learners (students learn to obtain high grades)  2 ends of the same
Eison + Nicholls continuum
Nicholls: 2 types of achievement goals:
 Task involvement: indivs seek to dvlp competence related to one’s ability
 Ego involvement: indivs seek to dvlp their competence relative to the abilities f
others
Dweck’s social- Focus on empirically-based studies that investigate how ppl dvlp beliefs abt themselves +
cognitive theory how these theories create their psychological worlds
(1988) 2 theories of intelligence:
 Entity view: intelligence is fixed + stdnts desire to prove themselves to others
 Incremental view: intelligence is malleable, fluid and challengeable + stdnts see
satisfaction from learning and opportunities to get better
Motivational Goals are attained if these are met:
systems theory  Motivation
(1992)  Skill
Ford  Biological structure and functioning
 Responsive environment
Self-efficacy It is ppl’s judgments of their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance
theory (1997) It sparked a line of research into how teachers’ beliefs are related to their actions and to the
Bandura outcomes they achieve
 Engagement and contextual influences:
Parental influence: engagement between schools and families results in better academic outcomes for students +
thru emotional engagement, parents could empower their children
Peer influence: partnership is transforming the learner from a consumer to a producer of klge + learning
communities result in mutual engagement and joint enterprise
Teacher-learner interaction: engaging students in classroom learning + importance of the teacher’s behaviour
o Students: background klge + reasons of learning
o Content: stimulate learners to go beyond the prescribed content
o Teacher: should reflect on their own klge
o Expertise: teachers must keep abreast of their subject and conduct research
o Rapport: takes account of research finding on the teacher attitudes
o Understanding the form of a bridge that students hv to build
 Constructivism (1980s-1990s) + Communities of Practice and Online Communities

Bruner
The process of education:
The woods hole conference and Bruner’s process of education:
 The role of structure in learning and how it lay be made central to teaching  the importance of structure
in relation to knowledge
 Learning is a match bn the external structure of the subject matter and the internal and cognitive structure
of the learner

The theory of cognitive dvpt:

Ordered dvpt of 3 modes of representation:

o Enactive: manipulating and interacting with objects

o Iconic: manipulating images of the objects or phenomena
o Symbolic: manipulation of representation of the actual object

Children’s view of the world: action images arbitrary symbol system

The spiral curriculum

Even the most complex material can be understood by young children if they were properly structured

 Features:
o Revisit the topic several times
o Increase in the complexity of the topic with every revisit
o New and old learning are interrelated
 Benefits:
o Reinforcement of info
o Logical progression from simplistic to complicated ideas
o Apply the early knowledge to later courses

MACOS (Man, A Course of Study):

 Def: an elementary-level social science curriculum that Bruner helped dvlp
 Principles:
o What is human abt human beings
o How did they get that way

an exploration of human evolution and the evolution of culture as human adaptation
 Focus on the humanizing forces: tool-making, lge social org, childhood and the urge to explain the world
 Techs:
o Contrast: human vs primate; Human vs prehistoric human, technological society vs primitive society,
adults vs children  important to establish continuity and similarity
o Simulation an use of informed guessing, hypothesis-making and conjectural procedures: films
o Participation: stimulated by games and models of reality
o Stimulation of self-consciousness abt thinking: learn how to get and use info intensification of
the self-consciousness abt thinking
 Use of films

Narrative and cultural psychology:

 Bruner: “I believe that story making, narrative, is what is needed for [helping learners create a version of the
world]” (Bruner, 1996)
 The narrative provides a theoretical rationale to make the immigrant ad other minority children feel at home
in the world of the school.
Guiding tenets for a psycho-cultural approach to education:
 Perspectival tenet: the meaning of any fact is relative to the perspective or frame of reference in which it is
constituted
 Constraints tenet: forms of meaning accessbile to humans in any culture are constrained by the nature of
human mental functioning and the nature of the symbolic systems accessible to the mind
 Interactional tenet: passing on kldge and skill
 Externalisation tenet: benefits of externalising joint projects
 Narrative tenet: the mode of thinking and feeling that helps children create a version of the world to
envisage a place for themselves.

Wenger (communities of practice and situated learning)

Jean Lave and situated learning:

 General Info:
Emerged in the late 1980s, 1990s + built upon Bandura’s social learning, Vygotsky’s constructivism, Dewey, Kolb..
+ concerned with problem-based learning and experiential learning
Learning is situated  as it normally occurs  embedded within activity, context and culture
Unintentional  peripheral” legitimate participation”
 Exples:
Field trips: active participation of learners in an unfamiliar environment
Cooperative education: active physical participation
Music and sports:
Vocational settings:
 Major ideas:
Emphasis on the higher order thinking
Encourages reflection on learning
Focus on application rather than retention
Places learners in the experience
Enhances employability
Stresses that learning occurs through dialogue
Community of practice: (CoP)
Def: a grp of ppl who share a concern or a passion for sth they do + who interact regularly to learn how to do it
better
Elements to dvlp a community of practice:
 Community: members engage in joint activities and discussion, help each other and share info
 Practice: members as practitioners dvlp a shared repertoire of resources
 Domain: membership implies commitment and a shared competence
Cop: Legitimate peripheral participation (LPP):
 LPP provides a way to speak abt the relations bn newcomers and old timers and abt activities
 It concerns the process by which newcomers become part of a CoP
 It is not itself an educational form but an analytical viewpoint on learning and a way of understanding
learning

Limitations:
Internally: how to organise educational experiences that ground school learning in practice thru participation
communities around subject matter
Externally: how to connect the experience of students to actual practice thru peripheral forms of participation in
broader communities beyond the walls of the school
Over the lifetime of students: how to serve the lifelong learning needs of students by organising communities of
practice focused on topics of continuing interest to students beyond the initial schooling period
 Teaching as a craft, art, or science
Teaching as a craft:
Def: the skilled practice of a practical occupation of the skills involved in carrying out one’s work
 Jonhson (2015):
o Teaching is a skill or set of skills learned through experience
o Teacher preparation progs will not teach how to teach; instead they will give the basis which is to
learn how to teach
o Master teachers dvlp over time thru experience, reflection and continued study
 Tom (1984): two senses:
o The act of teaching is moral bcz it presupposes that sth of value is to be taught
o The teacher-students relationship is inherit moral  entails an offer of control by one indiv over
another  this control will not be exploitative but will be used to enhance the competence of the
learner
 Barrie (1991):
o Concern abt the validity of regarding teaching as a craft
o Basic academic concepts can be forgotten and hv to be retaught
o Teachers hv changing and fluctuating means and ends within each classroom
o Crafts ppl hv clearly recognised means and ends to be achieved in a short period
Teaching as an art:
 Eisner (1988, 2004):
o Education work is an expression of artistry  allows one to look beyond the technical and dvlp
creative and appropriate responses
o Students as artists who do their art in any field as they represent a profound aspiration
o Education should allow sufficient space to explore the world in their own way thru arts
o A serious study and practice of an artistic discipline is the most effective way for children to learn:
 How to perceive and explore relationships
 How to think and express the constraints and affordances of a medium
 How to pay attention to sublets and be sensitive to differences
 How the shape of the built environment of the elements within it affect our experiences
 Eyler (2015):
o Teaching is like creative art or an artistic enterprise
o Artists and teachers also ask powerful questions, many of which hv difficult answers
Teaching as a science:
 Eyler (2015):
o Students are not experimental subjects
o They have the potential to surprise the teacher and create new kldge
 Johnson (2015):
o There are strategies and practices that are effective in enhancing learning
o Teachers are constantly collecting data by observing their students
o Like scientists, teachers experiment with new techniques and strategies to see how they work

Makedon (1990): teaching is:

 An art of applying learning research if it is defined as an attempt to help students learn
 Science: if we try to help students learn based on how we have observed them
 An act of conveying information with no particular emphasis on how well students learn

The teacher as a role model

Def: “the role of an educator is to foster learning and serve as a role model. Role modelling can be defined as
teaching by example and influencing ppl in an oftentimes unintentional, unaware, informal and episodic manner.”
What makes a good teacher:
 Active demonstration of one’s positive role model xeristics and skills
 Knowing how to deal with challenges
  Creating opportunities for authentic learner-centred experiences with constructive feedback
How to maximise learning thru role modelling:
 Attention: drawn to the behaviour or skill being modelled by physically emphasising it, asking relevant
questions, providing an enthusiastic narrative and subdividing aspects of a complex skill
 Retention: may be enhanced by the adoption of repetition of a skill or fact, symbolic representation to
create visual memory, drawing appropriate parallels and relating new to existing klge
 Production: provide experience with appropriate autonomy
 Motivation: awareness of motivators for learners and increasing frequency and magnitude
What makes teachers become inspirational role models:
 They need to respect the learners by being in control of the class with no authority, making pupils feel as
though treated as adults, empathising with students without being condescending, being fair and treating
everyone equally
 They need to epitomise the world of being a child in a world controlled by adults
Role model attributes:
Positive attributes and attitudes Negative attitudes
Taking an interest in the learners and spending Making derogatory comments
time with them Inappropriate humour
Enthusiasm Lack of empathy
Patience Unfriendliness
Provide clear explanations Expressing anger of frustration
Versatile, learner-centred style Bitterness and cynicism
Constructive feedback Forgetting names and faces
Demonstrating reasoning Excessive criticism
Facilitating patient interaction Humiliating learners
Identifying opportunities for reflection Promoting unnecessary competition

Modernism and postmodernism

Foundation of Modernism:
 European Enlightenment (18th C)
Its goal was to establish knowledge, ethics and aesthetics based on rationality + lead the society towards progress,
out of irrationality and superstition.
End of the Catholic Church + end of the Aristotelian logic +dominance of the Baconian inductionsim + emergence of
the Newtonian physics = first foundations of modernism
Bacon  role of observation Man became the centre of the universe
Newton  laws of nature Belief that Man can find the ultimate truth

Rationalism and scientific method took over as the dominant interpretation of life
Descartes  objective kldge + reason can gasp truths
A civilisation of scientific and rational kldge of value where the highest premium is on the individual human life
and freedom  such freedom and rationality would lead to social progress through virtuous, self-controlled work
and create a better material, political and intellectual life for all.
History of post-modernism:
It was first used to describe the nihilism of 20thC taken from Nietzsche + signifies the failure of secular modernism
and a return to religion + rise of mass society + refers in literary criticism to the reaction against literary modernism +
post-structuralist philo + against modern rationalism, utopianism and fundamentalism
Influenced by: Phenomenology; existentialism, psychoanalysis, Marxism and structuralism
They portrayed the human being as alienated in contemporary society and the sources of that estrangement are:
Capitalism (Marxism), naturalism (phenomenology), excessive repressive social mores (Freud) and
bureaucratically organised life & culture (existentialism) Avoided behaviourism and naturalism + focus on the
meaning of facts
Methods era corresponds directly to modernism era:
-> the 'best' teaching method (Kelly, 1969)
-> 'predetermined packaged deal' of static attitudes, theories, methods, techniques, pedagogies (Strevens,1977)
-> 1950s to 1980s: "spirit seventies" (Brown, 2002), 'Age of Methods', 'innovative designer' era, 'brand-name'
methods, "the changing winds and shifting sands" (Marckwardt, 1972),
"method era" (Richard and Rodgers, 2001)

Modernism Postmodernism
Objective Subjective
Rational Irrational
scientific Anti-scientific
Global claims Local claims
Positivist Constructivist
utopian Populist
Central Fragmented
The best Better
Linear Non-linear
Generalising Non-generalising
Theoretical Practical
Abstract Concrete
Unification Diversity

Instructional Technology in Schools

Information technology vs. Instructional technology

Information Technology Instructional Technology

It deals with the management of It is used to support teaching & learning
information not directly related to It should add to instruction, not replace it
instruction Enhance and support learning
used for student records, assessment…

Instructional technology in action:

Purpose: enhance and support learning
It examines teachers’ use of the major instructional techs over the last century
It explores the reasons why so few teachers have used tech and why is the pen, paper and teaching board are
more used now
Examples:
Computers and social media software to create presentations
Computer-based labs to measure and analyse variables
Digital and video cams to create documentaries
Scanners to input photos into presentations
Tape recorders
History of use:
Oral communication Oral communication was used to transmit and maintain stories and histories
Use of slate boards in India in the 12 th c then blackboards in the 18th c
After WWII, US Army started using overhead projectors for training until they were
replaced by electronic projectors & presentational software in the 1990s
No dvpt for education but for other purposes
Telephone: cvlped in the late 1870s but never became a major educational tool bcz
of its high cost
Video-conferencing by dedicated cable systems and conferencing rooms since the
1980s  Introduction of lecture capture systems and webinars to deliver lectures
Written education Forms analytic, lengthy chains of reasoning and argument  accessible +
reproducible with no distortion + more open to analysis and critique
Invention of the printing press in the 15 th c
Improvements in transport infrastructure in the 19 th c + creation of postal system
Uni of London offering an external degree pro by correspondence  still exists
 1970s: Open Uni transformed the use of print for teaching thru printed courses
based on advanced instructional design
Broadcasting and video BBC began broadcasting educational radio progs for schools
Open University in partnership with BBC dvlp a uniprog open to all
Introduction of audio and video casssettes
Use of tv for edu
World Bank and UNESCO provided dvlping countries with tech
Satellite broadcasting: INSAT (India) for delivering locally produced progs in several
lges and it still uses satellites for tele-education
Use of videos + introduction of Youtube and Apple Inc created iTunes U for uni
teaching
Computer techs  Computer-based learning: dvlpmnt of programmed learning to comutarise
teaching without human interaction + Skinner started experimenting with
teaching machines that made use of programmed learning based on
behaviourism
 Computer networking: Arpanet(USA) combined classroom teaching with
online discussion forums
 Online learning environments: LMS (Learning Management System) dvlpd
WebCT and provided online teaching environments where content can be
loaded and organised
 Social media: cover a wide range of technologies + associated with
millenials + integrated into forma education