"Through others we become ourselves"
Lev S. Vygotsky
The development of human being
is possible because all of us are living in socio-cultural context: each of us
develop through relationships and also by the interaction between emotions and
cognitive senses. The environment can disturb or help the learning
process: teachers should be able to create an environment that helps
students to learn at their very best. Teachers should also consider the
individuality of learning: each of us learn in different ways and need sometimes
support in some area. Some of us are also special needs students. How many of
us had problems at school with a certain subject? Was it really the subject or
was it the method? Was it our learning style that wasn´t combined with the
lesson? I found out what is my learning style in here and I really started to wonder, after our
first virtual session, why my teachers in Italy never considered the
student´s individuality of learning.
Learning is the interaction of several factors: the individual learner, the environment, the task itself and the process. The word "learning" has different meanings: for me learning means the permanent changes in a human pattern of acting, thinking and feeling. The learning process is different for each of us: timing, ways, reinforcement, style, etc.
R. Gagné (1972) found out different domains where the learning takes place: motor skills, verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies and attitudes (you can purchase his article in here). Learning takes place also in different sphere: the sphere of knowledge, understanding, skills, attitudes and behavior. In other words: I know, I understand, I can, I want to and I do. Those spheres are related to each other and every change that happens in one of them influences the other. How any individual reacts to learning changes in any one domain seems to depend on personal and situation factors.
There is a lot of literature suggesting that all learning comes from sense of need. In our first virtual session we presented Maslow pyramid: "Learning takes place when an individual feels a need, puts efforts to meet that need and experiences satisfaction with the results of his effort." (Leagans 1974). The problem in adult education with this kind of theory has been that educator or facilitator identify a "need" as they see it and try to engage the adult learner: in other words: I know what you need to learn. I would prefer to speak about motivation that need. Motivation works better than needs.
Learning is the interaction of several factors: the individual learner, the environment, the task itself and the process. The word "learning" has different meanings: for me learning means the permanent changes in a human pattern of acting, thinking and feeling. The learning process is different for each of us: timing, ways, reinforcement, style, etc.
R. Gagné (1972) found out different domains where the learning takes place: motor skills, verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies and attitudes (you can purchase his article in here). Learning takes place also in different sphere: the sphere of knowledge, understanding, skills, attitudes and behavior. In other words: I know, I understand, I can, I want to and I do. Those spheres are related to each other and every change that happens in one of them influences the other. How any individual reacts to learning changes in any one domain seems to depend on personal and situation factors.
There is a lot of literature suggesting that all learning comes from sense of need. In our first virtual session we presented Maslow pyramid: "Learning takes place when an individual feels a need, puts efforts to meet that need and experiences satisfaction with the results of his effort." (Leagans 1974). The problem in adult education with this kind of theory has been that educator or facilitator identify a "need" as they see it and try to engage the adult learner: in other words: I know what you need to learn. I would prefer to speak about motivation that need. Motivation works better than needs.
In addition to that, there are
many learning theories (behaviorism, cognitivism and humanism for
instance) which are based on an individual learner (NOT ON THE
INDIVIDUALITY OF LEARNING) and are concentrating into the interaction between
the context and the experiences in learning. In these theories one thing
is sure: in the learning process it is the entire individual (alone) who is
actually involved: they engage their learning episodes, and adults (for
instance) bring with them all their emotions and experience to their learning
tasks or to their teaching tasks.
In learning process we need to interact with other people, communicate with them and share our experiences. We need also to be social (constructivism, socio- constructivism and humanistic theories). Other theorists (such as for instance Kolb or Bloom) describe the learning as process a person goes through and can see and experience the learning.
At this stage of worldwide education situation I can say that not all learning theories are right, but it doesn´t mean that they are not valuable. For some of us learning can happen from external stimuli, or by transfer the knowledge, or as result of a critical experience, or as result of needs/motivation. We learn differently so I think we can apply different learning theories - not only one that covers all the situations - to a situation and in the class organize the lessons covering different learning styles. It´s very hard to do it but indeed we should try.
In learning process we need to interact with other people, communicate with them and share our experiences. We need also to be social (constructivism, socio- constructivism and humanistic theories). Other theorists (such as for instance Kolb or Bloom) describe the learning as process a person goes through and can see and experience the learning.
At this stage of worldwide education situation I can say that not all learning theories are right, but it doesn´t mean that they are not valuable. For some of us learning can happen from external stimuli, or by transfer the knowledge, or as result of a critical experience, or as result of needs/motivation. We learn differently so I think we can apply different learning theories - not only one that covers all the situations - to a situation and in the class organize the lessons covering different learning styles. It´s very hard to do it but indeed we should try.
In my classes for instance I
have really different adult students. I will take as an example
the Italian food class students (that takes place once in a month). In
this class I have students from different backgrounds and have
different kind of learning styles.
The approach to the receipt is quite easy: first I explain briefly what we are going to do (showing them some pictures - so I can cover the audio and visual learners) and then (in pairs) they are going to try the day´s recipe (kinetics learning). Usually I organize the class in pairs or in groups of three (for budget reasons). When the group is ready with their plates we are going to analyze the recipe process - did we really need so much oil? Is it going to be 30´ in a oven? - At the end of the day people have got their recipes in their way.
For doing that I use mostly Kolb´s analysis (they don´t know that) and it seems to work (at least I haven´t got any bad feedback until now... ;)
The approach to the receipt is quite easy: first I explain briefly what we are going to do (showing them some pictures - so I can cover the audio and visual learners) and then (in pairs) they are going to try the day´s recipe (kinetics learning). Usually I organize the class in pairs or in groups of three (for budget reasons). When the group is ready with their plates we are going to analyze the recipe process - did we really need so much oil? Is it going to be 30´ in a oven? - At the end of the day people have got their recipes in their way.
For doing that I use mostly Kolb´s analysis (they don´t know that) and it seems to work (at least I haven´t got any bad feedback until now... ;)
Further reading:
To our presentation´s video on learning styles:
about learning theories
- http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/resources/briefing_papers/learning_theories.pdf
- http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~nicolast/courses/cs654/lectures/LearningTheories.pdf
- https://iefx.engineering.illinois.edu/sites/iefx.engineering.illinois.edu/files/Illeris(03)Towards%20a%20contemporary%20and%20comprehensive%20theory%20of%20learning.pdf
- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/en-labs/5/5a/Learning_Theories.pdf
- http://team1cognitiveapproachestolearning.pbworks.com/w/page/46311057/How%20Behaviourism%20and%20CIP%20Differ
- http://team1cognitiveapproachestolearning.pbworks.com/w/page/46026491/Behaviourism%20%3A%20Skinner,%20Pavlov,%20Thorndike,%20Watson
- www.learningandteaching.info/learning
- Gagné Robert M., Learning outcomes and their effects: useful categories of human performance, American Psycologist, Vol 39 (4), April 1984, 377-385.
