Post #1 – Learning, Motivation + Theory

After reading through the article, I think that I have a pretty good idea about each method of teaching. Being in the B.Ed program, we have gone through these ideas pretty extensively already, with an emphasis on constructivism! For my first post, I am going to describe some examples from my life about when I was taught using each of the methods.

Behaviourism

I can just vividly recall sitting at the kitchen table with my mom, around grade 3-4 or so, doing math flashcards over and over. We were expected to know our times table from 1-12, and I was (and still am not!) a math gal. My mom would hold up a card and if it wasn’t either x 1, x 2, x 5 or x 10, I just couldn’t get it. There were many frustrating times at the kitchen table, let me tell you! Looking at this from a behaviourist point of view, the equation my mom would hold up would be the stimulus, and me calling out the correct answer would be the response. As mentioned in the article, behaviourism focuses on the importance of the consequences that follow an incorrect response to a stimulus. Every time I got an answer wrong, I would feel so embarrassed and stupid for not knowing my basic math facts. And I never really got any better at it. I still struggle with basic math facts, it just takes me a little less longer! After watching the video, “Backwards Bicycle”, Destin mentions how “knowledge is not understanding”. Maybe I was finally able to regurgitate math facts, but I think it took me so long to do it because I never fully understood why a simple math fact like 8 x 12 gives us 96, I was only focussed on giving the correct answer so as not to feel stupid.

Cognitivism

Growing up, I remember using lots of mnemonics to learn various ideas. I found that this cognitive strategy worked very well on me, because I was able to remember a fun little word or phrase that created meaning to me, in order to recall information. An example was when I was learning how to play piano as a kid, and I could never remember the notes on the music sheet, until my grandma taught me “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge”. This stuck with me! Cause it was silly, and it was so easy for me to remember the notes on the staff. I was able to store this information easily in my mind, rather than trying to remember that the bottom line notes = E.

Constructivism

I had to think a bit harder on this one to come up with an example from my life, but I thought of a good one! I had this psychology teacher in high school who was one of my most memorable teachers. He was able to teach in a way that would translate difficult concepts into ways his students would understand it. One of the way’s he would do this was by using analogies. For example, we were starting a new unit in psychology surrounding the behaviourist theory of learning (funnily enough). We came to class on the Monday morning, and he began by telling us that for every 20 minutes in class that he didn’t see any students on their phones, he would give us one point. By Friday, if the class was able to reach 10 points, he would buy the class pizza for lunch. The first day, nobody really seemed to care, and I think after the hour was up we only got 1 point, no big deal. The following day, he announced a new rule to the game, a punishment. Every time he caught someone on their phone, he would keep the class late for 1 minute (2 people on their phones, 2 extra minutes). Well this really upped the ante! We had a few punishments here and there, but we were able to get to 10 points by Friday through this motivation. He bought us all pizza, and we went on with our day. The following Monday, he told us that we had all been in an experiment on behaviourism that we didn’t know about. This was such a cool way to teach us a new concept in a meaningful way. We were all easily able to understand how the behaviourist theory generally worked, because he found a way to teach us in a way we were able to understand.

That concludes my first post! It was definitely fun to think back to how I used to learn things, and what might have worked and what probably didn’t.

References:

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. (2017). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective. Edtechbooks. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/behaviorism_cognitivism_constructivism