From Learning Theory to Learning Practice:

A Journey Through ETEC 512

Paper written for Dr. Cliff Falk, ETEC 512, December 2005

Participating in ETEC 512: Applications of Learning Theory to Instruction has been like taking an exciting journey. The course allows students to travel through space and time, visiting many famous psychologists and discovering how their theories can be applied to learning. At each stop on the journey, it seemed possible to gain more information about how to improve classroom teaching. This report gives an overview of the stops on my journey, describing my personal definition of learning, detailing six learning principles that I have developed, and providing a discussion of how I will or have put the theory into practice.

I believe that learning can be a life-long process which can take place anywhere and at any time. Learning can also be unintended or intended. Unintended learning occurs when the learner understands cause-and-effect relationships, and observes events that happen in a regular way. For example, a very young child may learn that each time she drops food on the floor, the dog will come. Intended learning occurs when the learner puts herself in the position (physically and/or mentally) of being asked or wanting to learn, such as when a person attends school or listens attentively while Grandmother shows how to make jam.

Learning is better retained when words (written or oral) are paired with action. Not everyone is a text-oriented visual learner, yet from about grade 4 on, we expect everyone to learn by reading text books. In order to cement learning, I believe that learners must take action – do some math problems, walk out a distance to find out how far 4 metres is, or work alongside Grandmother while making the jam.

Components of many of the theories studied in ETEC 512 reflect my beliefs about learning. Three of the theories that I consider to be especially relevant to my teaching are Ausubel’s meaningful reception learning, Bruner’s guided discovery learning, and the theories of constructivism. Reception learning occurs when students are presented with a body of knowledge in its final form, and it is contrasted with discovery learning. According to Ausubel, reception learning is the most efficient way to transmit the knowledge of an academic discipline. Meaningful reception learning (as opposed to rote learning, in which students simply try to memorize things), “...implies that the learner is cognitively active” (Driscoll, 2005, p. 116). In meaningful reception learning, learners make connections between what they already know and the new material to be learned.

Bruner developed ideas about the three modes of representation in learning and guided discovery learning. Bruner’s three modes of representation are enactive, iconic, and symbolic, and he noted that learners usually go through each stage in progression, although it is possible for people to skip stages in their learning. The enactive mode occurs when learners must represent their learning through motor responses. The iconic mode occurs when learners can demonstrate their learning through images, and the symbolic mode occurs when learners can use symbols (such as language or numbers) to show their learning. Bruner also developed ideas about discovery learning in which the students are guided towards the discovery of concepts. In his view, discovery “proceeds systematically toward a model which is there all the time” (Driscoll, 2005, p. 235).

The ideas of constructivism come from a number of theorists working in many different academic disciplines, but the father of constructivism is considered to be Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky believed that children “convert social relations into psychological functions” through mediation with tools or signs (Driscoll, 2005, p. 251). Another important idea of Vygotsky’s is that of scaffolding, where a teacher or more advanced peer provides assistance to a learner to allow him to accomplish more than he would be able to by himself. Because constructivists believe that learning is a social process, it will never be done with the learner in isolation, but always in partners or groups.

Six Learning Principles

From many of the theories studied in the course, I have developed six learning principles. These principles detail ways that the instructor can structure the environment in order to provide an optimal learning experience for the student. They include providing a safe place for the students to learn; having the students participate in a variety of learning activities; and building on each student’s previous experiences. Although many of the learning theories studied refer to children, I believe that they are equally valid for adults, especially in the community college setting where I work.

1. Provide an emotionally and physically safe space for students to learn.

Working with adult students can be an emotionally challenging experience, both for the instructor and the student. Many adult students who enter an ABE program have a background that may include previous unsuccessful schooling attempts as well as dysfunctional family relationships. Pratt (2002) defines five teaching perspectives through his Teaching Perspective Inventory (TPI), one of which is Nurturing. When instructors teach from this perspective, they ensure that students are well-supported emotionally in their efforts to learn because of their belief that if students don’t feel safe, no learning can take place. Nurturing instructors often find their roles changing from instructor to counselor, and must be prepared for this.

2. Have students work in groups as much as possible.

Cooperative groups have been used for years, and the notion is supported by many different psychologists. Driscoll (2005) describes one of three Piagetian-based learning principles: “Children’s interactions with their peers are an important source of cognitive development” (p. 215). Piaget believed that children’s thinking is very egocentric, and in order to move the child beyond this, instruction that includes “peer teaching and social negotiation during problem solving” (Driscoll, 2005, p. 215) is encouraged.

Bruner’s theories also support the idea of students working in groups, although Bruner’s ideas stem from an “outward-in” approach rather than Piaget’s “inward-out”. Bruner (1973) defined intelligence as “the internalisation of ‘tools’ provided by a given culture” (in Driscoll, 2005, p. 242). Working in groups allows students to build their intelligences by sharing their culture with each other, an impossibility while working individually.

Learning in groups is also important in constructivism. Vygotsky (1981) believed that development “is the conversion of social relations into mental functions” (in Driscoll, 2005, p. 250). A condition for constructivist learning also noted by Driscoll (2005, p. 394) is to “provide for social negotiation as an integral part of learning.” Tinzmann, Jones, Fennimore, Bakker, Fine and Pierce (1990) note, “Effective communication and collaboration are essential to becoming a successful learner. It is primarily through dialogue and examining different perspectives that students become knowledgeable, strategic, self-determined and empathetic.”

3. Provide multimodal experiences for the students.

The works of many theorists support this, including Bruner, who suggests that if learning is difficult using the symbolic mode of representation (i.e., language or other symbols), that the instructor may need to return to an earlier mode of representation, such as enactive (using physical movement) or iconic (using images). In her chapter on constructivist learning strategies, Driscoll (2005, p. 399) notes, “Viewing the same content through different sensory modes (such as visual, auditory, or tactile) again enables different aspects of it to be seen”. Finally, Gardiner’s theory of multiple intelligences provides some evidence that students’ strengths may lie in different areas, whether linguistic, logical-mathematical or bodily-kinesthetic, among others. Presenting information in several formats (for example, text-based, oral, and using imagery) will enable more students to understand the material, and in a more complex way.

4. Use scaffolding to allow students to work at a higher level than they would be capable of without assistance.

Challenge the students with difficult problems, and provide tutoring or peer interaction that allows the student to move beyond the simple problems. It was Vygotsky’s view that providing instruction at a development level that a child has already reached is ineffective for the child’s learning (Driscoll, 2005). Scaffolding means that an instructor or a more advanced peer will provide guidance so that a student can move to a higher skill level. As the student becomes more capable at the skill, the guidance is gradually withdrawn.

5. Find out and build on what students already know.

This idea is supported by theories from cognitive information processing (CIP) to constructivism. In CIP theory, encoding is the process of relating new material to that which the learner already knows, thereby making the new material more permanent in the long-term memory (Driscoll, 2005). Ausubel (1963b) noted three conditions for his meaningful reception learning, one of which is “what learners already know and how that knowledge relates to what they are asked to learn” (in Driscoll, 2005, p. 116). His theory of derivative and correlative subsumption refers to attaching new information to anchoring ideas already in the mind. When solving complex problems in a constructivist environment, students may discover that they are missing some prerequisite information or skills. It is in this context that teachers may direct students to appropriate resources in order to find the information or build those skills. Once the students have this additional information, they can return to building on those lower level skills in order to solve the more complex problem.

6. Use a variety of learning contexts to promote the students’ transfer of information from one situation to another.

When teaching a mathematical concept, for example, provide the students with many different examples of how the concept can be applied. Nothing is more frustrating to a student than to have only two simple worked examples in the textbook, and then be asked to use the concept in a variety of ways for which the textbook provides no assistance. From CIP theory, encoding specificity means that students will recall information at test time best by using the same cues that were used for encoding the information (Thompson & Tulving, in Driscoll, 2005). If students learn to apply the mathematical concept in only one type of problem, they will be unable to apply the concept in other situations. Providing ample and varied practice for the students will ensure that they are able to retrieve information using many different types of cues.

Learning Theory to Learning Practice

Before I began the MET program, I was a transmission-style instructor for the majority of my courses, and only beginning to see the value of other instructional strategies. My last teacher education course was many years ago when the transmission style was the main one that was taught. In the last few years before I started the MET program, I started using group work with a few of my courses, but I was slightly uncomfortable with it because it almost felt like I was letting the students “cheat” because of a focus on individual assessment. After completing five courses in the MET program, especially ETEC 512, I have broadened my instructional strategies to include more cooperative group work; building on previous learning; and using a multi-modal approach including videos and math manipulatives where appropriate. Although I have not had time to implement them in some of my classes yet, I would like to extend my strategies to the use of advance organizers and practice with computer-based multi-media information.

I work at a college in central British Columbia, dealing with adult students in many different programs. My teaching appointments have included work in the Adult Basic Education (ABE - high school upgrading), Aboriginal Teacher Assistant (ATA) and Applied Business Technology (ABT) programs. The ideas that follow, therefore, are based on my experiences with adult students in a rural BC area. It has been very exciting to review the work of many different educational and other psychologists, and I have found many opportunities to apply the theory in my classes, especially in the math class within the ATA program. I am not only able to practice the theory with my own students, but also to pass the theory on to them, as some of the prospective teacher assistants in the program may go on to further their education and become classroom teachers themselves.

The Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers course has 20 adult learners ranging in age from the late teens to the mid-forties. The academic ability of the students is quite varied as well, ranging from the top graduating student at the local high school to some students who have not completed grade 9 (and below). We spend most of our time in one classroom with the desks arranged in five groups of four students each. I have access to a whiteboard, overhead projector, DVD/VCR player and a laptop computer with projector.

Many of my instructional ideas have been reinforced by the experiences in the ETEC 512 course. The first is that not every student learns in the same way. Getting students to understand their own learning styles (e.g., visual – text-based, or auditory, etc.) can be a big step toward ensuring that students take responsibility for their own learning. If the instructor mainly gives oral instructions, students who are visual text-based learners will know to ask her to write the instructions on the board as well.

Another concept that I am becoming more convinced about as I take more MET courses is that students have a lot of knowledge that they can share with other students. To take advantage of this, I have arranged the desks in groups, and encourage students to share strategies with their group mates. In the past I have been uncomfortable with a noisy classroom, so this is a real challenge for me, although I am becoming more comfortable with the noise from group work the more I use it as a learning tool.

I use group work for two main reasons, the first being that it allows the students to get information from more than one perspective. Bruner, Piaget and Vygotsky all acknowledge the importance of culture and social interactions in learning. When the instructor stands at the board and gives a lecture, the students only get the knowledge from the instructor’s point of view. The instructor is only one person, and his perception of the knowledge that he is imparting will be coloured by his experiences. Group work allows students to also share their own experiences, which can be even more valuable than the instructor’s. It also allows students to talk over their methods for solving problems, helping to correct faulty reasoning and showing that more than one way exists to solve problems. Because I have encouraged multiple ways of solving problems, students are eager to speak up in class when they have an alternative way of generating a solution.

The second reason for using group work is that it provides a semi-authentic environment for the students to practice their classroom assistant skills. The students are grouped heterogeneously according to math ability and provide help to each other when working on in-class assignments. Group work also ensures that no student stays stuck on something unless the whole group is stuck – and even then, the students are free to ask a member from another group for help. According to Pratt (2002), an instructor teaching from an apprenticeship perspective must “see that learners work on tasks that are meaningful and relevant to the community of practice” (p.6).

Providing a multi-modal and multi-media experience for students is important, not only for addressing different learning styles, but also to demonstrate to students how a concept can be taught and learned in a variety of ways. For example, while learning set theory, the students cut out different shapes in three colours, then placed them in Venn diagrams according to specific rules. This activity helped the students understand the concepts of set union and set intersection using concrete objects. When the students start working with rational numbers, I plan to show two videos with different ways of looking at the various sets of numbers.

Although many of the ideas that the theories propose are attractive, gaps do appear between theory and practice when faced with the realities of lack of time, lack of student motivation, and students with cognitive disabilities. Lack of time is one of the greatest enemies of constructivist learning. Ideally, I would like to have the students develop every math concept “from the ground up”, as elementary students might be able to, rather than my standing at the board and telling them what I think they need to know. In reality, constructivist strategies take a lot of time, and the math course is not structured so that time is given for discovery learning. Instead, every concept that could be covered in grades 1 – 7 math is included in the textbook and the learning outcomes for the course, making for more work than time allowed for it.

The second gap between theory and reality is that many learning theories are developed with “average” students in mind, and they do not always work for people who have cognitive impairments. A great many of our students are affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Affected students may have learning and/or social difficulties, and a lot of them have not had success in the “regular” K-12 classrooms. These students can be easily distracted and do not always benefit from a multi-modal approach to learning. Some of our classrooms have been deliberately stripped of any extraneous stimuli (such as posters on the wall, books showing on shelves, etc.) to lessen the distraction for these students. Sometimes it is necessary to teach the same concept in the same way many times before a student affected by FASD will understand it. In this case, changing the mode of instruction or trying to explain it in a different way will only confuse the student.

A third gap that exists between theory and practice occurs when students are unmotivated, which is often something that an instructor cannot influence. Students who have had unsuccessful previous experiences with a subject may come to class with preconceived biases against the material in the course, and no matter how enthusiastic the instructor is about the subject, or how interesting he makes the course, some students will never have a positive attitude toward it. Students often will set performance goals, even though we would like them to set learning goals (Driscoll, 2005). On the first day of the ATA math class, I asked the students to tell me in their journals what they hoped to achieve in the course. Out of 20 students, three set performance goals. Many of the students who would be auditing the course, knowing that marks did not matter, set learning goals for themselves. It is unfortunate that our system relies on marks, as I believe that it constrains students from learning freely. While in one sense it provides motivation for students to attend and work hard (I need good marks in this course to get in to graduate studies; or, I can’t quit this course because I don’t want an F on my transcript) it is in a sense a very negative motivator (the consequences of not working hard will be bad.)

Based on the information I have gained while applying the learning theories to instruction, I feel that I would like to pursue constructivist strategies in my classroom more. I still do not know how to adapt these new learning strategies when faced with what I feel is an inadequate amount of time. When time gets short, I often revert back to the transmission style of teaching, simply because I am working toward (or against!) a set of learning outcomes that the students need to demonstrate.

A suggestion to improve teaching at the post-secondary level that the ETEC 512 course did not discuss is formative evaluation, or student feedback to the instructor that is given while a course is still in session, rather than after the course is done. If one reads the textbook for ETEC 512 as a way to improve teaching and therefore the students’ learning, the ideas behind formative evaluation are noticeably absent.

Conclusion

Through the MET program, and ETEC 512 in particular, I have embarked on a journey through learning theory that will not stop with the end of the course. Many of the theories have components that complement each other, and it has been a pleasure to look for ways to implement these theories in my classroom teaching. Although each stop on the journey has seemed brief, it has allowed a glimpse into the workings of each theory, and I plan to visit many of them again to learn what I can in order to improve my teaching and my students’ learning.

References

Atherton, J.S. (2005a). Learning and Teaching: Constructivism in learning. [On-line]. Retrieved December 11, 2005, from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/constructivism.htm

Atherton, J.S. (2005b). Learning and Teaching: Multiple Intelligences. [On-line]. Retrieved December 11, 2005, from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/multiple.htm

Davis, B.G. (1993). Tools for Teaching. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, Publisher. [Online: Tools for Teaching: Fast Feedback]. Retrieved December 11, 2005, from http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/feedback.html

Driscoll, M.P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction. USA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Physics Education Research and Development (University of Minnesota website). Cooperative group problem solving. Retrieved December 11, 2005, from http://groups.physics.umn.edu/physed/Research/CGPS/CGPSintro.htm

Pratt, D.D. (2002). Good teaching: One size fits all? In An Up-date on Teaching Theory, Jovita Ross-Gordon (Ed.), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Publisher.

Tinzmann, M.B., Jones, B.F., Fennimore, T.F., Bakker, J., Fine, C. & Pierce, J. (1990). What is the collaborative classroom? Retrieved November 11, 2005, from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/rpl_esys/collab.htm