LEARNING THEORY IN THE CLASSROOM 1 Mark Winkelman Dr. Dazhi Yang EDTECH504 -­‐ Theoretical Foundations of Educational Technology July 28, 2013 Learning Theory in the classroom John Watson is often considered the father of behaviorism and founder of the behaviorism school of psychology. Watson’s strong convictions to the elements of behaviorism prompted him to state: Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-­‐formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select -­‐-­‐ doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-­‐chief and, yes, even beggar-­‐man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors (Cherry, 2013). Watson based his theories on the belief that behaviors can be measured, trained, and changed. The key concept in behaviorism is building connections between stimuli and responses. In considering instructional design determining stimuli that encourages a response of learning and knowledge gain is the essential goal (Brown, 2004). Although Behaviorism is not as prominent or as influential in psychology today, it is still a strong method of teaching and training employed by parents and teachers alike. When considering learning theories, aspects of behaviorism are implied and implemented in many of the theories. The theory that should most likely be implemented in the classroom is “Student-­‐Led Learning’. Student-­‐Led Learning thrives in an environment that includes interaction, activities, and allows learners to explore their interests, as well as needs, and to study many different levels of complexity (Jonassen, 2012). There are many forms of student-­‐led learning and when implementing these means of learning, they may look and act completely different from each other. However, each has strong elements of the learner engaging in the process, and working either in a group with others or as an individual. Regardless of these different presentations of student-­‐led learning there are four elements that are present in each method: • Centrality of the learning in defining meaning. • Scaffolded participation in authentic tasks and sociocultural practices. • Importance of prior and everyday experiences in meaning construction. • Access to multiple perspectives, resources, and representations (Jonassen, 2012). When implementing student-­‐led learning methods it is important to recognize that the learner’s own beliefs and experiences provide a framework for new knowledge and LEARNING THEORY IN THE CLASSROOM 2 understanding. How then are these beliefs and experiences generated within the learner? A learner’s beliefs and experiences are gained through their response to stimuli that they have encountered in previous learning experiences. As student-­‐led learning is more higher functioning learning theory, the successes and failures of the theory is built upon the theory of behaviorism as a basic building block to the learner’s construction of knowledge. It becomes necessary for the instructor to consider not just the learning theory that would be implemented in instruction, but to also consider the many elements of behavioral learning such as the environment that surrounds the learner. Environmental conditions include many controllable factors, temperature, color, light, size of learning communities, and amount of social interaction with other learners are just a few environmental aspects that will provide influence on the success of learning in the classroom. Environment is no more than a single element that can contribute through behaviorism to the learner’s gain or loss in learning. It then becomes essential to the instructor to consider aspects and elements of behaviorism, even when exploring more resent and higher functioning learning theories. Each learning practice and each learning activity is influenced by those first initial building blocks of learning that the instructor can still influence to provide success for their students. As an instructor I plan to implement more student-­‐led learning activities, specifically communities of learning and communities of practice. In teaching a technology course, there are many opportunities for learners to work within groups, share instruction and learning through dividing up tasks and activities between group members and then providing learners to report to each other what they have learned. This includes implementing changes in the environment, arranging learners into groups with computers networked together, but also physically together in a “collaboration station” of computer where student can interact and work in community. References Brown, G. (2004). How Students Learn A supplement to the RoutledgeFalmer Key Guides for Effectve Teaching in Higher Education series. Retrieved July 28, 2013, from routledgeweb.com: http://media.routledgeweb.com/pdf/seriesinfo/how_to_learn.pdf Cherry, K. (2013). Education Psycology. Retrieved July 28, 2013, from About.com: http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/f/behaviorism.htm Jonassen, D. a. (2012). Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments (2nd Edition ed.). New York, New York, US: Routledge.