1. A Framework for Understanding Learning Perspectives PGCE Secondary 9 October 2009 James Atherton www.bedspce.org.uk/2dary
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3. What do we need to learn this for? Rather than go on about what my aims and objectives are for a session (because that is teacher-speak, not learner-speak) I prefer to try to answer the question students actually ask
4. How to think like a teacher We are supposed to be covering “learning theories”, but we need to think about the status of that knowledge. Is it just “inert” stuff we know about, or is it something which informs thinking and practice? So I want to offer an orientation to those theories, which will help you to put them in context and use them as you acquire more knowledge about them
5. Some ideas are like “thresholds”—once you get them you can cross to a different level of understanding
6. The Tardis is a great illustration of what happens when you go through some conceptual doors; the space is bigger on the inside than on the outside
8. Not “scientific” If you are a natural scientist or an engineer, you will be disappointed in learning theories. None of them have the predictive capacity you will have come to expect in a theory. Instead, they offer different perspectives which you might find useful. In that sense they are more like “myths”, as the anthropologists use the term. It is more important that they be useful than that they be true.
9. Fads and fashions Which of course makes them prone to influence and abuse, and to the whims of fashion.
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11. “ NTL” model Practice by doing Discussion Demonstration Audio-visual Reading Lecture 75% 50% 30% 20% 10% 5% Teachback 90% Take this model which appears in practically every introductory text on learning. It is supposed to be about the proportion of material which can be recalled after being learned under certain conditions. It is attributed to “National Training Laboratories, of Bethel Maine” but even they don’t know where it came from, or what, if any empirical basis it has. But it does look plausible, doesn’t it?
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15. Images of Teaching and Learning On other courses I frequently ask people to represent their images of the learning process, graphically. These are some which come up fairly frequently
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19. Are empty vessels Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts. Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of child-hood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away. "Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, "I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?" (Dickens, 1854, ch 2) Learners are passive recipients of what authority chooses to fill them with, and have to be made malleable to be formed into whatever the industrial age demands
20. Are empty vessels Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts. Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of child-hood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away. "Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, "I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?" (Dickens, 1854, ch 2) No-one claims this “theory”. It’s just obvious. Innit?
34. Growing up Are children just little adults, who have not yet had time to acquire all the knowledge of a grown-up? Or do they think differently, so that learning needs to be tailored to their maturing capabilities?
35. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Piaget has been hugely influential in researching and explicating the latter view.
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37. P’s main stages of development JSA Formal logic and abstract thought. Formal Operations 11+ More adult-like but abstract capacities limited Concrete Operations 7-11 Reasoning, but not using adult logic Intuitive 4-7 Using symbols Forming concepts Preoperational : Pre-conceptual 2-4 Sensory and motor experience Start language and symbolic thought (Schemata) Sensorimotor 0-2
38. Egocentrism 1 JSA Doll 1 Piaget & Inhelder (1956) What will Doll 2 see? (Can the child put himself into her position?) Doll 2 Child a b c.
39. Egocentrism 2 JSA Hughes (1975) Where can Teddy hide? Policeman 1 Policeman 2
Shaping: Most famously getting pigeons to play ping-pong. Two pigeons on either side of a table-tennis net, with a ball Food reinforcement used to encourage movement in the direction of the ball Then gets more specific, only for pecking at ball Then only in direction of net Then only getting over net Remarkably fast: whole training takes only about ten minutes Relies on skill of trainer of course, detecting the desired behaviours and reinforcing them Used in “clicker” training of animals
Schedule—reinforce every time and it is mere bribery. The learning has to be established in its own right. Value—food is a reinforce to a hungry animal but not to a satiated one Anticipatory avoidance learning: see http://www.learningandteaching.infolearninga_a_learning.htm Learned helplessness: see www.learningandteaching.info learninglearned_helplessness.htm
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