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Understanding Learning - Study Notes

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UNDERSTANDING LEARNING – STUDY NOTES

WHAT IS LEARNING? * Reflective teaching * Classroom experience * Technical teaching

* Knowledge about learning * Reflective teaching

* Classroom experience and knowledge about learning provide students with a constructive learning environment

* Understanding learning * Individual differences, Learning theories, Managing learning in classrooms, Teachers * Constructivist – refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves; each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning as he or she learns. * Humanist – a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over established doctrine or faith (fideism). * Cognitivist – believe that learning is a change in individuals' mental structures enabling them to show changes in behaviour. It is based on the thought process behind the behaviour. * Behaviourist – believe that learning takes place when knowledge is separated into smaller bits. Students are rewarded for successful answers. Instruction focuses on conditioning the learner's behaviour. Learning involves repetition and association and is highly mechanical. Behaviourist leaning teachers focus on a new behavioural pattern being repeated until it becomes automatic.

* Learning Theories * Behaviourism – The primary tenet of behaviorism, as expressed in the writings of John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and others, is that psychology should concern itself with the observable behavior of people and animals, not with unobservable events that take place in their minds. The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be described

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