by Team Satchel
- Pedagogy
- The theory and practice of teaching children
Summary
- Teacher workload is continually rising
- Teachers often don’t have time to focus on the practice of teaching
Four learning theories
- Behaviourism
- 1898: Edward Thorndike - Cat in a box
- The teacher should be in control of the classroom
- Repetition is the best way to learn
- Based on operant conditioning
- Skinner: applied behaviourism to teaching
- learn through immediate feedback (he had a “teaching machine” that graded tests immediately)
- Praise doesn’t just encourage learning, it guides them by giving structure to their learning
- Cons:
- Theory does not take individual thinking into account and removes learner independence
- By relying on observable behaviour, learning cannot be tailored to students needs
- For the purpose of exams and student behaviour, Behaviourism still mostly works.
- Liberationism
- Is centred on the student instead of the teacher
- 1964: Paulo Freire - “Emancipation through education”
- found traditional school systems to be oppressive
- Students should be treated as creators of knowledge
- It expels the idea that education is about learning things and makes it more about the way we learn
- If traditional ed was filling a cup, liberationism is like giving the cup arms so that it can fill itself.
- Joe Lewis (Hall of Fame teacher): “Teachers should be a guide on the side rather than a sage on the stage”
- By having cluster groups of students, the classroom can encapsulate more learning styles
- Social Constructivism
- Explores if students chatting in the classroom might be learning more
- Assumes that social interaction is a key component to the learning experience
- Lev Vygotsky
- believed that children learn best when they talked between themselves to solve problems
- Based on Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive constructivism
- Social constructivism works best when time is set aside for students to discuss the topic with each other AND with the teacher
- Example: teacher sets a problem that is to be solved in mixed ability groups
- teaches the student the importance of communication and learning from others’ experience
- students that are further ahead benefit from solidifying information with their peers
- students who are slightly behind will have a chance to catch up
- Connectivism
- Coined in 2005 by George Siemens
- Considers the impact of technology in education and how teachers can adapt to it.
- More than online learning; it teaches students to be learners in a digital age
Notes
- Video was made two months before the first lockdown. Technology in education is crazy right now.