What is learning?
Learning takes background knowledge, experience, motivation, etc. It takes more than opening up a students' head and pouring in information. Students need to be active and apply knowledge to other contexts. Every theory we have learned about has some merit, as does situated cognition.
How is learning effected by the teacher?
Abbot, in the video we watched this week, said "Learning and schooling are not necessarily the same thing." This is quite profound. It contradicts our current education system, meaning that if students are in school soaking up knowledge every day by sitting in a classroom, they are not really learning it. Students need to have experiences that build meaning and put the curriculum into the right context. It would take a massive effort to get our traditional public schools to switch from a classroom setting to a more hands-on setting. I think we need to change. We are failing a lot of kids in our current school system. I'm just not sure what the solution is.
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I have forgotten so much of what I supposedly learned in school. This especially hurts when I think about the money I spent on college classes that I attended just to go through the motions to get my diploma. In retrospect it is disappointing the amount I actually learned versus the amount I "absorbed" and I think this is in large part due to how I learned it. Very few times did I actually learn in context.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea of students needing to be active is a very appropriate and applicable one. But I do not think our schools are meant to only be institutions of academic learning. I loved college and felt it was invaluable in terms of my life view. However, it was not much different than What Mr. Myers said above. I cannot count the amount of hours I spent NOT doing what I should have been doing. BUT - that should not come at the expense of other things. I gained more knowledge on life and living than I EVER would have had I not lived the collegiate life I lived.
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