Understanding and Using Educational Theories

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Kuhlthau, C. C. (1990). The information search process: From theory to practice. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 31(1), 72-75. https://doi.org/10.2307/40323730 Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R. S., & Baumgartner, L. M. (2007). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide (3rd edition). Wiley. Their readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to the developmental tasks of their social roles. The authors provide a clear, concise, and engaging overview of both traditional and current theories of adult learning. The book includes activities and concrete examples for implementing the theories in the classroom. Disequilibrium and accommodation can be uncomfortable. People might be confused or anxious when they encounter information that does not fit their existing schema, and they might struggle to accommodate that new information, but disequilibrium is crucial to learning (Kretchmar, 2019a). During assimilation, people might be adding new bits of information to their knowledge store, but they are not changing their understanding of the world. During accommodation, as people change their schema, construct new knowledge, and draw new connections among existing areas of knowledge, actual learning occurs, and accommodation requires disequilibrium.

Keeping this idea of learning across theories in mind, we can sum up the key takeaways from this chapter: This is an essential primer for any university course that includes learning theory, with particular relevance for initial teacher education, education studies and early childhood degrees. Elicit performance. Allow time for students to practice skills and demonstrate their abilities. Ideally, students would be given low-stakes opportunities for practice, so they feel comfortable if they do not succeed immediately. Present the stimulus. Share new information. This step depends on the content of the lesson. For instance, a lesson on Boolean operators might begin with a Venn diagram and examples of the uses of and, or, and not. Karl Aubrey is a Visiting Tutor on the Professional Studies in Education programmes at Bishop Grosseteste University. Prior to this Karl was the Programme Leader for a range of initial teacher education and professional development programmes at a large city further education college. Between 2003 and 2005 he was seconded to the DfES Standards Unit as a learning and teaching practitioner in the East Midlands. Karl has contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of Education. His doctoral thesis explored the reforms in further education teacher education from 2000 to 2010, from the viewpoint of teacher educators. Karl's research interests include inclusion, education policy, pedagogy and work-based learning.How might any of your answers to these questions change if you were to use a different theory as your guide? Certain understandings follow from Knowles’ assumptions that we can use to guide our practice with adult learners. To begin with, we should recognize and respect adults’ tendency to be self-motivated and self-directed learners. After all, in most states, school attendance is compulsory up to a certain age, and relatively strict curriculum standards are set by each state, meaning that children have little choice about attending school in some form or about what content they learn. At least in theory, adults have a choice about whether to attend college or engage in other kinds of learning opportunities such as workshops and professional development and continuing education courses. Presumably, adults are motivated to pursue these opportunities for a specific reason, whether out of personal curiosity, to advance in their careers, or to gain a new skill. These adult learners will likely have opinions and ideas about what they want to learn and perhaps even how they want to engage with the content, so Knowles suggests we provide adult learners with choices and opportunities for input to help shape the curriculum.

If you can think of examples of behaviorism from several different learning experiences, were they more appropriate in some situations than others? How so? Gain attention. Engage students’ attention by tying learning to relevant events in their lives and asking stimulating questions. Adult learners also have a larger store of knowledge and experience than their younger counterparts. From a cognitivist or constructivist point of view, adults have a larger schema against which to compare new information and make new connections. As instructors, we should recognize this store of knowledge and find ways to integrate it into the classroom, by providing ample opportunity for reflection and using guiding questions to encourage learners to draw on that knowledge. We can approach adult learners as peers or co-learners, acting more as coaches or facilitators in the learning process than as the more directive teacher associated with a traditional school classroom. This focus on learner-centered approaches and a democratic environment overlaps with humanistic and constructivist approaches to teaching.While learning theories can be interesting on their own, our goal as instructors is to apply them to classroom practice. Imagine that you are a high school librarian working with a class that has just been assigned a research paper. Your goal for this session is for students to brainstorm keywords and synonyms for their topics, and to learn how to string those words together using the Boolean operators and, or, and not. You want to be sure the students understand the function of the Boolean operators and can remember how to use them for future searches. Understanding the stages laid out by Piaget and Perry, we can develop lessons that are appropriate to learners at each stage. For example, in presenting a lesson on climate change to preoperational students using Piaget’s framework, an instructor could gather pictures of different animal habitats, or take children on a nature walk to observe the surrounding environment. Instructors could ask these children to describe what they see and reflect on their personal experiences with weather, while older children could be asked to imagine how the changes are impacting other people and organisms, anticipate consequences of the impact of climate change, and perhaps use problem solving to propose steps to improve their environment. Considering Perry’s Scheme, instructors might guide students from multiplicity to relativism by explaining scientific methods for measuring climate, and challenging learners to evaluate and compare different sources of information to determine which presents the strongest evidence. While testing has fallen out of favor with many educators and education theorists, cognitivists find tests can be beneficial as both a retrieval practice and a diagnostic tool. They view tests not only as a way to measure what has been learned but as a way to practice retrieval of important concepts, and as a way to identify gaps or weaknesses in knowledge so that learners know where to concentrate their efforts (Brown et al., 2014). Cognitivists encourage “spaced practice,” or recalling previously learned information at regular intervals, and “interleaving,” or learning related concepts together to establish connections among them. Their research has found that retrieval is more effective when the brain is forced to recall information after some time has passed, and when the recall involves two or more related subjects or concepts. Finally, cognitivists also promote problem-based learning, maintaining that “trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution leads to better learning, even when errors are made in the attempt” (Brown et al., 2014, p.4).

Because humanists see people as autonomous beings, they believe that learning should be self-directed, meaning students should have some choice in what and how they learn. Humanistic education is often connected with student-centered pedagogical approaches such as differentiated curricula, self-paced learning, and discovery learning (Lucas, 1996). Self-directed learning can take many forms, but it generally means that the instructor acts as a guide, and learners are given the freedom to take responsibility for their own learning. Teachers will provide the materials and opportunities for learning, but students will engage with the learning on their own terms. In a library classroom, we can give students choices about the topics they will research or offer learners different types of activities to practice skills and demonstrate what they have learned. Humanism centers the individual person as the subject and recognizes learners as whole beings with emotional and affective states that accompany their cognitive development. Recognizing the role of students’ emotions means understanding how those emotions impact learning. Student anxiety, say around a test or a research paper, can interfere with the cognitive processes necessary to be successful. Empathetic teachers recognize and try to understand students’ emotional states, taking steps to alleviate negative emotions that might detract from learning by creating a supportive learning environment. Cooke, N. A. (2010). Becoming an andragogical librarian: Using library instruction as a tool to combat library anxiety and empower adult learners. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 16(2), 208-227. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614533.2010.507388 These processes that enhance memory and recall, and thus learning, have some implications for instructors in creating an optimal environment for learning. Gagné (1985) proposed nine conditions for learning, referred to as the external conditions of learning, or the nine events of instruction: The authors provide an overview of some of the major learning theories, followed by specific ideas and advice for applying the theory to reference and library instruction.Popp, J. A. (1996). Learning, theories of. In J. J. Chambliss (Ed.), Philosophy of education: An encyclopedia. Routledge. Make the material appropriately challenging. Reminiscent of the Zone of Proximal Development, material that is too easy will be boring for learners, while material that is too challenging will be overwhelming and frustrating. The learning process is influenced by internal factors such as the student’s level of motivation and feelings of self-efficacy, and external factors such as the classroom environment and the adults and peers with whom the learner interacts. Learning theories describe the conditions and processes through which learning occurs, providing teachers with models to develop instruction sessions that lead to better learning. These theories explain the processes that people engage in as they make sense of information, and how they integrate that information into their mental models so that it becomes new knowledge. Learning theories also examine what motivates people to learn, and what circumstances enable or hinder learning. While a student-centered approach and choice can be introduced in any classroom, observers note that in an age of curriculum frameworks and standardized tests, where teachers are often constrained by the material, the ability to provide students with choice and allow for exploration is limited (Sharp, 2012; Zucca-Scott, 2010). Librarians often face similar constraints. School librarians also must meet state and district curriculum standards. Academic librarians generally depend on faculty invitations to conduct instruction and need to adapt their sessions to fit the content, time frame, and learning objectives of the faculty member. Nevertheless, we can always find ways to integrate some self-direction. For instance, rather than using planned examples to demonstrate searches, we might have students suggest topics to search. If we plan hands-on practice activities, we could allow learners to explore their own interests as they engage in the activity, rather than limiting them to preselected topics. Cognitivism