Theory and Research: the link

One of the interesting things about learning theories are their value to both practice and research. They help explain and predict learning. As an education researcher that means it helps both for research and teaching. Though they didn't help me predict accurately the way my students would interpret my initial assignments for the class, they do explain the interpretations. I guess the way I would look at it is from a schema theory point of view. All my students have different schemas and for the most part my communication with them is asynchronous and mostly test. So schema theory is a great way to look at it. Students interpreted my assignments a little differently than I had thought initially. Now I have modified/clarified the assignments and all is well it seems. Perhaps the assignments fit better with their M. Ed. class schema?

Thoughts on Piaget

Piaget is an interesting character. He didn't really study in the education field...he was a psychologist. But he is one of the most influential figures in education, though sometimes for the wrong reasons. For instance, his idea of genetic epistemology is one of his more famous theories, but somehow people lost the point of it. Perhaps it was through bad translations (I speak French and have read both english and french versions of some of his works and there are sometimes some issues in the translations), or people's natural tendency to simplify things. What piaget said was that there were stages in children's cognition that all children go through in the same order no matter what culture they were from. But he never said anything like "Once kids hit their 14th birthdays, they will be able to reason formally." And he never said that when students struggle with something teachers should just throw up their arms and say "my students can't do that because they are in X stage." Rather he said that one should push the limits of students' thinking to help push them to the next stage. Ultimately that is what teachers are in the business of.

learning theories

so now in my learning theories class we are on meaningful learning. I like Ausubel's theory. I remember one of his quotes that went something like this "The most important thing to know about students is what they already know....learn that and teach accordingly." Or something like that. I think it is a very truthful statement. Connecting new material to already known material is always a good thing. Using analogies to already known material is helpful. So for example if I am trying to teach the game of cricket to an American, I might use the analogy of baseball since some of the facets of the game are similar. Students can learn what is different and similar between the games. That will help the new information to be better remembered and also make it so that less information needs to be learned.
Now Ausubel based his whole theory on studies of verbal learning....so learning how things are rather than how to do things or solve problems. But the principles can be applied to procedures or problem-solving also. So the big six could be compared to the scientific method for example.
The most important thing to remember as an instructional technologist learning about learning theories is that the greatest value of learning theories is that they help explain that if you have X learning situation and use strategy Y, then learning is likely to occur. They help ground the creation of instruction in knowledge of how people learn. After all what use is theory if it cannot help us refine practice? Locked up in an ivory tower theory does no one any good, but when applied they can do a world of good.