The Theories of Learning (Assignment 2)

Blogs I've read:
http://leeweining.blogspot.com/
http://iheartnm3204.blogspot.com/
http://tiff-elearning.blogspot.com/
http://jadorebridget.wordpress.com/

Blog I've commented:
http://iheartnm3204.blogspot.com/

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One of this week's tutorial questions is "In your opinion which theory promotes 21st century skills and why?" Initially, my answer was the Sociocultural approach. But after a deeper and critical thinking (hey, doesn't this reflect Cognitivism? haha), I came to a conclusion that learning is too vast an act, process or experience of gaining knowledge and skill. One theory is not enough to envision and predict the subjective effects of learning on people. Learning has different dimensions and I believe that is the reason why the three theories are developed. However, I feel that they should not be independent of one another but be cohesively used when we try to understand learning as a whole. In the survey Alfred conducted not long ago, nine possible problems were listed out for each theory to apply to. It has helped me to see the three theories and their difference more clearly.

When I think about Behaviourism now, two keywords appear in my mind instantly -- Rewards and Punishments. I feel that most of us have pretty much experience or rather exhibit Behaviourism since we were very young. When we behaved ourselves or perform well for our spellings, our parents bought us candies and toys. Likewise, when we misbehaved ourselves or underperformed in our tests, our parents gave us a good and long earful. Our parents don't even have to be a professional educator and they know how to apply Behaviourism, perhaps subconsciously on their part. Behaviorism can be applied to teaching and learning of rule-using, algorithmic and puzzle problems. All three problems require test and trial in order for us to reach the end result. Learning rule-using is close to what I mentioned above about the candies and earful we got from our parents when we do things differently. Therefore I feel that Behaviourism, to me, is the fundamental of learning where we become aware of what are the basic 'right's and 'wrong's before we advance to higher learning.

Cognitivism...to me is individual critical thinking. I feel that Cognitivism is a crucial theory of learning because everyone can be taught the same things but not everyone can think and assess things in the same way. Unlike Behaviourism where learners are deemed passive, Cognitivism makes us all active learners, makes us different from one another! Also, if Cognitivism doesn't exist, we will have difficulties explaining why some people still commit crimes and why wars are still take place. Behaviourism only explains how we acquire the knowledge of right and wrong but cognitivism explains how we might still act/think another way, against the knowledge of right and wrong. Cognitivism can be applied to the learning of trouble-shooting and diagnosis-solution. For trouble-shooting, we can all find out what the problem/trouble is but how we deal with it might be different. To sum cognitivism up: We are not just receivers of information, we all see, think and react differently and that's why conflicts happen.

Sociocultural Approach (SCA) is these three words together "others-context-self" and they mirror the aspects "social-experience-reflection" in the diagrammatic representation of learning came up by Conole, Dyke, Oliver and Seale. Also, we learn from the readings that in SCA, the unit of analysis is bigger than the individual learner, it's actually the whole system of learning. At first, I find SCA interesting because Behaviourism and Cognitivism are about ME, well logically speaking, we are the learners afterall right? But I come to understand that learning is close to nothing without others (social), context (experience) and self-assessment (reflection). Don't our lives get more complexed and complicated as we grow up? I know what is right and wrong (behaviourism), so what? I think about this matter in this way (cognitivism), so what? As we grow up, leave our comfort zones and enter into more complicated environments, it's inadequate to learn what is right and wrong and/or know how to think critically. We need to learn by interactions with people, thinking critically and in the right context. Issue-based problem is therefore best applied with SCA as we need to consider who we are interacting with, what situation it is and what we think is appropriate for this situation. Then, based on these considerations, in what ways/how we should deal with the issue.

Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Sociocultural Approach together gives a cohesive picture of learning and in my opinion, they shouldn't be viewed independently. They are like steps from simple learning to complex learning!