Lecture 2 How do we learn? cont'd

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What future for education?

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University of London

What future for education?

338 ratings

Through this course you will start to critically examine your own ideas about education, teaching and learning. The critique will be developed through engagement with theories and ideas developed through educational research. You will be encouraged to use these ideas to challenge or support your own ideas about education. Each week we will focus on one key question, using video lectures, key readings and challenges to explore some commonplace notions about education. With the guidance of the course team, you will be asked to use these ideas to critically reflect on your own understandings and experience. By the end of the course, you will have developed a personal response to the main question: what is your preferred future for education?

From the lesson

How do we learn?

This week we focus on the important question of "how do we learn?". One of our aims this week is to demonstrate the learning approach of this course as well as to get you to think about how you have learnt in the past, and to question some of your own assumptions about learning.

Clare's introduction to What future for education?4:22

Lecture 1 How do we learn?11:57

Lecture 2 How do we learn? cont'd7:59

Lecture 3 How do we learn? cont'd9:31

Lecture 4 How do we learn? optional extra4:18

Lecture 5 How do we learn? optional cont'd7:23

Lecture 6 How do we learn? optional cont'd5:55

Meet the Instructors

Dr Clare Brooks

UCL Institute of Education, University of London

>> So when we talk about learning, people often differentiate

between progressive and traditional approaches to learning.

Can you explain what those terms mean?

>> Yes.

Well, traditional approaches are what we were talking about in terms

of what you would expect in a normal classroom as we think of it these days.

The assumption is the brain is a sort of computer and

that you put data into the computer and

something good comes out in an exam or possibly in a future career.

The use of a website could assume the similar model.

The difference there is people can choose whether to go on a website or not and then

your motivation is completely different than if your sat in a classroom that you

have to be in, but the model of what you're trying to do would be the same.

It's a traditional view of the brain as a computer.

What it ignores though is the fact that lots of other things are going on in

the brain.

It isn't a simple black box of input and output.

It totally ignores the fact that people have feelings.

They have feelings of resistance, anger, joy.

They have original ideas that the person who made the website or the teacher in

the classroom has never thought of themselves, which might be better,

might be different, might add and they have different purposes for being there.

So even if they have to be at school, they'll make a purpose for being there.

Or even it's resistance, even if it's being as difficult as possible.

That will be one reaction to the purpose, the learning purpose in school.

So traditional approach to learning assumes that's what people's brains do,

but is somewhat limited in its scope one could say.

Progressive approaches to learning tend to be based on Piaget's work,

Jean Piaget and John Dewey as the author.

>> [LAUGH] >> This nice little volume.

They both were working at the beginning at the first half of last century.

And they both said that to learn

in any meaningful way, people had to have an experience and they themselves and

to construct the meaning of their experience

and then do something with it to change the world.

And so those are the progressive ones.

Another branch I suppose you could say of progressive theory is emancipatory theory.

So people like, Freire, Michael Apple

Michael Fielding, Stephen Kemmis.

They would consider themselves to be progressive, but

in terms of increasing freedom, people's freedom and

equality rather than just thinking about the learning experience

itself as being based on a personal encounter, if you like and

reflection on that and then meaning making inside the mind.

>> So, I often hear people talking about constructivist views of learning.

Is constructivist views of learning and progressive education are they linked?

Are they the same thing?

Are they different?

>> Well, they're used in all sorts of ways and

people mean all sorts of things by them.

But yes, they do tend to be very much linked.

It's the idea that one has to construct one's own learning,

that no one can do it for you.

And that even if someone tries to, you will be constructing your own

schemer in your head of how things work based on what was already there.

So in any classroom everybody comes with very,

very different experiences, backgrounds, memories, families.

And so the idea that everybody will learn the same thing is actually a fallacy,

because it all depends on what you already have and

how you, yourself process in a situation.

But constructivism is the idea that people have

the chance to construct their own meaning and

this is an explicit aim in any learning situation.

So Jean Piaget,

he was very much I think we would call him the Father of Constructivism.

But his focus, he looked at his own children in a laboratory and

it was very individual pursuit.

So he noticed how they made sense of their environment,

if they were left to their own devices.

So they would explore things and then they would say, things and be making sense and

they would explore more things.

And he noticed the stages that people went through in doing this.

How they were able to abstract more as they got older.

Vygotsky who tragically died in 1934,

so way before Dewey and Piaget.

He also talked about constructing learning, but

his famous zone of proximal development that every student essay includes.

Suggested that yes, learners made sense of their own world.

They made sense themselves of the world, but they could be guided by what

he called a more expert other to a certain extent, depending on the individual.

And for Vygotsky language was very important,

because he was interested in promoting the Soviet idea.

So he knew that through language,

we carry cultural meanings and that was his goal.

So, even these classic learning theories have their agenda and

I think that's really important to remember.

Anyone writing about learning fits in somewhere with their own agenda,

whether it be political or cognitive or psychological.

I think it's a good idea to explore where they're coming from and why.

So the idea is that you can structure in learning and

constructivism with the support of a more expert other or

without on your own, that's what we might call experiential

learning when it's without the support of a teacher or and with peers.

So in a typically constructivist classroom,

one that is based on the theory of constructivism,

you would expect to find a lot of dialogue where people

are supporting each other in developing their own ideas.

>> So would it be true to say that there is some of these different approaches to

learning are better suited for some of the different purposes that we discussed?

>> Absolutely.

I mean, if your purpose is which it may well be in many countries at this

moment to get through that exam, to get that qualification,

to get you out of the country or to get you out of poverty.

Then you best sit down and read your book and check it over and

memorize, because that's what the system it.

It doesn't mean it's for you as a human being, best for the world, but

it might be the most strategic approach.

Yes.

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