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Learning theories: A reflection

As mentioned earlier, the course GCLT400 allowed me to reflect on my journey. The topic covering the Learning theories took me back to when the teacher in me awakened. Beware, as I will use Bloom's Taxonomy to reference this part.

By the way, I completed my schooling in Lebanon. Pedagogy in the Lebanese Curriculum, which is trilingual, focuses on the cognitive ability of the student and memorising information, or Cognitivism. Cognitivism emphasises understanding the subject as a whole; it helps students become critical thinkers.

My teachers used behaviourism, which is based on rewarding the student's behaviour (whether negative or positive), to manage the behaviour in the classroom. It was mainly a negative reward; teachers were strict and hardly gave any praise. The expectation was to memorise and get tested on how much information you could store. There wasn't much interaction between the teacher and students, and a lack of resources and WAR impacted the pressure on the teacher to facilitate as much content and learning! An example of a negative reward is practising handwriting by copying the same sentence 100 times because I got caught speaking in Arabic, and the rule was to use French to communicate during the day. 

I struggled with memorising, and I never received praise for my efforts. 

Because of this and more, I chose to study Special Education when I shifted my career to teaching. I decided to use a different approach in my classroom and apply various strategies to keep my students engaged and control their behaviour.

I often use constructivism. Vygotsky's theory aims to achieve a good lesson outcome by increasing the ZOP, a student-centred activity with the teacher as the facilitator. The idea is to set activities that are not too hard or not too easy, with a scaffold so the student doesn't lose interest or find it hard. In the case of students with learning difficulties, they can achieve independently and gain confidence. I actually see myself as being the ZOP,  as the facilitator, the bridge for student's achieving their outcomes.

I must add that my parents are level 3 (John Bigg, thinking about teaching) exemplary retired educators who eased my learning journey as I struggled, especially around exams. When my dad retired, he took carpentry as a hobby; he used his mathematical skills to measure, design and make furniture. He scaffolded my maths homework and taught me maths through his carpentry. He used connectivism to teach me about geography; he even taught me to know the time by looking at the sun and the number of days each month by counting the knuckles. He taught me ancient History and the love of reading through novels focused on love stories in the ancient world. Dad also used andragogy in his delivery. We played games to help drill information from different topics. Connectivism is building on prior knowledge. 

Given the fact that there is no room to engage students in my teaching, as I teach literacy to High School students, I try to keep them involved by listening to music, rewarding them with food and allowing them to become a teacher for the day to give them the confidence to become leaders and ease their struggle to learn. 

When teaching adults spoken Arabic, I follow my dad's lead. I use constructivism to allow my students to interact with other Arabic speakers and connect with the culture through food and stories. 

I use behaviourism, and I apply ABA as my approach when working with behaviour-challenging students. 

I never thought that learning theory was this interesting.

Teaching adults has made me realise, I use pedagogical approach to reach outcome. And Bloom has summed it up in his theory. Teaching is never a one size fits all. We, as teachers, tend to use a combination to reach a good lesson and great outcome. We tend to use the cognitive ability of the student, we plan according to already stored information, and build the knowledge. We often don't pay attention to the social interactions of the student, or their stories. Or we simply aren't aware of the they've been through or how much knowledge the students acquired before they came to our class. 

 I chose to pursue Special Education, because I believed that there was a bridge between these theories, they intertwine and are based on research and can be used in conjunction for the students' benefit.