READ | TEACHING @ | HOW STUDENTS LEARN
learning | motivation | differences
As a visiting lecturer at Ohio State some years ago, Professor Tony Grasha of the University of Cincinnati titled his talk, "How Can I Teach You If I Don’t Know How You Learn?" Although Grasha's question seems perfectly logical, quite amazingly, colleges and universities have traditionally had no formal requirements for any study of learning theory in the backgrounds of the people they hire to teach. The longstanding assumption has been that if one knows a body of knowledge, one can teach it. Recently, this assumption has been questioned and more systematic efforts to prepare graduate students and new faculty for teaching have been undertaken. Knowing how students learn involves exploring theories of cognition and motivation, knowing the backgrounds of the students one will teach, and being aware of differences in learning styles and stages of development among one's students. The material offered here will provide an overview of current learning theory, some constructs that have been used by researchers to organize descriptive information on students' ways of learning, and implications for instructors.
IDEAS ON HOW LEARNING OCCURS
Ideas on how human learning occurs are explored primarily by psychologists. A very powerful explanation, posed by a group of theorists taking what has come to be called the behaviorist-associationist approach, has dominated thinking on how people learn. Some tenets of this theory are that people learn through associations and that a given stimulus will produce a response. The well-known example is Pavlov’s classical conditioning exercise of the salivating dog. Learning is viewed as the building up of habits of association. Repetition, especially followed by positive reinforcement, promotes learning. The teacher breaks up knowledge into small, logically organized bits of information and provides reinforcement for students to learn. Many of the approaches in college teaching today, such as behavioral objectives, hierarchical curricula, and objective testing, are the legacy of behaviorist-associationist thinking.
More recently, the cognitive approach has been favored as an explanation for how people learn in settings such as college environments, where knowledge is complex and process is as important as recall of facts. Cognitive psychologists focus on memory, reasoning, and tasks such as critical thinking and problem solving. They are most interested in how learners construct meaning as they encounter new information and try to fit it in with what they already know. These theorists describe learning as a process of accommodating new information into existing frameworks that the learner has established for fitting pieces of information together. At times, new frameworks must be constructed as well. Good explanations of learning theory applied to college teaching are contained in Bruning (1994), Casazza and Silverman (1996) and Svinicki (2004).
Svinicki (1991) outlines six principles of learning based on cognitive theory and their implications for instructors:
- If information is to be learned, it must first be recognized as important.
Implication: The more attention is effectively directed toward what is to be learned (that is, toward critical concepts and major areas), the higher the probability of learning. - During learning, learners act on information in ways that make it more meaningful.
Implication: Both instructor and student should use examples, images, elaborations, and connections to prior knowledge to increase the meaningfulness of information. - Learners store information in long-term memory in an organized fashion related to their existing understanding of the world.
Implication: The instructor can facilitate the organization of new materials by providing an organizational structure, particularly one with which students are familiar, or by encouraging students to create such structures. - Learners continually check understanding, which results in refinement and revision of what is retained.
Implication: Ample opportunities for checking and diagnosis should be given to aid learning. - Transfer of learning to new contexts is not automatic but results from exposure to multiple applications.
Implication: Provision must be made during initial learning for later transfer. - Learning is facilitated when learners are aware of their learning strategies and monitor their use.
Implication: The instructor should help students learn how to translate these strategies into action at appropriate points in their learning.
Some suggestions for instructors for translating learning theory into practice were made by Svinicki (2004) in a guest lecture at Ohio State:
Follow the GAMES Model: be Goal oriented; encourage Active learning; make learning Meaningful; focus on how Explanations are given; encourage Self-regulation of learning.
- Goal-oriented learning anchors the purpose for learning new material and concepts, focuses efforts for efficiency, and assists in monitoring progress.
- Active learning builds motivation into the learning process, helps hold attention, encourages deep processing, and assists in monitoring progress.
- Meaningful learning stresses the importance of making connections between prior knowledge, personal experiences, and concepts, as well as the value of those connections.
- Focus on explanations and learning furthers deeper processing, feedback on clarity, and negotiation of meaning.
- Self-regulation of learning involves self, task, and strategy knowledge, self-monitoring; self-evaluation; and self-correction.
For activating prior knowledge before learning, instructors can ask students to fill out a prelearning checklist, a preconceptions/misconceptions checklist, or brainstorm on what they already know that is related. During learning, instructors can make ample use of analogies, familiar examples, and comparison with topics that were previously treated.
To help students actively process new information, instructors can emphasize the organization of the ideas by having students fill in empty outlines or making concept maps that show relationships with other ideas. They can encourage students to summarize by asking them to paraphrase at given intervals or write a short summary of their understanding after a class or reading. Instructors can promote active involvement in learning by fostering peer dialogue and speaking, problem solving, and writing.
To help students become more aware of their own learning, instructors can have students document in writing the steps they took to solve a problem or arrive at a conclusion, discuss their learning approach and assess their own progress, and use peers as process observers who give feedback on the observed approaches to tasks and assignments.
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