Knowledge is not a copy of reality. (My Philosophy of Learning)
My Philosophy of Learning
“Knowledge is not a copy of reality. To know an object, to know an event, is not simply to look at it and make a mental copy or image of it. To know an object is to act on it. To know is to modify, to transform the object, and to understand the process of the transformation, and as a consequence to understand the way the object is constructed (Piaget, 1964).”
My most successful years in the classroom were earmarked by the constant request by a neighbor teacher for my class to quiet down; a fear-stricken administrator walking through the classroom, sure that I had lost all “control” only to be swept into a lively discussion or debate around theories for solving a math or science challenge.
As an elementary instructional coach, I usually described it as investments. I would challenge mentees to put in the pre-work to orchestrate rich environments of learning where students had voice and choice, but the choices were meticulously designed to always lead to discovery and learning. We build the environment for the student to react in (Ertmer, 2013) and it is the assimilation or accommodation (Piaget, 1964) to the stimuli we introduce where the learning takes place. Learning occurs when the teacher is the author of a curated choose your own adventure.
I believe that the best way to teach is to carefully build learning environments that take these three things in consideration: knowledge of the student, knowledge of the content, knowledge of various modalities of learning.
The creation of the environment depends greatly on the perception of the learner (Greeno, 1994). What does the learner see, to what schema does the stimuli attach, and how does the teacher construct each situation while employing restraint to not lose the friction needed for learning to happen. In knowing your learner, you know their Zone of Proximal Development (LG and MS, 2017). This knowledge of your learners allows you to meet them where they are at and ready to learn.
As you can imagine, given I started this paper with a Piaget quote and my mentions of the zone of proximal development, the foundation of my personal learning theory is rooted in constructivism. And, until reading the required online literature for this week, I would have answered the question of what my personal learning theory is as unequivocally constructivism. However, with this article I was introduced to Social Constructivism as a category. As it is described the teacher, “consider how people’s interactions with others impact their understanding of the world (Saunders, 2020).” I believe if we are truly constructivists building on existing knowledge, we cannot omit the social knowledge our students bring to the table because that would be omitting knowledge of our student which is one of three key factors I believe to be so important in effective instruction. So, I guess today is the day I expand and more accurately label my personal learning theory as Social Constructivism… it has a nice ring to it.
References
Ertmer, P.A. and Newby, T.J. (2013), Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective. Perf. Improvement Qrtly, 26: 43-71. https://doi-org.libproxy.library.unt.edu/10.1002/piq.21143
Greeno, J. G. (1994, April). Gibson’s Affordances (No. 336–342). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.101.2.336
Piaget, J. (1964), Part I: Cognitive development in children: Piaget development and learning. J. Res. Sci. Teach., 2: 176-186. https://doi-org.libproxy.library.unt.edu/10.1002/tea.3660020306
Tate, M. L. (2010). Worksheets don't grow dendrites: 20 instructional strategies that engage the brain. Second edition. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press.
Guseva, L. G., & Solomonovich, M. (2017). Implementing the zone of proximal development: From the pedagogical experiment to the developmental education system of leonid zankov. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 9(4), 775-786. Retrieved from https://libproxy.library.unt.edu/login?url=https://www.proqu
est.com/scholarly-journals/implementing-zone-proximal-development/
docview/1967312921/se-2
Saunders, L. (2020, August 1). Learning Theories: Understanding How People Learn – Instruction in Libraries and Information Centers. Pressbooks. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/pressbooks/instructioninlibraries/chapter/learning-theories-understanding-how-people-learn/
