Learning Theories

After suffering through a week of the flu and a horrendous cold, I finally have the energy to write a new post to continue my thoughts on the Online Connectivism Conference. While over for a week, this is one of the greatest things about an online conference; I can place my thoughts online and they will still be included with the overall archive of tagged thoughts.

As I listened to Bill Kerr's presentation last weekend, I have to admit that that the one quote I have been left thinking about was one made by George Siemens during one of the times when he was waiting for Bill's audio to pick up again. His quote was that for something to be considered a learning theory, it needs to be both "descriptive and prescriptive."

As someone who needs to walk into a classroom each morning and face a room filled with junior high kids, I was struck by this. If you ask many practising teachers about learning theories, you will probably get a whole lot of blank stares. Unfortunately, this is something that many people don't spend enough time thinking about. if you start throwing around words like "constructivism," you may get a glimmer of recognition, but for many practising classroom teachers, our over - heated classroom lives leave little time for reflection and theoretical consideration.

George's thought that learning theories should be descriptive is an important issue. While in many nations that have had the misfortune to have passed through a political revolution of some kind understand that education and teaching are inherently political acts which support a certain political world view, in many Western societies, teaching and education is undervalued. Many teachers do not consider that the pedagogies and curriculum which they support and use in their classrooms support a certain world view. A learning theory needs to be descriptive of our beliefs  of the world and its current political and economic situation.

As well, George tells us that learning theories need to be prescriptive; they need to give us a framework to function and design our classrooms around. A learning theory needs to give us a structure for our pedagogy. It cannot be too "tight," leaving us know room to work within or else it simply becomes dogma.

As busy classroom teachers, more thought needs to be given to the theories and structures that we spend our time with and which supports our beliefs about our pedagogy.

Now if I can only get over my cold......

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