Leveraging Learning Theory to Improve Instruction (LLC 2018)

Leveraging Learning Theory to Improve Instruction

James Sheldon, LLC 2018

jsheldon@email.arizona.edu

 

Learning Objectives:

  • Reflect upon your own personal beliefs about how people learn and become aware of your own conceptions (and misconceptions) about learning theories
  • Apply learning theories to the planning of classes and other instruction
  • Evaluate the appropriateness of different theories for different instructional situations

Quotations for Discussion:

  • “There is nothing more practical than a good theory” -Kurt Lewin
  • “The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done” – Jean Piaget
  • “The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual” – Lee Vygotsky
  • In apprenticeship, opportunities for learning are, more often than not, given structure by work practices instead of by strongly asymmetrical master-apprentice relations… There may be a looser coupling between relations among learners on the one hand and the often hierarchical relations between learners and old-timers on the other hand, than where directive pedagogy is the central motive…” – Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger

Resources for further study:

  • Harasim, Linda. Learning Theory and Online Technologies.
  • Karpov, Yuriy. Vygotsky for Educators. 
  • Lave, Jean and Wenger, Etinne. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation.
  • Vygotsky, L.S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.