Friday, April 13, 2012

Reflection 2:  Philosophy of Education: Epistemology and Learning Theory


I learned many things in writing my Learning Theories paper.  Using OneNote to compile my thoughts and notes made writing my paper a lot easier.   I am really starting to get how to organize my notes to make them more meaningful to write a paper.  I think my Process of Learning and Motivation is Crucial paper turned out pretty good. 

I documented quite of few questions and terms for during my learning process for writing my paper in OneNote. 

 People are not blank slates but begin with models and knowledge of the world and learn and exist in a social context of great intricacy and depth (Anderson & Dron, 2011).  This thought is what I based much of my reading and research about.  It was interesting to me that in the reading the Seels and Richely pointed out effectiveness often implies efficiency when it comes to technology. But in real life technology is not always effective and efficient.

 The article by Phillips stated something quite interesting to me "human development and to what degree this process is flexible and hence can be influenced or manipulated; the tension between liberal education and vocational education, and the overlapping issue of which should be given priority—education for personal development or education for citizenship " (Spring 2009). My first thought, is this what our districts leaders think needs to happen in our schools? We need to focus more on citizenship instead of a well-round liberal education.  In some ways, that is what I think at work.  However, when it comes to my daughter, I think, she should be well rounded and not have one focus area in education.   During the course of reading about this article I was sitting in a Girl Scout meeting with some other parents waiting for our daughters to finish a project.

 A discussion came up if children should learn how to cursive right anymore.  At first I was shock because, I would think, is a valuable thing to learn.  The first thought came to my mind; will children know how to sign important documents in the future if they don't how to write in cursive?  As I was thinking about this, a parent speaks up and said kids don't need to learn cursive they need to learn how to type.  Half of the guys I work have poor typing skills because they never learned how to type in school.  It made me sit back and think about this article.  Teaching cursive would make a child more rounded in the arts of writing but in the long run the child needs to know how to type.  I am still not sure what my stance is but it did give me much to think about. 

The thought about education system made me think about the results by the OECD 2010.  Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2009 Results by the OECD 2010 Stated “The best-performing education systems embrace the diversity in students’ capacities, interests and social background with individualized approaches to learning.  This thought also from the Philosophy of Education by Phillips meant a lot to me “We never would say that students had been indoctrinated by their teacher if he or she had fostered open inquiry and discussion, encouraged exploration in the library and on the net, allowed students to work in collaborative groups, and so on. However, if the teacher did not allow independent inquiry, quashed classroom questions, suppressed dissenting opinions, relied heavily on rewards and punishments, used repetition and fostered rote memorization, and so on, then it is likely we would say the students were being indoctrinated ( 2009)."  I really think the first model of thought is what we in our society at first but I could see why the second theory of thought was used for so many years and it some aspects today.   Teachers use to be the sole owners of educational knowledge but now with the internet and technology we have a world of teachers without degrees behind their names.   Not to say they all can facilitate the learning experience but I do believe they can help teacher bridge concepts for students.  That is why explored the Social Cognitive Theory for my paper. 

Albert Bandura (2001) believes that humans can use learning and motivation to power their own actions and produce desired consequence to shape their social and cultural environments.    As quoted from Anderson & Dron, "teachers do not merely transmit knowledge to be passively consumed by learners; rather, each learner constructs means by which new knowledge is both created and integrated with existing knowledge"(2010).  If the student’s engagement should not be an inevitable consequence of the environment but an engagement of learning and motivation that help the student get to the clear goal (Feist & Feist, 2002).  

 The process of learning more about the Social Cognitive theories still just makes me concluded more that I support this thought of using this theory to support learning and technology.   I would have to say that I have support this theory most of my adult career but learning more about how it being used in research to understand education technology make me optimist about how might educational system will support all kinds of learners:  visual, auditory, tactile  and or kinesthetic in the future. 


Lindy

References:
 

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2010). Three generations of distance education pedagogy. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 12(3), 80-97. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/890
 
Feist, J. & Feist, G., (2002) Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory.  In J. Karpacz (Eds.), Theories of Personality, Fifth Edition (pp. 299-326). New York: McGraw-Hill 


Phillips, D.C., "Philosophy of Education", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/education-philosophy/>.

Seels, B., & Richey, R. (1994). Instructional technology: The definition and domains of the field.  Washington, DC: Association for Educational Communications and Technology.
 
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology. (2010). National educational technology plan, 2010: Executive summary. retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/NETP-2010-exec-summary.pdf


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