Cognition, Developement, and Instruction

Introduction to Learning Theory: The Learner: It is important to consider what the students need to learn (outcome), where they are academically (prior knowledge), and how to implement the lesson to meet the intended outcome-hands on activities, visuals, inquiry, multiple learning styles. The Learning Environment: It is important for the teacher to consider the learning environment by helping students feel a sense of community and understanding/awareness where students feel safe in their environment to share personal experiences with each other. The Process: It is important for the teacher to guide students throughout their learning by empowering students to engage strategies on their own (metacognition).  Interactions of Theories: It is important to motivate students and create a school culture that enables engagement of a broad spectrum of learning through the utilization of theories and methodology. Students who learn to think as experts are able to understand the big i...

Sense the beginning of time people have sought to define the human mind and how it learns and develops. In the article, "How people learn: Introduction to theory," the authors share how centuries of inquiry of the learning process has lead us to where we are today. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle where the founding fathers of inquiring about the learning process. Their thoughts and ideas lead to centuries of philosophers trying to pin point exactly how we learn.  The twentieth century lead to proper schooling being more widespread. Researchers adopted the philosophers, Piaget and Vygotsky's view on learning by creating a balance between the two philosophers ideas by creating "child centered" schools. Following the development of established schools many new philosophers sought to better the educational ideologies. This includes philosopher John Dewey who believed that life and education should be intertwined by creating a child centered learning environment w...