Module 1: "How people learn: Introduction to learning theory"

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 where the child learns through life experiences, but is guided by the curriculum and the teacher. 
  • Marie Montessori followed with a more "liberated" form of education.  She believed that children learn through properly planned activities that invite children to learn through play. Her influence lead to Friedrich Frobel establishing the first kindergarten in the United States, thus leading to the creation of K-5 schools.
  • Jerome Burner went even further with the views of modern philosophers by creating the philosophy that broad conceptual curriculum should be spiraled with each revisit of the topic going more in-depth. His views of curriculum are a major influence in today's modern classrooms. 
  • Modern teachers realize the importance of combining all the past philosophers ideas. In today's education world educators have come to realize that experiences, reflection, play, developmental stages, socialization, culture, life influences, content importance are all necessary in creating learning strategies that are useful for different kinds of learning and all play a huge role in creating learning strategies.
  • The Learning Process= the brain, learning environment, associations and connections, social and cultural environments, and how people think and feel about their own learning.
  • Teacher assist learning by: organizing the environment (hands on activities with reflection-purpose), knowledge, information, and activities (understanding the students, prior knowledge, structure and relation of topics, modeling and demonstrating) , and people (sense of community, facilitation of student interaction, making connections, collaboration).
  • Teachers are essentially theorists as they observe, research, and practice "theories" or strategies they have developed and act upon the good or bad outcome. Teachers are also responsible for applying others theories, as well as, their own so that they may aid in the building and expanding of "the learning theory."
Reflection:
The theory of learning, as it deals with education. is an ever changing process. Theories upon theories have been developed to explain how we learn each one building upon the other thus creating the modern education system we have today. As teachers we are the main theorists of the educational world as it is us who are able to accept or deny theory within our classroom based on our research and observations. We use these theories and develop new ones in order to expand the views on the learning process and meet the needs of the individual child.

Resource:
Darling-Hammond, L, Rosso, J, Austin, K, Orcutt, S, & Martin Daisy. (n.d) How people learn: Introduction to learning theory. Stanford University School of Education.

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