Understanding learning theories is crucially important for anyone who wants to teach. Without purposefully designing the learning experience by choosing the learning theory and instructional strategy for the lesson, there is a great change that we are just teaching the same way we were taught – and that might not help our students to learn! It might make them to use surface learning strategies to just pass, not to learn!
Are you (and/or your students) engaging in deep learning or surface learning?
There is a big difference between instructor/instruction centered vs. learner-centered education. When learning is perceived to be a product (product, grade, task, test score, etc.) created according the instruction, it makes great sense to group students by their academic ability. That’s what we would do in other industries, right? However, learning is so much more than just a product of instruction!
When learning is perceived to be an internal, individual, life-long process, also the instructional practices have to change. I understand teachers’ concerns of limited instructional time (especially when teaching to the test) and external accountability measures that seriously complicate the teaching-learning interactions. We cannot expect the teachers to change a situation that derives from structural demands and administrative practices in education. Which is why we need to focus on our own teaching practices to always, always, always support our students to choose to engage in deeper learning.
The concept of learning as a product often gets reinforced through teacher education and instructional design practices (current ID models were created in business and military settings, but the pervasiveness of learning objects as measurements of successful instruction is today a global practice). University faculty seldom has extensive training in instructional practices, so they may teach the same way they were taught – which is less than ideal, because contemporary educational research acknowledges the benefits of modern learning theories over behaviorism.
Teacher education has to change. If we want to have teachers who know how to engage their students in learner-centered practices, we must provide teachers with the experience of learning in such environment.
Meanwhile, we all as individual educators, can choose to prioritize supporting our own students’ deeper learning process. Because that makes learning more meaningful.
Deeper learning has another dimension in our contemporary world: media literacy, which is crucially important to teach in all K-12 grades and beyond. Please see the excellent suggestions below:
Image from: https://futuremakers.nz/2023/07/24/a-theory-of-stupid/ and the green link for Fact checking tools in the image: https://www.rand.org/research/projects/truth-decay/fighting-disinformation/search.html
NotesFromNina 