LDT100x Final Reflection

My learning journey

As an individual, learning theories have been an integral part of my own learning journey.

Starting in elementary school, teachers would employ behaviorism by rewarding us with points for correct answers and good behavior (and take them away if we misbehaved). As soon as we were old enough, we engaged in social learning activities under the supervision of our teachers in a social constructivist setting. In secondary school, we were using textbooks that were grounded in social cognitivist theories which focused on promoting effective learning through the use of graphic organizers, problem-solving tasks, insightful questions, and multimedia resources. Later in life, as I grew more self-motivated, learning became more rooted in andragogy. Training would focus more on skills that were more immediately relevant to my life and help me solve problems while acknowledging my prior experience. Learning also became more connected with the rise of learning networks, and more personalized thanks to the emergence of mobile apps and adaptive learning technology. Throughout my life, learning theories have shaped my own learning experiences and preferences and become a source of inspiration for the teacher I would eventually develop into.

Today, as an ESL teacher, learning theories help me create better learning experiences by allowing me to understand the learning process and design lessons that are more engaging and effective for my target learners. Another benefit of using learning theories is that they help me reflect upon my own teaching and explore new ways of promoting learning in the classroom.

Learning Theories, Models, and Course Design

Contemplating my own teaching experience, here is how the learning theories and approaches covered in LDT100x fit in the overall design of my courses as freelance ESL tutor and trainer.

As the oldest learning theory on the list, I consider behaviorist theory to be equally as beneficial in young learners who typically lack self-motivation as in busy individuals who may benefit from gamified elements in their self-learning courses. Even more ingrained in our education system, scores and grades are another behaviorist instrument used to shape the learning behavior of learners of all ages. This means that practically all my lessons are infused with a healthy dose of behaviorism for times when learners run out of self-motivation.

Social constructivism, in my experience, really shines in any physical group setting, making it perfect for the ESL classroom. Scaffolding helps learners make progress without fear of getting stuck while discovery activities promote a social learning environment that is beneficial to learners.

Cognitivism informs how I design my learning materials. Presentations, handouts, and other learning materials are created following Meyer’s multimedia principles to limit cognitive overload and allow learners to incorporate their own prior learning (Main, 2022).((Main, P. (2022, January 20). Cognitivism Learning Theories: A Teachers Guide. Structural Learning. https://www.structural-learning.com/post/cognitivism-learning-theories))

Authentic assessment and project-based learning (PBL) can be great tools in both children and adult learning scenarios as they give learners a sense of shared purpose where their work (and learning) matters. Realizing that their work will have an impact in the real world can be really empowering.

All in all, what this course on learning theories has achieved for me so far is that it has allowed me to realize how my prior learning experiences rooted in different learning theories have shaped my own teaching preferences later in life.

Past teaching experiences

Here are few notable past teaching experiences as they relate to different learning theories.

Having been an ESL teacher in China, I found behaviorism to be an essential motivating factor in a system where grades, which can be considered a source of extrinsic motivation, determine what academic and career opportunities learners will have access to. Learners have to deal with immense pressure from both their family and society as a whole to get perfect grades. One would probably question the benefits of this system for the individual and their mental health, but competition and large class sizes may partly explain it.
Students love doing work that will have an impact in the real world. This is why we would have our students prepare and host international (English language) events throughout the year. Using a project-based learning approach with authentic assessment, we would coach our learners in a social constructivist way to support them and make sure the events would be ready in time. Several times a year, those events would be held at our school for all students, parents, and teachers. Those projects would prove to be very challenging to organize, requiring many extra (unpaid) hours, but also prove to be hugely rewarding for all parties involved.
Exploring new teaching methods can be both hugely challenging and rewarding. One such teaching method was flipped learning which combines connectivism, self-learning, and cognitivism in the learning phase with experiential learning in the practice phase. Aside from requiring a significant amount of work for all parties involved (in classes of more than 60 students), the greatest challenge was to persuade learners (and teachers) to try something new and potentially risky. Apart from a few initial hiccups, flipped learning became one of my favorite teaching methods and proved to be hugely effective when used in the right circumstances.
Classroom activities, and presentations, such as a speed-dating and job fair activities tended to work well and require less resources. During an activity, a formative type of assessment helped the learners make progress while a rubric based summative assessment of their final product would help me grade their final work. The social constructivist dimension here presented itself in the form of group work where students would help each other while the teacher provided feedback and helped those individuals perceived as being in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
One learning theory that I did not have a chance to truly explore as a secondary school ESL teacher was connectivism. In China, the internet being restricted, and online research being discouraged in high school, this meant that my students had only limited access to English language knowledge networks (in a connectivist sense). This, combined with poor research skills and difficulties applying critical thinking, often led to students resorting to plagiarism, even in situations where their English level would have allowed them to give their own opinion. The solution I came up with to counter this, was to send them pre-formatted differentiated content kits where different materials, offering various viewpoints, such as news articles, pictures, videos, and tutorials, would be made available to them for offline use to help prepare them to formulate an opinion. They were taught how to extract information from a text, summarize, and use keywords to form sentences in an effort to lead them away from rote learning and reciting. Since I had control over the content they learned from, it was easier for me to detect plagiarism and assess their work.

Additional Reflections

Here are some additional reflections about learning theories in general.

Learning theories, and by extension our understanding of how we learn, only started gaining prominence less than 200 years ago, that is less than 10 generations ago.
These learning theories developed from the study of animals. All the prominent behaviorist were at first concerned with animal behavior when they shifted to applying their findings in animal behavior to humans. Does that mean they were more concerned with understanding animals? Or perhaps studying animals seemed less daunting due to their seemingly less complex nature?
The number of new learning theories, learning models, and research has increased rapidly since the start of the 20th century .
There was a shift from learning theories to more practical learning models in the late 20th century.
Learning theories and models were originally the subject of interest in universities and academic circles, but as our societies have progressed toward the use of advanced technologies, it looks like the private sector is now leading the trend .
A few of the learning theories and models featured in this course did not inform the making of this course (LTD100x). This course appears to embrace a connectivist approach at the expense of cognitivism. Many of the videos made by the university fail to consider many of Mayer’s multimedia principle for instance and it made me realize that perhaps some models, due to being too time-consuming implement might just not be realistic to use in an academic setting?
A cognitivist method of instruction could be too expensive approaches in certain scenarios due to the cost of designing materials
A cognitivist approach would require not only an instructional designer, but other skilled experts such as subject matter experts, writers, animators, graphic designers, and voice artists.
At the opposite and of the spectrum, connectivism seems to be more of an opportunist effort to utilize technology and networks to inexpensively achieve learning goals while freeing up resources for institutions. Considering the time and money to not only make learning materials, but also update them, it seems logical that certain learning experiences will favor connectivism at the expense of cognitivism for budgetary reasons.

My learning journey

Learning Theories, Models, and Course Design

Past teaching experiences

Additional Reflections

Further reading