CI 512: Teaching and Learning

1. CI 512: Teaching and Learning Thursday, 7/21: Week 1 Classical Learning Theories Behaviorism

2. Class Outline – Classical Theories and Behaviorism Note Taker: ImanAlattar Observer: Martin Rausch • Community Standards and Logistics (9:00-9:05) • Syllabus Questions and Outline of the Course (9:05-9:20) • Classical Learning Theories (9:20-9:40) • Behaviorism, Drill & Practice • Small Group Discussion and Break (9:40-10:30) • Whole Class (10:30-11:00) • Snapshots Work-time (11:00-11:35) • Observer Observations (11:35-11:40) • Conclusions and Exit Cards (11:40-11:50)

3. Scoring Guide for Synthesis Paper

4. Community Standards

5. Comments from Exit Cards • Many are aware of their role as a listener and a speaker in the class • Learning names • Community practice of stating your name before you talk • Changing Seats • Lingering Questions about Course Content

7. Classical Learning Theories • Plato • Lock • Freud

8. Plato (428?-347 BC) • All knowledge rests in an eternal soul, but is forgotten upon birth • Er visited the Lethe river in Hades and witnessed souls drinking forgetfulness • Knowledge construction is the process of remembering what was forgotten

9. Allegory of the Cave • How is learning symbolized in this allegory? • How does teaching take place?

10. Plato • “Learning” is a passive process • Instruction should be teacher centered- those with greater wisdom can be a guide for the ignorant • Emphasis on the importance of learning virtues and reason

11. “We must reject the conception of education professed by those who say that they can put into the mind knowledge that was not there before– rather as if they could put sight into blind eyes… The faculty by which he learns is like an eye which cannot be turned from darkness to light unless the whole body is turned; in the same way the mind as a whole must be turned away from the world of change until it can bear to look straight at reality.” - Plato, The Republic

12. John Locke (1632-1704) • “Tabula rasa” (blank slate) philosophy maintains that human minds are born completely free of content • The mind is biologically wired with abilities such as memory, recall, and the capacity to join ideas together • Simple ideas are formed directly through experience and observation • Simple ideas can be combined to form complex ideas.

13. A study by Rothstein (2008) found the following “On average, professional parents spoke more than 2,000 words per hour to their children, working-class parents spoke about 1,300, and welfare mothers spoke about 600. At 4 years old, children of professionals had vocabularies that were nearly 50 percent larger than those of working-class children and twice as large as those of welfare children.” How could this be explained through Lockean educational theory?

14. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) • Learning is controlled by our psyche • Learning is a challenging processes in which a child’s “natural state” is changed • Constant conflict between the ego and natural desires

15. The child is frightfully inconsiderate of others and egotistic; he is only concerned with getting his own way and satis-fying his own desires; he is quite indifferent as to whether this hurts others or not. He is dirty and odoriferous; he does not mind catching hold of the most disgusting things or even putting them to his mouth. He is quite shameless so far as his own body is concerned and very curious about the things that other people wish to conceal from him. He is greedy and will steal dainties. He is cruel to all living creatures that are weaker than himself and filled with a perfect lust for destroying inanimate objects. He has an abundance of naughty bodily tricks, he sucks his fingers, he bites his nails, he picks his nose and plays with his sexual organs; he does all these things urged by his intense desire for self-fulfillment, and regards the slightest hindrance as intolerable. -Anna Freud (1935)

16. Small Group Discussion • Phillips and Soltis (Behaviorism) • What are the primary features of behaviorism? • How to the tenants of behaviorism align with current standardized testing practices? • Resnickand Ford (Drill and practice) • For what types of learning has drill and practice been particularly effective for you? For what types of learning has it been ineffective? • Brownell (Reaction to drill and practice)

17. Behaviorism • Lens for research • Theory on what consists of learning • Focuses on external behaviors of humans • Views human learning as biologically similar to animal learning

18. Behaviorism • Classical Conditioning • Pavlov (1849-1946) • Focuses on involuntary response mechanisms for learning • Operant Conditioning • Thorndike (1874-1949) • Reinforcement (positive and negative) to reinforce bonds • Skinner (1904-1990) • Continuous vs. intermittent reinforcement schedules

19. Drill & Practice and the role of automaticity • Working memory space is limited • Automaticity frees up space in working memory to allow for other cognitive function • Common examples include talking while driving, reading, and arithmetic

20. Working Memory Theory Miller (1957) The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information

21. Barn

22. Engine

23. Bay

24. Fire

25. Ticket

26. Key

27. Swallow

28. Hair

29. Green

30. Cabin

31. Duck

32. Anger

33. Place

34. Gun

35. Data

36. Land

37. Hard

38. Feet

39. Spoon

40. Loud

41. Heart

42. Working Memory Theory Miller (1957) The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information • Differentiation of Inputs of a single characteristic (loudness, pitch, taste, shades of grey) (7±2) • Memorization of “bits” of information (7±2) • “Bits” could be recoded into “chunks”

43. Recoding Binary Data into Chunks

44. Barn

45. Engine

46. Bay

47. Fire

48. Ticket

49. Key

50. Swallow