Running head: PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 1. Personal Statement on Learning and Instruction. Jay A. Bostwick

Transcription

1 Running head: PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 1 Personal Statement on Learning and Instruction Jay A. Bostwick IP&T 620 Principles of Learning

2 PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 2 Personal Statement on Learning and Instruction My philosophy on learning and instruction as a teacher and an instructional designer has been formed through five years experience facilitating learner-owned undergraduate field study experiences in international and cross-cultural settings, and through graduate studies in instructional psychology and instructional technology. In these experiences I have come value many ideas about learning, drawn from a variety of theorists and theoretical movements. Along with behaviorists like Skinner (1961), for example, I feel that learning is demonstrated in the things a student actually produces and the skills they are able to demonstrate practically. At the same time, I also believe, with the cognitivists, that learning can be improved with attention to how knowledge is received and processed, the process students use to think about what is being taught (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). In my core understanding of what learning is, however, I align most closely with the definition offered by Lave (1991), who develops a model of learning as an emerging property of whole persons legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice (p. 63). In other words, learning is about gradually becoming a more and more capable participant in a group of people; becoming oriented to their skills, behaviors, culture, and history; taking an increasingly more central role in the community as one s competency increases. In the words of Wenger (1998), this is a mutual developmental process between communities and individuals, one that goes beyond mere socialization (p. 263). Learning in this sense is a collaboration that not only builds the learner, but also sustains the community of experts in a particular practice. In relation to this perspective on learning, teaching must be concerned with much more than simply conveying facts and information, aiming instead to provide learners with opportunities to become engaged in communities of practice, imagine and build their identities,

3 PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 3 and have meaningful impacts on the world (Wenger, 1998). Lave (1991) suggests traditional apprenticeship, as it has appeared in pre-modern, non-western societies, as one approach through which this kind of teaching can be performed. My own instructional approach, as developed through teaching undergraduate students preparing to do research abroad, is based on several key assumptions: First, I feel that it is important for learners to be engaged in authentic tasks in authentic contexts, that in learning they be prepared to do and understand things the way experts do and understand them. When learning is directed toward authentic problems, such as finding solutions to real-world challenges in a particular field, I believe that learners are more motivated and insightful, and more effectively retain what they ve learned. For example, the education abroad students I teach are engaged in the authentic task of designing and implementing their own field research projects, including writing a research proposal and applying for approval from the university s Institutional Review Board (IRB) to affirm that the project design is ethically sound with respect to human subjects. The fact that they are doing the kind of research that scholars within their disciplines do is highly motivating. Second, I believe that learning is initiated by a sense of dissonance between one s own understandings and external realities, what Savery and Duffy (1996) refer to as cognitive conflict or puzzlement (p. 136). It is difficult to describe this motivating sensation in terms that do not have negative connotations, but the outcomes of this puzzlement are good, focused questions that can pull learning beyond the goal of acquiring facts and information only. In my teaching experience, it has been important for students to actively produce and articulate their own questions about the things we study. As a teacher, raising questions has also been an effective way to initiate thought and discussion without rigid lecturing.

4 PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 4 Third, I believe that social collaboration greatly enhances the learning process, that in working with peers and more knowledgeable mentors and content experts, learners can me exposed to a variety of understandings and abilities that will help stimulate questions and help a learner develop and articulate his or her own thinking. Our field study students are engaged in a community of learners with each other, and also work closely with faculty mentors. We are always looking for ways to build stronger connections within these associations, and to sustain interaction within these communities after they have gone abroad. Academic blogging has been a recent addition to our students process. Beyond this, the entire field experience is based on the idea that interaction with people should be maximized, and one of the greatest learning experiences for students is to live with a host family in a new culture. This not only immerses the students more deeply into the host culture and community, but provides relationships on which the students can rely for support as they are still developing their ability to participate appropriately within the culture. Fourth, I believe that students need to have ownership over their learning, that they should play a role in negotiating learning objectives with their teachers and take responsibility for their own progress. Commitment to this principle is a key quality in the most effective teachers. Our field study students choose their own topics of research, identify and form their own relationships with mentoring faculty, and are responsible for receiving the necessary approvals. Their project work will fail if any of these tasks are not performed well. As demanding as these expectations are, the fact that students are responsible for their own experience is highly motivating. They are typically more excited and engaged in their academic studies while participating in our programs than they have ever been before, and generally return to finish their studies on campus with a new energy and focus.

5 PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 5 As something of a summation of these assumptions, I believe that knowledge of the world comes about through one s experience of it (Driscoll, 2000, p. 376). This belief, taken with all others I have mentioned, has been identified as a foundational concept in what is defined broadly as constructivism (Driscoll, 2000; see also Jonassen, 1991; Savery & Duffy, 1996). In this broad sense, I feel an affinity with this family of paradigms and methods in my own instructional approach. In line with the constructivist paradigm, I feel that the role of a teacher is to provide learners with access to experience and facilitate the construction of meaning from those experiences. As I ve taught our field study students, for example, we have aimed to help students prepare for cross-cultural experiences by exposing them to ideas, strategies of observation, and principles for good inquiry. While instructors and teaching assistants do share their own experiences with the students as a part of the process, we do not determine or attempt to control what a particular student s experience abroad will mean to him or her, in academic or any other terms. Specific strategies employed in this kind of teaching can take a number of different forms, including, among others, discovery learning (Bruner, 1961) or constructionism, which Hay and Barab (2001) distinguish from constructivism; problem-based learning (Savery & Duffy, 1996); and peripheral participation (Lave 1991; Wenger 1998); and cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Holum, 1991). I take the caveat on constructionism generally presented by Jonassen (1991) as applying to the implementation of these specific methods: When integrating constructivism into the instructional design process, the nature of the learning and the context in which it will occur should be considered before committing to one theory or the other (13). Each of these approaches to instruction is suited to a particular type of learning

6 PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 6 situation with specific kinds of learners and learning objectives. Along with these methods for teaching, I believe that technology can also play an important role in learning. Clark (1983; 1994) has argued that technology does not cause learning, comparing it to a truck delivering groceries without itself causing a change in the nutrition of those who receive the groceries (1983, p. 445). His claim is that improvements in learning will be affected through a change in instructional method, not in technology. I agree that method has a direct and primary impact on learning and that good teaching can occur without the latest technology. At the same time, I believe there are many useful technological tools that can have a positive effect in enhancing, even creating, learning environments. What Clark identifies as delivery technology (Clark, 1994, p. 23) can play a particularly critical role not only in increasing student access to additional sources of information, but also can connect students to communities of learning and practice. In case of our field study students, academic blogging is one activity we have identified as being a potential way to increase interaction and collaborating among students and staff, and also as a potential platform from which to begin having dialogue with experts in their fields of study, even as they are still reviewing literature and formulating their project designs. This, I believe, is one way to incorporate technology in a teaching situation in order to more fully realize the particular teaching method of facilitating peripheral participation with communities of practice. In conclusion, I believe that knowledge is power, that as we develop more effective understandings of the world around us, we have more freedom to choose the kind of people we want to be. The process of supporting and encouraging these decisions as a teacher and learner myself, is a process that I feel excited and fortunate to take part in.

7 PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 7 References Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). Learning and transfer. How people learn. Washington DC: National Academy of Sciences. Bruner, J. S. (1961). The act of discovery. Harvard Educational Review, 31, Clark, R. E. (1983). Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media. Review of Educational Research, 53(4), Clark, R. E. (1994). Media Will Never Influence Learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2), Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: Making thinking visible. American Educator, 15(3), 6-11, Driscoll, M.P. (2000). Constructivism. Psychology of learning for instruction (pp ). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Hay, K. E. & Barab, S. A. (2001). Constructivism in practice: A comparison and contrast of apprenticeship and constructionist learning environments. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 10, Jonassen, D. H. (1991). Objectivism versus constructivism: Do we need a new philosophical paradigm? Educational Technology Research and Development, 39(3), Lave, J. (1991). Situated learning in communities of practice. In L.B. Resnick, J.M. Levine, & S.D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp ). Washington DC: American Psychological Association Press.

8 PERSONAL STATEMENT ON LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION 8 Savery, J. R., & Duffy, T. M. (1996). Problem-based learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework. In B.G. Wilson (Ed.), Constructivist learning environments: Case studies in instructional design (pp ). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Skinner, B. F. (1961). Why we need teaching machines. Harvard Educational Review, 31, Wenger, E. (1998). Education. Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity (pp ). New York: Cambridge University Press.