Marsello 1 Education Theory One Billion & Counting and the Behaviorist- Constructivist Continuum One Billion & Counting: The Hidden Momentum of Population Growth in India is an online module designed to complement Chapter 5 of the undergraduate textbook Human Geography in Action. It serves as an introduction to population geography, highlighting various measurements and models related to population change. Supplementing the module are a selection of review activities and an interactive lab. While the module employs some behaviorist and constructivist principles, the majority of the learning occurs through a cognitivist framework. Of the three dominant educational paradigms, constructivism appears to have gained the most ground in recent years. Focus is gradually shifting away from a rigidly defined curriculum and toward the learner s individual needs, with an emphasis on dialogue, collaboration and problem- based learning. However, as Ertmer and Newby assert, the older theories of behaviorism and cognitivism are still relevant within an instructional design setting. Ertmer and Newby believe that principles of each theory can be applied to education; they propose a positive correlation between the level of mental processing a task requires and movement along the behaviorist- constructivist continuum (60-61). All three disciplines have their place in modern instructional design, and all three can be found in One Billion & Counting. In any educational setting where basic concepts must be taught, classic stimulus- response behaviorism is a good place to start. Unless the learner has a decent foundation in the core concepts of a subject, some behaviorist instruction is unavoidable. In One Billion &
Marsello 2 Counting, for example, it is difficult to discuss population dynamics without first introducing the concepts of birth rate, death rate, immigration rate and emigration rate, which together comprise the basic formula for population change. Learners must become conditioned to know that (B- D) represents natural increase and that (I- O) represents migration. These fundamental relationships should be drilled into the learner s mind, to be built upon later with higher levels of mental processing. Further behaviorist structures are utilized in the Measures of Population Change slide, where students are tasked with understanding Crude Birth Rate, Crude Death Rate, and the Rate of Natural Increase (Atkinson 4). Behaviorism is also seen in the Review Activities section, most evidently through the use of flashcards, where terms (stimuli) must be matched with their definitions (responses). Cognitvism is probably the most frequently encountered learning paradigm in One Billion & Counting. According to Ally, Cognitivists see learning as an internal process that involves memory, thinking, reflection, abstraction, motivation, and meta- cognition (8). Evidently, cognitivists view the learner in a more complex light than do behaviorists. Ally s learning model proposes that while Behaviourist strategies can be used to teach the facts (what), cognitivist strategies teach the principles and processes (how) (24). More so than most disciplines, population geography cannot avoid the how, and must extend further than a simple behaviorist framework. Examples of cognitivist structures are scattered throughout the module. Section six introduces the concept of a population pyramid and explains its significance to the study of human geography. Rote memory won t suffice in these instances; the learner must grasp how a population pyramid works, what the archetypal pyramid shapes signify, and how to apply these conclusions to future examples. This aligns perfectly with what cognitivists call
Marsello 3 schema : internal knowledge structures by which to compare new information (Keesee 2). Once a schema for recognizing population patterns has been internalized by the learner, they should be able to draw conclusions when presented with a previously unseen population pyramid. According to Keesee (8), explanations and illustrative examples are chief among learning activities employed by cognitivists. Population geography, as opposed to more theoretical subjects like math and physics, cannot be studied in a vacuum. As an ever- changing study of our world, this discipline lends itself particularly well to illustrative examples, and to their accompanying cognitive schema. Though cognitivism plays a front- and- centre role, constructivism too can be found in the teaching style of One Billion & Counting. Constructivism holds that learners interpret information and the world according to their personal reality, (Ally 7) and focuses on the uniqueness of the individual learner. Students are engaged in guided discovery, (Ally 19) whereby the instructor facilitates learning but does not rigidly enforce it. Within One Billion & Counting, constructivism is primarily used in the appendices. Section ten presents several open- ended discussion questions for the learner to answer on Blackboard. Each question is worded such that no true right or wrong answer exists, and each asks that learners justify their choices. The word why is emphasized in all three questions (Atkinson 10) and, as Ally maintains, why is to constructivism as how is to cognitivism. Indeed, the module has followed the continuum: by the lesson s end, learners will have internalized the basic terms and equations (behaviorism), developed mental schema related to the topic at hand (cognitivism), and reflected on the subject based on their own reality (constructivism). One Billion & Counting teaches population geography in a variety of ways. While the bulk of the learning takes place through developing cognitive schema to be recalled later, the
Marsello 4 module also leans on behaviorism to encode simple definitions and equations in the learner, and constructivism for self- guided reflection once the primary teaching is through.
Marsello 5 Works Cited Ally, M. (2004). Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Atkinson, G. (2011, January 7). Ch.5: One Billion and Counting: The Hidden Momentum of Population Growth in India. Human Geography in Action. Keesee, G. S. (n.d.). Learning Theories. Teaching Learning Resources. Augusta, Georgia, USA. Newby, P. A. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26 (2), 43-71.