Learning Theories, Research Paper Example

Learning can be viewed under three major broad domains that include motivation, Cognitive processes and Intelligence. These three domains can be illustrated by practical classroom situations that expound on the various theories of learning. These theories of learning may include behaviorist theory, constructivist theory, experimental theory, information processing theory, psychomotor, and evaluation theory.

Motivation

Motivation is a process by which a given activity is energized with an aim to achieve a given activity. Under this domain, constructivism can be used to show applicability in a classroom situation. A teacher may pose an open-ended question to learners prompting them to come up with possible solutions to problem. As the learners give answers with each one of them offering the answers in his or her own way of understanding, the teacher will encourage other students to participate by offering an opinion on the applicability and viability of the other student’s responses. This will be a situation in which learners are engaged in open discussions, exploring new ideas on the concepts behind the question’s requirements and correcting and reinforcing each others ideas. The ideas contributed by learners will be as a result of their existing knowledge and thoughtful activities that they will be involved in (Dale, 2007).

The role of the teacher in this case will be to attentively listen to the ideas of the students as they are being aired by others and chose other students who have raised their hands to offer additional information or correct their colleagues. The teacher will then at the end of the discussion correct the non corrected mistakes in the understanding of the concepts as elicited from his or her attentive listening to the discussions. He or she will give probing questions in the middle of the discussions to make sure the discussions will remain within context to enhance achievement of lesson objectives. This sought of active learning will make the learning situation more enjoyable and thus motivating to students. The process in itself will help reinforce the ideas in the minds of students. Learners will therefore gain individual passion to seek more knowledge and thus an intrinsic motivation.

Behaviorism can be used to illustrate the motivational domain in a real world situation. Taking for instance in martial arts class, the coach will demonstrate the manner in which a given kick is executed. He or she will ask the students or trainees to do it as he or she did. The trainees will be subjected to repetitive performance of the execution of the kick for several occasions until the learners master how to do it. He or she will observe keenly to as the trainees perform the execution of the particular kick correcting those who are giving undesirable performances and congratulating those who are making good trials. Positive and negative reinforces will be used in these scenarios. Words like ‘good’ and ‘perfect’ may signify positive reinforcement while ‘too bad’ or ‘not yet’ and some form of punishment may be used to signify negative reinforcement.

As the learners continue making trials and slowly by slowly mastering the kicks, they start to gain confidence in themselves as those who were receiving negative reinforcements will now start to be congratulated. As the positive reinforcements continue for a number of times, the trainees will start to gain insight into the sport and gain curiosity even to learn more. This will enhance their motivation in seeking more skills into the art. This is also very applicable to a classroom situation where the effective use of positive and negative reinforcements helps to speed up achievement.

Cognitive Processes

Cognitive processes can be brought into learning whereby thought is actively involved in the processes of learning. The experiential theory of learning can be effectively used to illustrate this in a real world situation. For instance in a Biology class, the teacher may present to learners an illustration of how the respiratory system of animals work. The teacher will explain that during respiration, oxygen combines with carbohydrates to form energy, water and salts. He or she will go further to explain that when somebody is running, the body requires more energy and that is why he or she will breathe faster to get more oxygen so that the rate of burning of food substances is increased to cater for the high energy requirements. As this happens more water will also be produced that is going to come out as sweat. The sweat will contain the salts produced from the burning of food substances. In this case the earners will then be taken out of class to run for some distance until they start sweating. The teacher will then ask the students to taste their sweat and find out how it tastes. Through their thoughtful and reflective capabilities, the students will be able to prove that it is true that in respiration, energy, salt and water are produced. The concept is going to be transformed into abstract terms and made to remain concrete in the minds of the students as they will have experienced it in real terms.

Information processing theory of learning is another form in which practical classroom situations can be used to illustrate the cognitive domain. The teacher presents all the concepts to be taught to students in a hierarchical manner introducing a topic after another or a concept after another. In order for a teacher to introduce a new concept, he or she has to ensure that learners understand all the prerequisite concepts or ideas to the particular concept (Gordon and Ernest, 1980). For instance before a teacher introduces the topic of finding areas of different figures in a mathematics class, learners should be well vast with the concept of multiplication and multiplication tables. After the class, the teacher gives a short exercise for the students to attempt with an aim to test the state of the short term memory. This will enhance semantic encoding of the information and facilitate the storage of the information in the long term memory. The teacher will prepare a continuous assessment test at the end of the week and an exam at the end of the semester to test the ability of the learner to retrieve the information from the long term memory. The students will be required to organize their responses in a logical manner and present them.

Intelligence

Intelligence is a characteristic of the mind to have the ability to learn, to reason, to think abstractly, to solve problems, to comprehend concepts, to plan and to use language effectively. (Mathew and Hergenhahn, 2008) say that intelligence can be described under certain traits such as good personality or character, creativity, and knowledge or wisdom. Psychomotor theory of learning can be used to illustrate this domain in a real world situation. For instance in a music class, in the case of learning how to play a musical instrument the learner has to get actively involved in practicing the playing of the musical instrument. The process will involve mental processes and some physical movements of the hands, arms, fingers, and sometimes the feet. The learner will perform coordination of these movements trying to achieve some precision and manipulating the instrument in different ways until the skill is mastered. The ability of the learner to master the skill faster and perfectly can be described as intelligence. Intelligence can also come in where by the learner now involves creativity in the execution of the skill.

Learning through evaluation can also be used to illustrate the intelligence domain the processes of learning. This is a situation in which learners involve themselves in systematically making judgment on the worth or merit of some concepts in some learning situations. For instance in an economics class, students may be asked to provide their own judgment on whether a certain company should invest in a given project given certain statistical information. The students will then actively involve themselves in carrying out some project appraisal measures that will help them provide their judgment on whether it is advisable for the firm to invest in the project. The students will base their judgment on reliable facts about the project in order to provide their judgment. Therefore the students will be using their knowledge to reason, thinking abstractly and solving a problem which shows in itself some of intelligence. They will use proper language to define the state of the project in their provision of the judgment.

References

Dale, H. (2007).Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective. (5^th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Gordon, H. and Ernest, R. (1980). Theories of Learning. (5^th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Mathew, O. and Hergenhahn, P.(2008). Introduction to the Theories of Learning. (8^th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall