Approaches to Learning • ANNE JORDAN • ORISON CARLILE • ANNETTA STACK Open University Press McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill House Shoppenhangers Road Maidenhead Berkshire England SL6 2QL email: [email protected] world wide web: www.openup.co.uk and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121—2289, USA First published 2008 Copyright © Anne Jordan, Orison Carlile and Annetta Stack 2008 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN-10: 0-33-522670-1 (pb) 0-33-522671-X (hb) ISBN-13: 978-0-33-522670-2 (pb) 978-0-33-522671-9 (hb) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data applied for Typeset by Kerrypress Ltd, Luton, Bedfordshire Printed in the UK by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow Fictitious names of companies, products, people, characters and/or data that may be used herein (in case studies or in examples) are not intended to represent any real individual, company, product or event. viii APPROACHES TO LEARNING: A GUIDE FOR TEACHERS Figures 1.1 Philosophy and its educational implications 7 1.2 Aristotle’s animating principles 16 2.1 Unconditional and conditional responses 22 2.2 A comparison of classical conditioning and Hull’s theory 24 2.3 Reinforcement and punishment 25 2.4 An example of a learning outcome 32 3.1 Input-process-output model of brain processes 37 3.2 Perceptual categorization 39 3.3 Rabbit or duck? 40 3.4 Theories of selective attention 42 3.5 How experience is encoded 44 3.6 Modal model of memory 45 3.7 Working memory model 46 3.8 Associative network 48 5.1 Peer group effects on children 70 5.2 Reciprocal determinism 75 6.1 Culture as iceberg 83 7.1 The bell curve of normal distribution 102 7.2 IQ variance of men and women 106 8.1 Biological/maturational model of development 114 8.2 Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of development 115 9.1 Evolving terminology in adult education 129 11.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 156 12.1 The brain 173 14.1 Kolb’s learning cycle 202 14.2 Skill, competence and competency 203 14.3 Role competence model 204 14.4 From potential to role competence 206 14.5 How to reflect 210 16.1 Waterfall model of software development 231 16.2 Hybrid ID model 232 16.3 Linear navigation 236 16.4 Non-linear navigation 236 16.5 Hierarchical navigation 237 16.6 Composite navigation 237 Tables 2.1 Key terms in classical conditioning 24 2.2 Key terms in operant conditioning 26 2.3 Bloom’s cognitive domain 28 2.4 Bloom’s affective domain 28 2.5 Bloom’s psychomotor domain 29 2.6 Internal processes and their corresponding instructional events 30 CONTENTS ix 3.1 Different types of memory systems 44 4.1 Comparing behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism 55 4.2 Bruner’s representational modes 58 6.1 Assessing classroom culture using Hofstede’s indices 88 7.1 Twentieth-century definitions of intelligence 97 7.2 Sample tasks from Binet and Simon’s tests 101 7.3 WISC subtest 103 7.4 Factorial models of intelligence 104 7.5 Gardner’s multiple intelligences 105 7.6 Curricular implications of intelligence theories 107 7.7 Intelligence theories and classroom strategies 108 8.1 Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development 117 8.2 Peck’s stages of middle age 117 8.3 Peck’s stages of old age 117 8.4 Kohlberg’s theory of moral development 118 8.5 Piaget’s theory of cognitive development 119 8.6 Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories of development: a comparison 120 8.7 Biological and cognitive aspects of ageing 121 8.8 Educational implications of Baxter Magolda’s theory 124 8.9 Educational implications of adult thinking 125 10.1 Educational values and implications in twentieth-century England 148 11.1 McGregor’s X and Y theory 158 11.2 Examples of motivational orientations 159 12.1 Brain lobes and related responsibilities 174 12.2 Left and right hemisphere cognitive mode specialization 174 12.3 Stages of psychomotor development 176 12.4 Left and right brain thinking 180 13.1 Socio-cultural roles of language in relation to the curriculum 184 13.2 Cognitive roles of language in relation to classroom activities 185 13.3 Relationship between language and thinking 189 13.4 Piaget’s developmental stages: cognitive and linguistic development 189 13.5 Phonic and whole-word method of reading 195 14.1 The importance of experience in definitions of learning 200 14.2 Theorists and experiential elements 201 14.3 Bloom’s taxonomies of learning 205 14.4 Criteria for assessing reflective writing 209 14.5 A constructively aligned approach to learning to drive 212 14.6 Hard and soft transferable skills 213 15.1 Simplified typology of disabilities 216 15.2 Moving to inclusion: form of organization and reorganization 222 16.1 Synchronous and asynchronous communication tools 234 Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the help of many people in the writing of this book. First, we are indebted to our editor Catherine Pratt for her thoroughness and acuity. We would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Claire Marie Fanning who constructed the glossary and Rob Carlile who laboured over permissions and referenc- ing. Peter Jordan read chapters for us and made many helpful suggestions, and Celia Carlile gave us constant support. We would like to thank our colleague Mary Fenton for the use of her house as a writing retreat, and our Heads of School and Department – Dolores Gilhooly, Paul Barry and Mícheál Ó hEigeartaigh at the Waterford Institute of Technology – for their support. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the help of Willie Donnelly, Head of Research in WIT, for funding support. We are truly grateful for all their help. We wish to acknowledge the following for permission to reproduce material within this book. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked, we should be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. Figures: Figure 5.3 BANDURA, ALBERT, SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF THOUGHT & ACTION: A SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY, 1st Edition, ௠ 1986, Pg.24. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. Figure 14.1 Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Tables: Table 7.3 Wood, C., Littleton, K. and Sheehy, K. (eds) Development Psychology in Action. Oxford: Blackwell Press and Open University Press. Copyright The Open University, Reproduced by kind permission. Table 12.2 Rosenzweig, M. R., Breedlove, S.M. and Watson, N.V. (2005) Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience (4th edn.). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc. Introduction This book aims to make life easier for educators by gathering together many of the theoretical approaches that inform the modern principles and practices of western education. Without sacrificing depth or rigour, it attempts to provide a lucid and succinct overview of these theoretical approaches, and considers their implications for policy and practice. The authors are committed to the view that theory has many practical implications and to its value in supporting, confirming and optimizing best practice. This is expressed in the title Approaches to Learning: A Guide for Teachers which is deliberately ambitious. Underlying the book is the maxim that there is ‘nothing as practical as a good theory’ (Lewin 1943: 35) and that educators base their professional practices on some aspects of theory, however derived. Educational theory may be considered as the distilled experiences of others and the purpose of this book is to share the experience and conclusions of theorists who have thought deeply about the educational process. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone holds theories of learning, since all action is based on assumptions which may or may not have been articulated or tested. We hope that this book will help educators to become aware of alternative views, so that they can clarify their own. The educator’s role as a facilitator of student learning is dependent upon the theory of learning held. The educator’s views may form a coherent whole; alterna- tively they may hold scraps of incompatible theory. It is important not to have principles which clash, so bringing them to light will help in their organization so that they can be used more consciously to engage in ongoing inquiry. A knowledge of theory gives the educator: + insight into theoretical positions; + access to the considered experience of others; + validation and affirmation of existing practice; + mind-tools for recognizing, analysing and evaluating issues; + power to manipulate and develop concepts in a reflective manner; + terminology to explore epistemological and pedagogical topics; + shared educational discourse for engagement in the scholarship of teaching; + justifications for personal teaching practices to colleagues and stakeholders; + protection from unproven and faddish ideas. There are many theories of education, drawn from a number of separate disciplines. This book places them side by side in order to make links and comparisons. It allows 2 APPROACHES TO LEARNING: A GUIDE FOR TEACHERS the educator to see areas of interest that can be pursued in relation to others, adding depth and balance to knowledge.