Adopting and adapting teaching and learning styles

2. Adopting and adapting teaching and learning styles Neil Denby

3. Learning Behavioural (Skinner, Thorndike) • Learning is a change in observable behaviour • Change existing classroom behaviours • Shape observable learning outcomes • Shape new skills

4. Four approaches Contiguity • Two stimuli become associated when they repeatedly occur together Classical conditioning • The pairing of an automatic response (emotional) (positive or negative) with a certain stimulus Operant conditioning • The type and timing of reinforcement affects learned behaviour Social learning • Learning by observing other behaviours

5. Contiguity • Two stimuli become associated when they repeatedly occur together Task: Give examples from your subject • Matching games, battleships, missing words, bingo, concentration-type games • Discourage incorrect matches: It is imperative that wrong notions are not initially given!

6. Classical conditioning The pairing of an automatic response (emotional) (positive or negative) with a certain stimuluse.g.: • Fear, anxiety, worry – associated with ‘difficult’ concepts, examinations, etc. … • Confidence, pride, comfort associated with ‘easy’ concepts, ‘fun’ lessons Task: Give examples from your subject

7. Learning experiences … • Enjoyable, positive so that positive outcomes are associated with the subject • Learning tasks must be hard enough to challenge, but not so hard that failure is inevitable • Use cooperative team structures to establish new ideas • Minimise individual competition (tests are for progress, not competition) • Use familiar and relevant case study material so that study is associated with everyday life

8. Operant conditioning The type and timing of reinforcement affects learned behaviour, e.g.: • An unpredictable series of reinforcement promotes persistence at a learning task • Reward good ‘learning’ behaviour • Reinforce new learning: Apply previously learned knowledge to a local issue or make relevant by collecting current data • Use unpredictable reinforcement • Use plenty of praise when learning new concepts (construction of praise is important – give reasons) • Surprise tests are better than scheduled ones

9. Social learning Learning by observing other behaviours.(attention; retention; reproduction; motivation): • Attention is paid to things that are interesting, exciting, enthusiastic, engaging • Use of props, newspaper clippings, stories • Reproduction: Model behaviour to be reproduced (‘talking through’ difficult concepts) • Motivation: Positive reinforcement – grades, marks, praise motivates

10. Cognitive • Change in observable behaviour is a reflection of a more important internal change • Learning is the result of one’s attempts to make sense of the world • Learner is an active source of plans, goals, intentionsand emotions, which are used to sort incoming stimuli and construct meaning and knowledge • Cognitive learning is often experiential (Piaget et al.)

11. Experiential learning • On-the-job experience • Mini enterprise • Role play • Problem solving: • Understand the problem • Have enough prior knowledge to solve the problem • Visually portray the problem • Encourage role taking and opinion forming • Encourage different perspectives • Encourage ownership

12. Perception and attention Which stimuli are attended to, and which are ignored? Depends on: • Rules • Knowledge • Patterns • Beliefs • Expectations Give examples from your own subject

13. Different perceptions • Different outputs possible from the same input (different perceptions) • Teachers (you) can help pupils to attend to (focus on) relevance • Provide a context: • Purpose and main ideas of the lesson • Repeat and review main ideas • State ideas in student’s own words • Identify important central concepts and supporting examples • Use of headings and sub-headings

14. Arouse curiosity For each of the following, give examples from your own subject: • Use surprise • Use novel ideas or approaches • Set up a puzzle or open-ended issue • Raise a question or issue before knowledge/answer

15. Memory Information storage consists of: • Words, concepts, skills, strategies (verbalised) • Pictures, imagination (images) • Meanings, perceptions (interpretation)

16. Networks • Networks of ideas, etc., form the basis of memory, and are reinforced with examples, relationships and sub-concepts • New ideas are integrated into the existing network

17. Retrieval Help students to retrieve prior knowledge before proceeding For each of the following, give examples from your own subject: • Brainstorm existing knowledge • Hierarchical classification (what I knew, what I know now, both together) • Pupils make mental images of new ideas • Rephrase, give examples, develop graphic representations • Pupils to be active participants