Learning and Teaching Theories

1. Learning and Teaching Theories Developmental trends Information – Processing Strategy Instruction Warm-up: • What are learning strategies and how are they helpful to students with disabilities? • What are the developmental issues concerning students with learning disabilities? • Any extras about CBM from chapter 8?

2. Constructivism • Students construct their own solutions and processes to problem solving based on interactions with the problem. Thus, a child builds on previous learning (scaffolding) through exploration. • Teacher designs instruction that allows students to explore learning and learn by what they did and what they found. Learning is implicit in the discovery. • Assessment through interviews and observations of the process of learning.

3. Behaviorists/Reductionists • Tasks need to be broken down to small components and taught sequentially (task analysis) • Student learning should be closely monitored and recorded • CBM – incremental growth monitored across several days. • Direct Instruction – a method of teaching skills through teacher directed (explicit), structured, and sequential lessons.

4. Paradigm wars • Why must there be a balance between reductionism and constructivism? • Gallagher (1989) Teacher involvement Student involvement

5. Information-processing • Based on learning strategies and computer model • An interaction between short and long term memory. • Short-term memory • Restricted to about 7 items • Long-term memory • Encoding takes up to 20 mintues (STMtoLTM) • Knowledges: Declarative (facts); Procedural (fluent steps); Conditional (metacognitive, the when and why)

6. Strategy Instruction • Metacognitive purposes • Teaching how to learn rather than only what • Students who are passive might revert to learned helplessness when encountered with a unique or difficult challenge • Learning strategies are on the website http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox • Strands (acquisition, storage, academic competence)

7. Fluency • Students need opportunities to work in timed situations: to retrieve facts and follow known procedures with prosody (accuracy and without hesitation) • How to graph (example) • pinpoint the behavior and appropriateness of skills • design the probe • baseline • select a goal • identify the objective and intervene appropriately • teach, test and score • monitor • evaluate with observation • What kinds of learning could be followed with instruction in fluency?

8. Details of learning • Learning modalities and Multi Int (Gardner, 1983) • Verbal/linguistic; logic/math; visual; musical; kinesthetic; interpersonal; intrapersonal • How do you teach to them all?????? • Stages of learning • Exposure – student knows about some information • Grasping – can explain general ideas of the information to another • Independence – completes tasks using the info • Application – applies the knowledge in general or outside forms

9. Application of Assessment • Should instruction be based on assessment items -or- should assessment be based on instruction?(An argument over packaged curriculum) • Assess frequently • Go beyond scores and into the why • Error pattern analysis

10. Summation • How can you apply CBM to your classroom instruction? • What are the benefits to students graphing their progress? • Name factors that affect long-term memory. • When is it appropriate to use Reductionist or Constructivist techniques? • How can you incorporate strategy instruction in your class?