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Teaching and Learning: Philosophies, Principles and Practices

The document discusses theories and trends in teaching and learning. It notes that teaching and learning were traditionally seen as separate activities, but new interdisciplinary approaches now emphasize their interconnection. Cognitive psychology, early learning research, social/cultural theories, and technology are changing understandings of the learning process. Specifically, there is a new focus on learning as understanding rather than just acquiring facts, and on learners' prior knowledge and intuitive knowing. Experts demonstrate deep understanding through organized knowledge and flexible retrieval of relevant information to new situations.

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Gilang Nugraha
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62 views10 pages

Teaching and Learning: Philosophies, Principles and Practices

The document discusses theories and trends in teaching and learning. It notes that teaching and learning were traditionally seen as separate activities, but new interdisciplinary approaches now emphasize their interconnection. Cognitive psychology, early learning research, social/cultural theories, and technology are changing understandings of the learning process. Specifically, there is a new focus on learning as understanding rather than just acquiring facts, and on learners' prior knowledge and intuitive knowing. Experts demonstrate deep understanding through organized knowledge and flexible retrieval of relevant information to new situations.

Uploaded by

Gilang Nugraha
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Teaching and learning: philosophies,

principles and practices


 Teaching: a purposeful intervention with the aim of
promoting, facilitating and causing learning

 Learning: a process by which change occurs through


development or advancement of mental, physical and
emotional abilities

 Teaching and learning have remained largely fragmented activities until


relatively recently
 New interventions emphasising the interdisciplinarity of t & l have led to
schools of thought which are amalgams of psychology, sociology, science,
philosophy and para-educational areas, such as counselling, politics etc.
 Perhaps the most important development is the development of new
research approaches and techniques and the ways in which these are
converging to uncover the complexities of t & l.
Examples of new work in t & l

 Problem solving, knowledge organisation and performance-


competency research from cognitive psychology
 The advancement of early learning abilities which make innovative
and demanding curricula more possible
 The centrality of cultural and social norms to affect the content and
transferability of learning at work and in communities
 Theories as to the ‘wisdom’ aspects of knowledge and how these
might contribute to successful application of learning
 Comprehension of the learning enhancement and recognition of
difference that technology might provide
Trends in teaching and learning

 In the early part of this century, education focused on the


acquisition of literacy skills: reading, writing and calculation
 Education was also based on the ‘deficit’ model of memory and
instruction
 The notions of oracy, voice, critical thinking, persuasion and
problem solving-ness were alien to most people’s experience
 Arguably, there has been a wholesale change: the flexibility of jobs,
the inflated requirements of work, the need for participation in
democracies, has created a new meaning for education
 Further, the sheer colossus which is modern knowledge and
understanding, renders a deficit model defunct: what is needed
now are tools for understanding, interrogation, insight, application
and transfer.
Ideas about teaching and learning

 First, it is quite a new idea that the way in which learning occurs
and about who is capable of learning and what and when, can
powerfully affect people’s lives

 Over this last century, there have been many arguments about the
location of the learning environment; the purpose of a learning
environment to begin with; the role of the teacher in causing
learning; the type of learning which is (or is not) valued

 Recent learning research suggests that we can all enhance our


learning in some way, if we recognise the fact that learning and
teaching can happen in diverse and sometimes unexpected ways.
Principles in the evolving disciplines of
teaching and learning

 Watson (1913): behaviourism is merely another word for the ‘soul’


of more ancient times…..

 Based on the empiricist tradition, behaviourists believed that


learning was a connection making process of stimulus and
response, and rewards stimulated the production of connections, to
reinforce the ‘correct’ response. In this model, learning could be
explained without reference to thinking at all

 In the late 1950s, cognitive science emerged as a major force in


explaining learning, and with it, the growth of complex models of
learning, theorised by Bruner, Lave and Wenger among others.
The inexorable rise of teaching and
learning for understanding

 A major tenet of all new learning theories and models is the notion
of understanding:

 This can be understood in many ways: with the teacher as an


‘empowerer’; with the learner as a ‘conduit’; with the teacher and
learning interaction as the ‘transformation and discovery team’…

 But that is not to say that ‘new learning’ discounts facts: expertise
and therefore true understanding is a synthesis of knowledge,
usability, applicability, transfer and insight - above all, it is about
ways of ‘knowing’.
Knowledge and knowing

 Prior knowledge: the importance of knowing in a lived and believed


sense

 Intuitive knowledge: the importance of knowing in an observed and


folk sense

 Active knowledge: the importance of knowing in your own words


and meanings rather than in terms of someone else’s

 What is common to all these concepts however, is the idea of


sense-making, and consequently, how one is changed as a result of
having made sense of something.
An example of expert knowing

 Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that


are not noticed by novices
 Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is
organized in ways that reflect a deep understanding of their subject
matter
 Experts’ knowledge cannot be reduced to a set of isolated facts or
propositions, but instead reflects contexts of applicability: that is,
the knowledge is ‘conditionalised’ on a set of circumstances
 Experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their
knowledge with little attention to effort
 Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not
guarantee that they are able to teach others
 Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approach to new
situations.
De Groot (1965)
 Increasing experience and exposure to complexity, can lead to
abstraction being replaced by perception
 Problems thus become issues of perception rather than problems in
their own right
 As a result, knowing is a matter of subjective seeing and sense-
making rather than inherent qualities of the object

 For the expert, learning becomes a synthesis of the declarative


(what) intuiting with the procedural (how) and illuminated by the
reflective (why) but tempered by the conditional (when)
 The growing awareness of this model of what we could be if we
learned from expert knowledge and skill representation, has led to
a more accommodating view of not just learning, but also,
teaching, and the curriculum……….
Towards a typology of educational,
teaching and learning purposes

 Humanism: liberation, autonomy, emotional growth (Hirsch, Adler,


Rogers)

 Social Reconstructionism: society, world purposes, issues (Vygotsky,


Freire, Giroux)

 Technicism: skills, work, wealth creation (Dewey, Piaget, Holt)

 Academicism: knowledge, inquiry, logic (Socrates, Jenkins, Keefe)

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