When it comes down to it, how to best teach our students is a simple yet extremely complex and difficult question to answer. It is difficult to suss out who and what to believe when it comes to best educational practices but it is vastly important to do so (Willingham, 2012). This is why I tend to model my teaching mainly around two learning theories - constructivism and sociocultural learning.
When I think about how I learn best I tend to fit into these two learning theory categories pretty well and I have modeled my teaching style around those. During my high school and undergraduate years I would always try to work in groups with classmates I felt that were more knowledgeable than me and learning from that more knowledgeable other was extremely helpful - not only content-wise but how they learned or studied or prepared themselves for classes. And then within those groups I could bring my ideas and work them out with my peers while they provided suggestions, improvements, or new perspectives I hadn’t considered. I found that I did this with sports as well - I always pushed myself to be surrounded by people more talented than me so that I could learn from them which I feel almost perfectly blends these two learning theories.
In my classroom I try to build a community of learners by prepping my students the first week of school on how to work collaboratively and effectively in a group. We watch videos and work through activities that I have picked from Jo Boaler’s website Youcubed.org and do the 100 numbers to get students talking activity to discuss what makes efficient and effective group members. Then whenever we start a new topic I have students randomly assigned to new groups and we always start with a discovery activity that has students push their Zone of Proximal development through collaboration with their new group members.
It is also important for me to keep in mind that just because I learn through collaboration and experiences really well my students may learn other ways better. Trying to work other types of learning styles into my everyday activities is important not only to reach all learners, but to keep each lesson interesting and fresh for me and my students.
Resources:
Misura, M. July 22, 2022. Learning Theory. [Image]. Willingham, D. T. (2012). When can you trust the experts?: How to tell good science from bad in education. John Wiley & Sons.
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AuthorMarissa McGregor, high school math teacher extraordinaire. I love my husband, daughter, and family dearly. Archives
August 2022
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