Setting Goals: How to get from where I am to where I want to be
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One of the first things I had to do as a brand new student of Korean language and culture was to set goals. What exactly did I want to learn how to do? How would I go about studying? What expectations could I set? Because I am a visual learner, I decided that the first thing I needed to do was to learn how to read and write Korean letters (called Han-geul). This would allow me to identify words on menus, on buildings, and very importantly, on buses and trains to get around in the city. This was a way of giving myself access to the language and culture in linguistic, culinary, and geographical terms!
Similarly, I found that one of my first goals in the MET program was to absorb as much information as I could. I read a great deal, and participated in discussions by observing the language, behaviour, and tone of my peers. I voiced opinions when I had them, but was careful not to be too contradictory, or to assert positions too strongly. I was working on identifying what it was I believed about education as a beginner in the MET program, and how that aligned with the theories and discussions that were swirling around me.
Similarly, I found that one of my first goals in the MET program was to absorb as much information as I could. I read a great deal, and participated in discussions by observing the language, behaviour, and tone of my peers. I voiced opinions when I had them, but was careful not to be too contradictory, or to assert positions too strongly. I was working on identifying what it was I believed about education as a beginner in the MET program, and how that aligned with the theories and discussions that were swirling around me.
Course Reflection - Applications of Learning Theories to Instruction
ETEC 512: Applications of Learning Theories to Instruction focused first on exploring the variety of learning theories being discussed currently in the field of education and researching and the relationships between them, and then to applying those ideas to how we approach instruction online and in the classroom. This course was one of the most useful I encountered in my MET career, for several reasons. First, as someone new to the field of education from an academic perspective, it provided an effective overview of traditional learning theories. During the first two modules, we evaluated Behaviourist theories of education, during which time I was able to develop an understanding of some of the foundations of education theory, and meet some of the founders - Watson, Skinner, Bandura, and Asubel. Subsequent modules explored the ideas of Cognitivists like Bruner, Piaget, and Vygotsky, before we delved into the Constructivism and Social Approaches to learning, where Vygotsky and Piaget were again featured prominently, but I was also intruduced to the influences of Edwin Hutchins (Distributed Cognitive Theory) and Brown, Collins, and Duguid (Situated Cognitive Theory), whose writings became an important foundation for me in future MET courses and writings.
Finally, the course reached a culminating point, where the ideas we had been focusing on began to merge with the rise of the Web, online learning, and blended learning approaches. Here Anderson, Scardamalia, and Kanuka offered insight on how education must shift (more rapidly) towards a learning theory which acknowledges and incorporates the World Wide Web, and leverages its power to connect people and spread knowledge.
Throughout this course, readings were supplemented by rousing discussions on the applicability of various theories to modern teaching contexts, thought questions concerning the relationships between different theories, continuously updating a learning theories concept map (below), and involvement in a group website-construction and presentation project, the culmination of extensive reading and discussion on, in the case of my group, Social Approaches to Learning.
Finally, the course reached a culminating point, where the ideas we had been focusing on began to merge with the rise of the Web, online learning, and blended learning approaches. Here Anderson, Scardamalia, and Kanuka offered insight on how education must shift (more rapidly) towards a learning theory which acknowledges and incorporates the World Wide Web, and leverages its power to connect people and spread knowledge.
Throughout this course, readings were supplemented by rousing discussions on the applicability of various theories to modern teaching contexts, thought questions concerning the relationships between different theories, continuously updating a learning theories concept map (below), and involvement in a group website-construction and presentation project, the culmination of extensive reading and discussion on, in the case of my group, Social Approaches to Learning.
Learning Artifact - ETEC 512 Personal Learning Theories
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Communicative intention: There are many elements involved in mapping a route to where you want to go - whether it is a geographical, professional, linguistic, or educational destination you have in mind, there are two questions which must be answered first: Where am I? and Where do I want to go? My personal learning theories, written in my first semester of the MET program, are instances of finding myself on the map; seeking to understand where I was and what I believed at that time about education and my role in it.
Vocabulary and grammar: This artifact has two parts: my Personal Learning Theory, written in the first weeks of ETEC 512, and my Personal Learning Theory Revisited, written as the final assignment in ETEC 512, designed as a way to demonstrate an evolving theoretical and practical perspective on theories of education and their application to real-world teaching. The vocabulary and grammar, in the case of these artifacts, are the theories themselves, and the language those theories employ.
Working Towards fluency: What is striking to me, as I re-read the personal learning theory I composed in the first weeks of the MET program, is that although some of my positions on education, technology, and particularly online learning have shifted over the past two years, many of the ideas I currently hold are already present in my personal learning theory, but inarticulately expressed, sketched out but unclear, in their infancy. What I see is that my practical experience as an educator had already begun to lead me towards a social approach to learning. I use the terminology of apprenticeship and community, but had not yet been exposed to the writings of Vygotsky (1978), Lave and Wenger (1991), Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989), and others who have profoundly influenced the ways I think about communication, learning, and knowledge itself.
In my Personal Learning Theory Revisited, written at the end of my first MET semester, I was able to express my beliefs about education in more concrete terms, to situate my ideas in relationship to educational theorists past and present, and, importantly, to make a clear distinction between a theory of teaching and a theory of learning.This very brief essay is a glimpse into my developing knowledge and ability to express my ideas on how learners learn, and just one moment in an ongoing process of becoming more fluent in the language of learning.
Vocabulary and grammar: This artifact has two parts: my Personal Learning Theory, written in the first weeks of ETEC 512, and my Personal Learning Theory Revisited, written as the final assignment in ETEC 512, designed as a way to demonstrate an evolving theoretical and practical perspective on theories of education and their application to real-world teaching. The vocabulary and grammar, in the case of these artifacts, are the theories themselves, and the language those theories employ.
Working Towards fluency: What is striking to me, as I re-read the personal learning theory I composed in the first weeks of the MET program, is that although some of my positions on education, technology, and particularly online learning have shifted over the past two years, many of the ideas I currently hold are already present in my personal learning theory, but inarticulately expressed, sketched out but unclear, in their infancy. What I see is that my practical experience as an educator had already begun to lead me towards a social approach to learning. I use the terminology of apprenticeship and community, but had not yet been exposed to the writings of Vygotsky (1978), Lave and Wenger (1991), Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989), and others who have profoundly influenced the ways I think about communication, learning, and knowledge itself.
In my Personal Learning Theory Revisited, written at the end of my first MET semester, I was able to express my beliefs about education in more concrete terms, to situate my ideas in relationship to educational theorists past and present, and, importantly, to make a clear distinction between a theory of teaching and a theory of learning.This very brief essay is a glimpse into my developing knowledge and ability to express my ideas on how learners learn, and just one moment in an ongoing process of becoming more fluent in the language of learning.
Learning Artifact - ETEC512 Learning Theories Concept Map
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Communicative intention: This map was created as a way to express, in one artifact, a broad range of significant learning theories, and identify their distinctive components and how they are differentiated from one another. This map was an ongoing project throughout a semester - as we studied and discussed individual theories and theorists, the main components of their ideas were added to the map.
Vocabulary and grammar: This was my first experience using concept mapping software. In this instance I used Cmap tools, a free program which allows users to generate concept maps (also called mind maps), which can be exported in a variety of formats. It was a challenge for me to get the hang of creating concept maps, but by the end of the semester when my map was nearing completion, I began to understand their value as a tool for representing knowledge visually.
Working towards fluency: The Learning Theories Concept Map is an example of how goal-setting leads to a cycle of action, reflection, and then additional goal-setting. This cycle has, throughout the MET program, helped me to accumulate a network of ideas evolving over time. The concept map here is just one manifestation of those ideas, which helped me to step back from the variety of theories being studied to understand which areas of study I wanted to focus on moving forward. For me, concept-mapping has become an increasingly valuable way for me to incorporate ideas into my own "idiosyncratic knowledge framework" (Novak, 1998). Mapping ideas helps me to see and understand the relationships between ideas and idea-makers; they not only help to organize information, but serve as cognitive artifacts, objects which can exist externally as a representation of knowledge which can be difficult to keep organized internally. Edwin Hutchins (2000) argued that the way we understand ideas and "know" something is not as simple as either having it in your brain or not. Rather, knowledge may be distributed, spread out among individual people in a social group or network, internally (in the mind) and externally (in objects and environments), and of across time. Concept-mapping, in my experience, is one valuable way to extend knowledge beyond the limitations of individual human memory.
Vocabulary and grammar: This was my first experience using concept mapping software. In this instance I used Cmap tools, a free program which allows users to generate concept maps (also called mind maps), which can be exported in a variety of formats. It was a challenge for me to get the hang of creating concept maps, but by the end of the semester when my map was nearing completion, I began to understand their value as a tool for representing knowledge visually.
Working towards fluency: The Learning Theories Concept Map is an example of how goal-setting leads to a cycle of action, reflection, and then additional goal-setting. This cycle has, throughout the MET program, helped me to accumulate a network of ideas evolving over time. The concept map here is just one manifestation of those ideas, which helped me to step back from the variety of theories being studied to understand which areas of study I wanted to focus on moving forward. For me, concept-mapping has become an increasingly valuable way for me to incorporate ideas into my own "idiosyncratic knowledge framework" (Novak, 1998). Mapping ideas helps me to see and understand the relationships between ideas and idea-makers; they not only help to organize information, but serve as cognitive artifacts, objects which can exist externally as a representation of knowledge which can be difficult to keep organized internally. Edwin Hutchins (2000) argued that the way we understand ideas and "know" something is not as simple as either having it in your brain or not. Rather, knowledge may be distributed, spread out among individual people in a social group or network, internally (in the mind) and externally (in objects and environments), and of across time. Concept-mapping, in my experience, is one valuable way to extend knowledge beyond the limitations of individual human memory.
Learning Artifact - ETEC 530 Paper: Constructivism in the EFL Classroom
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Communicative intention: Throughout the MET program, social learning theories, in particular Constructivism and Problem-based Learning (PBL) are examined and highlighted as productive 21st-century learning methods. Usually however, essays on Constructivism and PBL discuss them in the context of school subjects (math, science, writing, woodshop, etc.), and fail to connect these theories to their potential to improve the process of learning a language. As an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructor, it was important for me to understand how Constructivism related to my own context, working in an English-immersion Business degree program in South Korea.
Vocabulary and grammar: The first stage of exploring this topic was to search for recent writings on the connection between constructivism and language learning. This research element of my process was useful, but even more so was the careful examination of current instruction practices across courses in my teaching context, and the discovery that the status quo of EFL instruction in my context (and at all levels of education in South Korea, from my experience of teaching here for over 7 years) was sorely lacking in constructivist, socially-supported, situated learning experiences.
Working towards fluency:While there are some relevant peer-reviewed journals discussing this relationship, I found that the most important voices were much less recent - Lev Vygotsky spoke often and in detail about the relationship between speech and thought, finding them inextricably entwined with one another (1978). Likewise, Lave and Wenger (1991) saw learning as a social exercise, and memory as existing in its most robust form in the context of a social community (1991). Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) explain the interconnectedness of learning and activity, suggesting that all types of learning - including language acquisition - are tied to the context in which they occur. As EFL students unlikely to be placed in contexts with multiple-choice answers, breakdowns of grammar structure, or lists of vocabulary words juxtaposed against their opposites unless they are in a classroom or an examination, it stands to reason that a meaningful approach to EFL instruction would require considerably more hands-on, in-context, real-life language acquisition and application than is commonly employed in EFL classrooms today.
Vocabulary and grammar: The first stage of exploring this topic was to search for recent writings on the connection between constructivism and language learning. This research element of my process was useful, but even more so was the careful examination of current instruction practices across courses in my teaching context, and the discovery that the status quo of EFL instruction in my context (and at all levels of education in South Korea, from my experience of teaching here for over 7 years) was sorely lacking in constructivist, socially-supported, situated learning experiences.
Working towards fluency:While there are some relevant peer-reviewed journals discussing this relationship, I found that the most important voices were much less recent - Lev Vygotsky spoke often and in detail about the relationship between speech and thought, finding them inextricably entwined with one another (1978). Likewise, Lave and Wenger (1991) saw learning as a social exercise, and memory as existing in its most robust form in the context of a social community (1991). Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989) explain the interconnectedness of learning and activity, suggesting that all types of learning - including language acquisition - are tied to the context in which they occur. As EFL students unlikely to be placed in contexts with multiple-choice answers, breakdowns of grammar structure, or lists of vocabulary words juxtaposed against their opposites unless they are in a classroom or an examination, it stands to reason that a meaningful approach to EFL instruction would require considerably more hands-on, in-context, real-life language acquisition and application than is commonly employed in EFL classrooms today.
References
Anderson, T. (2008). “Towards and Theory of Online Learning.” In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning.
Bigge, M.L. & Shermis, S.S. (2004). Learning Theories for Teachers, 6th Ed. pp. 1-7. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989). Situated Cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18, 32-42
Driscoll. M.P. (2005). Psychology of Learning for Instruction . Toronto, ON: Pearson.
Hutchins, E. (2000). Distributed Cognition. Available online at:http://www.artmap-research.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Hutchins_DistributedCognition.pdf
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, P.H. (2002). Theories of Developmental Psychology, 4th Ed. (pp.367-396; Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Approach). New York: Worth
Novak, J. D. (1998). Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: Concept Maps as Facilitative Tools in Schools and Corporations (pp. 49-78; ch 5 – Ausubel’s Assimilation Learning Theory).
Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Scardamalia, M. (2004). CSILE/Knowledge Forum. Education and Technology: An Encyclopedia (pp. 183-192). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
Available online at: http://ikit.org/fulltext/CSILE_KF.pdf
Schunk, D.H. (2008). Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Bigge, M.L. & Shermis, S.S. (2004). Learning Theories for Teachers, 6th Ed. pp. 1-7. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989). Situated Cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18, 32-42
Driscoll. M.P. (2005). Psychology of Learning for Instruction . Toronto, ON: Pearson.
Hutchins, E. (2000). Distributed Cognition. Available online at:http://www.artmap-research.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Hutchins_DistributedCognition.pdf
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, P.H. (2002). Theories of Developmental Psychology, 4th Ed. (pp.367-396; Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Approach). New York: Worth
Novak, J. D. (1998). Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: Concept Maps as Facilitative Tools in Schools and Corporations (pp. 49-78; ch 5 – Ausubel’s Assimilation Learning Theory).
Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Scardamalia, M. (2004). CSILE/Knowledge Forum. Education and Technology: An Encyclopedia (pp. 183-192). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
Available online at: http://ikit.org/fulltext/CSILE_KF.pdf
Schunk, D.H. (2008). Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.