My Learning Philosophy
Allison Parsons
Lamar University
Abstract
The following will present and evaluate what it means to be a learner in this every changing technologically advanced age. A new outlook on learning and, by extension teaching, must be assessed on its effectiveness both in the classroom and in society in general. Social media, global internet capabilities and ease of information sharing has created a new style of learning as opposed to the standard delivery of information within the confines of the classroom. It will be argued that teaching must adapt in order to stay ahead or at the least on pace with this new style of learning.
Keywords: Technology, learning philosophy, Constructivism
My Learning Philosophy
Gone are the days of the “Sage on the stage”. The stage has been uprooted from a permanent position in the classroom to a digital stage and as such the accomplished educators have transformed into the “Guide on the side.” As we look at a personal learning philosophy it is imperative to examine the end goal of one’s learning. What do I want to achieve as a learner and what purpose is driving me into my role of a learner? How do I learn best? Lastly, What style of education facilitator best suits my needs as a learner?
Personal Beliefs of Learning
Although our age continues to increase as time passes, there are moments in life we revert to infancy as we learn new information. I look at my life as an example of change. Much like an infant I observed, tested and applied new information to build knowledge. Research has compared infant learning to that of a dancer learning a new complex dance move. It is stated, “when the dancers watch other people perform dance moves, their brains react more to dance moves that they can do themselves, compared with the moves they cannot do. (Calvo-Merino, B., Grezes, J. et. all). It is my belief the brain reacts more to actions they can perform because of background knowledge and the connection the brain makes with memories of familiar activity. This is much like a person learning new information. As we set out to learn new information, we start out as an infant with little to no familiarity. We wobble as we stand uneasy in our ability to take a step, and as we attempt to walk we fall multiple times. However, eventually our legs gain strength and we take our first step in our new adventure. One step leads to another and then another until we begin to balance and stabilize as we walk and eventually run. Immigrating to the United States and working through my masters are two examples of starting out as an infant and gaining strength as time went on.
Immigrating to the United States.
Stepping off the plane in Washington D.C., as a green card holder, brought a feeling of excitement mixed with a feeling of uncertainty. The later took many years to overcome and exemplifies my general belief about learning. The language issue was greater than I expected. Living in West Virginia, the accent was so strong and I felt as if I would never be able to understand anyone. Every aspect of life was difficult at the time. Communication was difficult that I began to shut myself into my home with my 1 year old so that I didn’t have to talk to anyone. However, slowly I took chances. One of my first attempts of communicating was going to a McDonald’s drive thru to order a coffee. When I pulled up to pick up my coffee I asked for sugar, but the worker could not understand what I was asking for. After what felt like an eternity of trying I received a spoon and decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation and accepted a sugarless coffee with a spoon and went back home defeated. There was another instance where I decided to go get my hair done. I walked in and they beautician stated they were about to close, but I didn’t understand what she said and I sat down in the chair. With a chuckle, she giggled at me and said sorry we are closing. That giggle hurt me tremendously. I tell these stories to say that difficult experiences bring growth and desire to learn. In the book, If You Only Knew, Francis summarizes, “I have learned to embrace the pain of those experiences, and I have learned to see suffering as a series of stepping stones to something higher rather than something that makes me someone to be pitied.” (Francis, p. 153) As I learned and as I took each step on those stones I grew from doing. I learned to listen to that accent and understand it. I learned to speak the “American way”. I learned through practice. Now I don’t just walk timidly through my life in the United States, instead I march proudly every day.
Going for my masters.
Late in 2022, I decided it was time to get a masters degree. I was confident in my abilities and knew I was ready to achieve my goal of gaining my masters. Once again, I began like an infant learning to walk. My first semester was more difficult than I would like to admit. I fell down multiple times and wanted to give up. Maybe it wasn’t my time, maybe I wasn’t ready. I wrote a paper and it was not even close to good enough. My professor would send it back with needed corrections time and time again. I rewrote papers multiple times, but unlike myself my professor was not going to let me fail. She pushed me to keep going. I eventually figured out how to “school” in the United States. I would say I am now stable on my feet, cautiously taking my first few steps.
As I reflect on my life and my two major changes, I find myself looking on how I learned when I moved to the United States and how I am learning attempted to gain a masters. I have realized, I learn through doing. I learn by going out of my comfort zone, opening the door of potential and stepping into the world and taking it on. I have learned by failing. I have learned to overcome that failure and turn it into growth. I learned to be a business owner and use the skills I have gained to better my life. I learn through fighting.
Relationship between teaching and learning
One cannot teach if no one is willing to learn, and one cannot learn if there is no one to teach. Both learning and teaching should be a team effort, where no one person is more important than the other. As I think about the relationship between teaching and learning, I am reminded of Nancy Motley’s new book, Small Moves Big Gains. In the book, Motley explains that a teacher is not the one who should be speaking, but instead a facilitator to create discussion in her students. “Speaking effectively in an academic setting is more critical than ever before as our world is becoming more interconnected.” (Motley, p. 22) When students talk and interact with each, the learning is organic. Thus, learning falls on the student to interact with the material and take ownership with the material, whereas the teacher is charged with facilitating the opportunity to interact. The teacher, or as Dr. Harapnuik states facilitator, is the one to keep the learning going in the classroom. As technology has developed into what it is today, one can learn at anytime from anywhere. The learner can thereby take ownership of their learning and decide the importance of the information presented. Gone are the days of sit and listen to me, for what I say is gospel in this classroom. Ideas are being challenged and discussions are being created. It is my belief that the teacher is responsible to create positive discourse in the classroom. The facilitator needs to create a sense of excitement in the learner to want to hear differing ideas and learn new things. Today, the learner and teacher should work together to build knowledge where one individual is no more important to the relationship than the other.
The Constructivism Approach.
“Education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active constructive process.” (Dewey). As one learns a new idea, it is essential to connect the new theory to that of a previous experience. This previous experience, or background knowledge, creates the foundation to learn new material. In the study conducted by Gulcehre and Bengio, they studied the effects of introducing prior knowledge to students prior to introducing new material. The study found, “a toy task which seems quite difficult to solve by standard black-box machine learning algorithms, but can be solved almost perfectly when one encourages a particular semantics on the intermediate-level representation which is guided by prior knowledge about the task.” (Gulcehre & Bengio, p. 20). As technical as this study is, the conclusion states, that prior knowledge takes a difficult task much more manageable through the introduction of prior knowledge. Much like my personal life, I believe people learn through doing and as one is learning they are making connections to prior experiences. This learning approach was most famously formalized by John Dewey when he theorized “educators need to provide students with experiences that are immediately valuable and better enable them to contribute to society. (University College Dublin, n.d.). Following Dewey, Jean Piaget states children cannot undertake tasks in which they are not mature enough. There is a need for the child to have more life experiences before they can take on harder tasks. Believing that knowledge is needed to learn, it stands to reason in order for true learning to occur one needs to experience or connect with someone who experienced a similar event. Taking this one step further, in today’s world, one can easily access information through multiple mediums. Due to this fact, today’s technology allows for a quick transfer of information where people can be exposed to prior knowledge in a rapid manner. Therefore, the potential for a massive learning epiphany is upon us, if and only if we utilize the information available in the proper manner and the student and facilitator learn to work through the information properly.
References
Calvo-Merino, B., Grèzes, J., Glaser, D. E., Passingham, R. E., & Haggard, P. (2006). Seeing or doing? influence of visual and motor familiarity in action observation. Current Biology, 16(22), 2277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2006.10.065
Education theory/constructivism and social constructivism – UCD – UCDOER. (n.d.). Retrieved February 6, 2023, from http://www.ucdoer.ie/index.php/education_theory/constructivism_and_social_constructivism
Francis, E. (2022). In If you only knew letters from an immigration teacher (pp. 153–153). essay, Seidlitz Education.
Journal of Machine Learning Research. (n.d.). Retrieved February 6, 2023, from https://jmlr.org/papers/volume17/gulchere16a/gulchere16a.pdf
Motley, N. (2022). Chapter 2/ Target the Talk. In Small Moves Big Gains Teacher habits that help kids to talk more think more achieve more (pp. 22–22). essay, Seidlitz Education.