Learning is difficult because one must navigate through the unknown, through territories not before considered. Furthermore, learning is, in a way, changing one’s mind about something. Therefore, learning takes hard work and consistency. Everyone is motivated to learn different things. But the general reasons people are motivated to learn are these: the need/want to solve a problem; the feeling that the thing one learns one will be good at, or excel in; and lastly, just sheer curiosity. Learning theory can improve one’s learning in ways that expedite the matter, make it easier and quicker. For example, learning theory enables one to best navigate learning based upon their experience and interaction with the world.
One idea I disagreed with was this: “everybody has misconceptions about the world.” I feel that that is a blanket and generalized statement that varies based upon individual experience. Some people have less than others; some people have none. I think the one concept that was the most difficult to understand was confirmation bias. For example, if my friend and I buy the same stock at the same time, I think is bullish and my friend think is bearish, we can find a lot of bullish or bearish evidence and information to support our views. Even for the same piece of information about the stock, we can come to opposite interpretations. Every time I encounter this kind of situation, I don’t know how to communicate with each other. By studying psychology, I will try to think about each other’s ideas and try to overcome my psychology. I think my current method of learning is a cognitivist approach. Most of the things I do now such as read, write, and economics. I used methods such as finding connections between ideas, justifying my ways of thinking, understanding how I thought, and using those thoughts in other thought experiments and exercises. All these examples have helped me tremendously in learning.Â
References
Artimer, P.A., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective.Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.
Madland, C. (2021a, May 5). Learning theories. University of Victoria Educational Technology. https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/learning-theories/
Madland, C. (2021b, May 5). Motivation and learning. University of Victoria Educational Technology. https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/motivation/
Madland, C. (2021c, May 5). Why is learning hard? University of Victoria Educational Technology. https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/why-is-learning-hard/
Muller, D. [Veritasium]. (2011, Mar 17). Khan Academy and the effectiveness of science videos. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8
SmarterEveryDay. (2015, Apr 24). The backwards brain bicycle – Smarter Every Day 133. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
Comment
It is a good blog. Now the Internet is very convenient we can learn a lot of shooting skills through video. That’s one way to learn. I also think learning is difficult. The new things we receive every day may break our imagination of it, so we have to keep forgetting the old impression and learn new knowledge. Finally, behaviourism is to pay attention to external behaviour and improve learning efficiency; Cognitive behaviour is concerned with the behaviour or emotional response of receiving external information. So I like your example of teachers and students.
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