Understanding Learning Essay Research Paper Understanding myself

Understanding Learning Essay, Research Paper

Understanding myself as a learner.

On my journey to a better understanding of how learning theories have shown

themselves in my life, I realized that I have had more experience with them than I had first

thought. I don.t see myself as being changed dramatically by any one learning experience,

but I do realize that my desire to learn has increased as I have been introduced to a variety

of teaching methods. In short, I could not pick one theory that I could relate most of my

learning experiences to. Therefore, as I looked through our textbook, I tried to remember

if and how any of these theories played a role in my educational development so far.

As we have studied, most learning theories can be placed into one of two groups:

cognitive learning and association learning. .The cognitive learning view states that

learning is based on a restructuring of perceptions and thoughts occurring within the

organism. This restructuring allows us to perceive new relationships, solve new problems,

and gain understanding of a subject area. Cognitive learning theorists stress the

reorganization of one.s perceptions in order to achieve understanding.. (Sprinthall,

Sprinthall, and Oja; Educational Psychology- A developmental Approach 1998)

One of these cognitive-learning theorists is Wolfgang Kohler. Kohler performed

many experiments with chimps during World War I. Kohler constructed a variety of

problems for the chimps, each of which involved obtaining food that was not directly

accessible. In the simplest task, food was put on the other side of a barrier. Dogs and cats

in previous experiments had faced the barrier in order to reach the food, rather than

moving away from the goal to go around the barrier. The chimps, however, presented

with an apparently similar situation, set off immediately on the roundabout route to the

food.

Over the last few years my husband and I, for lack of anything better to do, have begun

playing video games. One of the first we started to play together was Tomb Raider. Tomb

Raider is an action/adventure game that only lets you progress to the next level once you

have successfully completed the current level. Some of levels are rather challenging and

my husband and I often found ourselves stuck in one problem that we could not solve to

go onto the next level. We would try and try to get past this obstacle, but just couldn.t

figure it out. One night, while watching TV, the solution just .came to me.. This is what is

known as the .a ha phenomenon..

Understanding the concept if transfer is also very important to getting to know

ourselves as learners. Transfer occurs when learning task A influences task B. When

learning task A helps us to learn task B, positive transfer has taken place. When learning

task A obstructs learning task B, negative transfer has occurred.

One experience I have had with positive transfer is that of learning to ride a motorcycle

after I had learned to ride a bicycle. When I was eleven years old we lived in a very rural

area and rather than take me to my best friends house, 5 miles away, they opted to get me

my own transportation. A motorcycle. The motorcycle was a step up from the bicycle I

had learned to ride a few years earlier, the difference being that I didn.t have to pedal. I

thought the difference was huge, but in all actuality it wasn.t. The main goal of learning

how to ride a motorcycle was balance, something I had already learned on my bicycle.

Once I applied the same concept of balance I had learned on my bicycle, it was much

easier to achieve success on the motorcycle.

I am currently experiencing the effects of negative transfer. I am working toward my

degree in Psychology and I thought, though not a very well thought out thought, that I

should take as many Psychology classes as possible. This is true in most cases, but I

decided to take 3 psychology classes in one term. Now that the proctored exam is coming

up, I find myself mixing up what I.ve learned in one Psychology class with something that

I.ve learned in another class. For example, while studying the social learning theory, I

found myself repeatedly trying to incorporate cognitive dissonance into the process.

Cognitive dissonance is something I had been studying in my Social psychology class.

Both of these concepts are important to psychology. However, they can not be readily

used my me until I really understand them and I can.t really understand them if I keep

trying to merge them.

Jerome Bruner.s main point in his constructivist theory is that learning is an active

process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current and

past learning experiences.

.The concept of prime numbers appears to be more readily grasped when the child,

through construction, discovers that certain handfuls of beans cannot be laid out in

completed row

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