Learning Revolution

Enlightened. This is the best word to describe how I felt after watching the Bring on the Learning Revolution and RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us videos for this week. Both videos helped confirm just how necessary our innovation plans are in comparison to what we currently practice in many of our educational institutions.

I must admit, I am definitely guilty of subscribing to the industrial style, fast food model of education rather than a more organic, agricultural style where customization and personalization form the basic ideology (Ted, 2010) for most of my career. This is mainly because the emphasis on standardized testing has caused my current district to emphasize teaching in this manner. I have also been guilty in the past of using incentives as a way of motivating students to perform better (RSA, 2010). As a career elementary school teacher, incentives and positive reinforcements have always been ingrained as ways to motivate students to “do what we want them to do”. Therefore, when incentives failed to increase student performance, I was confused and stopped using this method altogether. After viewing RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, however, it now makes sense why those incentives did not work. As long as tasks are mechanical (i.e. behavior), incentives positively affect performance. However, once tasks move into the cognitive arena, higher incentives do not positively affect performance (RSA, 2010). Therefore, in my flipped classroom with a project-based learning environment, I think my incentives will be more effective when used towards problem-solving behaviors exhibited by students as they work on their projects.

So, how do these messages in the videos influence my learning philosophy? Well, they have helped me gain clarity on what my actual learning philosophy entails. This agreement with many of the points made in the videos along with my flipped classroom with project-based learning innovation plan have helped me realize that my learning philosophy is a mix of elements from the behaviorist, humanist, and constructivist theories. The behaviorist element comes from my belief that students need to learn how to learn in order to be successful. This includes showing students how to use resources effectively, how to locate different resources in the classroom, etc. and encouraging these behaviors via incentives as mentioned earlier. If students don’t have any ideas of a starting point, how will they know where to go? The humanist element is included due to my belief that students need to engage in learning that is self-directed and meaningful in order to be successful. From my experience, students have been the most excited about learning when they are able to choose. With my flipped classroom with project-based learning plan students will be allowed to choose how they would like to explore and present their learning for the concept taught that week. Finally, the constructivist element of my learning comes from my belief that, as the old saying goes, “experience is the best teacher”. Throughout my years of teaching, students have been the most excited, engaged, and understood the most when they completed projects. This is largely why I decided to incorporate a project-based learning component with my flipped classroom. Project-based learning allows students to experience the autonomy, mastery, and purpose (RAS, 2010) necessary to perform better.

By incorporating these behaviorist, humanist, and constructivist theories into my learning philosophy, I believe I will be able to transform the learning environment into one that creates the circumstances under which students diversity of talents, needs, and aptitudes can be explored so they can flourish (Ted, 2010).

REFERENCES:

RSA. (2010, April 24). RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=youtu.be

TED. (2010, May 24). Bring on the learning revolution!

[Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I&feature=youtu.be

Theories_History of Learning Theories. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://kb.edu.hku.hk/learning_theory_history/