Educational and Motivational Philosophies

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Educational and Motivational Philosophies

• Dr Elizabeth KleinDr. David Klein
• 10th Annual InHome Conference
• Chicago
• February 23 24, 2007

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Overview

• Behaviorism
• Piaget and human development
• The computer model
• Social learning
• Other learning ideas

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Behaviorism

• Change behavior
• Reward to reinforce the same behavior
• Punish to replace behavior
• Extinguish behavior
• No response and behavior goes away

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Public School

• Stars and stickers
• Praise
• Special privileges
• Grades

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Pitfalls

• External motivation
• Habituation loses effect over time
• Reward or punishment ambiguity

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Recommendations

• Reward
• Rewardable behavior should happen naturally
• Should be very specific and related to the
  behavior
• Reinforce, but reduce over time
• Use rarely
• Focus on rewards that center of relationships

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Recommendations

• Punishment
• Avoid if possible
• Should be very specific
• Always replace with desirable behavior
• Should be natural consequence
• Useful for embedded behaviors or ones that
  include their own reinforcement

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Recommendations

• Extinguishing
• The calculated ignore
• Be consistent intermittent reinforcement can be
  more powerful than consistent rewards
• Use distraction without addressing the behavior
• Useful for initial onset of behaviors, rather
  than embedded behaviors

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Piaget

• The Real Piaget
• Developmental
• Psychology

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Observation

• Descriptive, not prescriptive
• Age ranges-not specific
• Acknowledged the the natural order of stages

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Basic Stages-are orderly

• Sensory Motor
• Pre-Operational
• Concrete Operational
• Formal Operational
• Neo-Piagetians combine Piagets Stages with
  Cognitivism
• Stages are domain specific

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How we learn

• Equilibration
• Assimilation
• Accommodation

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What school does

• Narrows Stages
• Penalizes outliers/ creates disabilities
• Wrongly tries to enhance development

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What you can do

• Observe your child/ Children
• Respect individual development
• Support, not push
• Provide resources
• Be quick to support, slow to label
• Be patient, be very patient

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Information Processing

• Computer model
• Mental processes
• Receiving information
• Manipulating information
• Storing information by connecting information to
  prior knowledge
• Retrieving and using information

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Information Processing
Longterm Memory
Shortterm Memory

• Stored indefinitely
• Connects to existing memories
• Information chunked

• A few seconds
• 5 to 9 items
• Work space for thinking

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Cognitive Load

• Too much information to process at once
• Too much information coming in through the senses
• Too much information to be retrieved from
  longterm memory
• Processing of information too slow

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Public School

• Factory metaphor teacher disseminating
  information to students
• Drill practice (worksheets)
• Projects
• Group work
• Tests

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Pitfalls

• Usually doesnt include all the senses
• Information in discrete units not clear how it
  connects with prior experience
• Set curriculum doesnt ensure that students
  acquire all needed information
• Can leave gaps in learning
• Little accounting for cognitive load

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Recommendations

• Use sensory-rich learning environment
• Allow child to control pace
• Focus on connecting new knowledge and skills to
  prior learning
• Encourage mastery
• Promote recitation and other ways of retrieving
  information

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Social Learning Theories

• Dr Elizabeth Klein

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Bandura

• Relationships matter
• Interaction with others provides the majority of
  information about ourselves and our world
• Children learn within relationships
• Homeschooling is all about relationships

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Major ideas

• Observational learning modeling
• Learning is a social activity
• Takes place within relationships
• Allows us to develop
• Standards
• For performance
• Value judgments

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Contributing Factors

• Attention
• What is noticed parts of the situation the
  child pays attention to
• Retention
• How well it is remembered
• How many aspects the child can relate to

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Modeling

• Those behaviors we care about
• Of those we care about
• Learning to read
• If parent values and enjoys reading, child will
  too
• Think of an activity made exciting by the person
  who introduced you to it

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Factors that Affect Learning

• Size of reward or punishment
• Attention Retention
• Time from observation until practice

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What Public School Does

• Doesnt foster relationships between adults and
  children
• Forces children to use age mates as models
• Parents / family are not valued as models
• Tends to use paper and pencil rather than people

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You Suspected This All Along

• Homeschooling provides many opportunities for
  modeling behavior
• Model the behaviors and activities you want in
  your child
• If you want learners, be a learner
• If you want respect, be respectful

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What This Means to You

• Its okay not to know
• Find out together
• Its okay to be human
• Model full range of human emotions and own them
• Apologize when needed
• Ask for help when needed
• Its okay to provide alternative models
• You dont have to be all things to your child

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Vygotsky

• Cognitive development is limited to a certain
  range at any given age.
• Children cannot learn what they are not
  developmentally ready for
• Full cognitive development requires social
  interaction
• To get to the next level, your children need you

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Social Mediation Scaffolding

• What a child can do alone
• Scaffolding not needed
• What a child can do with help
• Zone of proximal development (ZOP)
• Where you want to be working with your child
• What the child cannot do even with help
• Scaffolding is irrelevant
• Frustration, demotivation

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What Public School Does

• Presents material above or below childs ZOP
• Pushes child by asking child to work above ZOP
• Bores child by giving work below ZOP
• Mistakes doing work for the child as scaffolding

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What This Means to You

• Be sensitive to childs frustration level
• Have child work below this level
• Provide child with help if she asks
• Watch for boredom and dont allow it to go on for
  very long
• Be sure child is correctly challenged
• Provide resources at the appropriate level
• Modify material to fit childs needs,
  development, and interests

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Other Learning Research

• Constructivism
• Situated cognition
• Communities of practice

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Constructivism

• Meaning is personal
• Student should direct learning process
• Exploration in a rich environment is ideal
• Meaning is constructed

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Situated Cognition

• Start with a complex, realistic context
• No predefined solution
• Possibly no predefined questions
• Encourage student to solve problems
• Discover possible questions to ask
• Explore possible solutions
• Try out multiple solutions

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Communities of Practice

• People who connect with each other to accomplish
  something
• Agree on rules
• Learner observes community in action
• Learner contributes to the community
• Cognitive apprenticeship