Learning Theories for Teachers

1
Learning Theories for Teachers

• Morris B. Bigge Samuel Shermis
• Chapter 9
• What is the Cognitive Field Interactionist theory
  of Learning?

2
Introduction

• Cognitive-field interactionist learning theory
  has emerged as a current synthesis whose basic
  paradigm or model, life space, centers upon each
  persons interaction with ones contemporaneous
  psychological environment.
• Kurt Lewin produced the root ideas of
  cognitive-field psychology.

3
What is the Purpose of Cognitive-Field
Interactionist Learning Theory?

• Formulate test relationships that are predictive
  of the psychological behaviors of individual
  persons in their specific life spaces or
  psychological situations.
• Learning is a process within which a person
  attains new insights or cognitive structures or
  changes old ones.
• Insights are senses of, or feelings for, patterns
  or relationships in a persons life situations

4
What is the Purpose of Cognitive-Field
Interactionist Learning Theory? Cont.

• Learning is the development of insights into the
  nature of that persons world as represented by
  the model-life space.
• Describes how a person gains understanding of
  oneself and ones universe in a situation so
  construed that both the person and the persons
  psychological environment compose a totality of
  mutually interdependent, coexisting factors.

5
What are Insights?

• Basic senses of, or feelings for, relationships
  they are meanings or discernments.
• A persons insights collectively constitute the
  cognitive structure of that persons life space.
• Cognitive structure means that persons
  perception of the psychological aspects of the
  personal, physical, and social world, which
  includes the person and all of the persons
  facts, concepts, beliefs, memory, traces, and
  expectations.

6
What are the Sources of Cognitive-Field
Interactionist Learning Theory?

• Kurt Lewin, John Dewey, Edward C. Toleman, Boyd
  H. Bode, Danald Snygg, Ernest E. Bayles, Maurice
  P. Hunt, and Albert Bandura
• Theory is derived from cognitive and field
  psychological theories
• Cognitive means to know
• Field consists of the simultaneous concurrent
  interrelationships of a person and that persons
  psychological environment in any one situation

7
How Does Cognitive-Field Interactionist Learning
Theory Differ from the Stimulus-Response
Conditioning Theories?

• Emphasize psychological functions
• View intelligent behavior as purposive
• The focus upon contemporaneous situations
• View interactions of persons and their
  environments as being simultaneous and mutual,
  not alternating
• Represent a relativistic-interactional approach
  to understanding perception

8
Why the Emphasis Upon Purposiveness of
Intelligent Behavior

• Each person, at ones level of development, does
  the best that one knows how for whatever one
  thinks he is
• A normal process of development produces
  self-involvement with objects, people, groups,
  and social organizations in a physical and social
  environment

9
Why do Cognitive-Field Interactionists View
Intelligence Behaviors as Being Purposive?

• The purposivism of the cognitive-field
  interactionists theory means that a person
  operates within, not beyond, the world of ones
  experience, which prevails in workaday life
  situations.
• Interactionists emphasize situational choice.

10
Why the Focus upon Contemporaneous Situations?

• Cognitive-field psychology studies the presents
  of persons in order to apprehend their presents
  and thereby predict their futures.
• Situational Emphasis a study always begins with
  a description of a current situation as whole
• Principle of Contemporaneity everything
  psychological that is occurring in relation to a
  specific person at a given time.

11
Why a relativistic-interactional approach to an
understand of perception?

• Relativistic vs. Mechanistic
• Relativists counter that when a person perceives
  ones world, one does not develop a photographic
  image of exactly what is out there.
• A person views, selects, simplifies, compares,
  completes, combins and places into context the
  objects of ones experience.

12
Behavioristic Linear Alternating Reaction

• Linear Alternating Reaction begins with a
  reaction of a person or organism to a stimulus.
• When one receives a stimulus, one responds in
  accordance with both the innate and the
  conditioned behaviors that are called into play.
• When one reacts, one is likely to change ones
  physical or social environment in some way

13
Cognitive-Field Simultaneous Mutual
Interaction-SMI

• Interaction refers to a relationship between a
  person and ones psychological environment.
• Psychological behavior may be
• An overt purposive act
• An attitudinal shift
• A change in the perceived value of an object or
  activity
• A new relationship being established between two
  or more events.

14
Cognitive-Field Simultaneous Mutual
Interaction-SMI, cont.,

• The psychological concept person is much broader
  than the biological concepept organism
• SMI - A simultaneous mutual relation of a person
  and a persons psychological environment.

15
Cognitive-Field Simultaneous Mutual Interaction -
SMI, cont.,

• Perception is a cognitive experimental process
  within which a person simultaneously reaches out
  to ones environment, encounters some aspects of
  it, brings those aspects into relationship with
  oneself, makes something of those aspects, acts
  in relation to what one makes of them, and
  realizes the consequences of the entire process.

16
Experience An Insightful Process

• Experience is a psychological event that involves
  a person acting purposefully with anticipation of
  the probable or possible consequences of such
  action.

17
How do Cognitive-Field Interactionists Apply the
Life Space Concept to Teaching-Learning
Situations?

• Teachers us life space to describe various
  situations that people find themselves in and
  peoples tendencies to behave in certain ways
  because of how they size up matters.
• With-in a situation-life space-a person engages
  in those motor, verbal, and ideational activities
  that point toward either continuation or
  reestablishment of equilibrium through a
  moderation or blance of tension.

18
What Psychological Processes Characterize Ones
Life spaces?

• Four Concurrent Psychological Process
• Interaction, within each life space, of a person
  and that persons psychological environment
• Continuity of succeeding life spaces
• Differentiation in the persons perspective
• Changes in the concrete-imaginative levels of
  reality

19
What Does Interaction within Each Life Space Mean?

• Ones person consists of what ones makes of
  oneself, and ones psychological environment
  consists of what one makes of that which seems to
  surround one.

20
What does Continuity of Succeeding Life Spaces
Mean?

• Each life space covers only a limited expanse of
  time, an individual lives through a continuous
  series of overlapping life spaces that have much
  in common but seldom are identical.

21
What is Differentiation in a Persons Time
Perspective?

• Everyone lives in the present a person cannot
  really live in either the physical past or
  future.
• The past is past-present, the future is
  future-present, and the present is
  present-present.
• The past-present consists of memories and the
  future-present consists of what we ordinarily
  call anticipations or expectations.

22
What are changes in concrete-imaginative levels
of reality?

• When a child grows older, the child tends to make
  an even sharper distinction between concrete and
  imaginative reality.
• Adults generally are better able to distinguish
  imaginative processes from concrete experiences.

23
Who are concrete-imaginative levels related to
time dimensions of life space?

• Two salient characteristics of life space at any
  given time
• The level of concrete-imaginative reality at
  which the person is operating
• The degree to which the individuals life space
  encompasses a psychological past and future

24
For Cognitive-Field Interactionists, What is
Learning?

• Learning is a process within which a person
  attains new insights or cognitive structures or
  changes old ones
• Ones learning is a process of cognitively
  reconstruction, reorganizing, and enhancing one
  life space.
• Insights are defined a a basic sense of or
  feeling for relationships.

25
How is Learning a Change in Insights or Cognitive
Structures?

• Learning is a dynamic process whereby through
  interactive experience, insights or cognitive
  structures of life spaces are changed so as to
  become more serviceable for future guidance.
• Changes in cognitive structures includes changes
  in perceptual knowledge, motivation, group
  belongingness and ideology.
• Changes in perceptual knowledge are focused upon
  the topological or structural aspects of a
  situation, changes in motivation are focused upon
  its vectorial or dynamic aspects.

26
How may the Cognitive Structures of Life Spaces
Change?

• A person changes the cognitive structure of ones
  life space through perceptual differential,
  cognitive generalization, and cognitive
  restructurization of its respective regions or
  aspects.

27
What is Cognitive or Perceptual Differentiation?

• Cognitive differentiation is the process within
  which regions of a life space are subdivided into
  smaller regions
• Differentiation means discerning more and more
  specific aspects of ones environment an oneself
• Differentiation proceeds at different rates at
  different times, and during crisis periods, such
  as adolescence, its speed rapidly fluctuates.

28
What is Cognitive or Perceptual
Differentiation? Cont.,

• As a person grows, that person differentiates
• A self or person from the persons environment
• Different aspects of ones person and environment
  from one another
• A psychological past and future from the
  psychological present
• Imaginative reality levels from the concrete
  reality level of the persons life spaces.

29
What is Cognitive Generalization?

• Cognitive generalization is a process whereby one
  formulates a generalized idea or concept through
  discerning some common characteristics of a
  number of individual cases and identifying the
  cases as a class or ideas or objects.

30
What is Cognitive Restructurization?

• Cognitive restructurization of a persons life
  space means that persons making more or
  different sense of oneself and ones world.
• Within the process of restructurization, a person
  defines and redefines direction in ones life
  space the person learns what actions will lead
  to what result

31
How is Intelligence Related to Learning?

• Intelligence is defined as the ability to respond
  in present situations on the basis of cogent
  anticipation of possible consequences and with a
  view to controlling those consequences that
  ensue.
• Leaning is the enhancement of ones intelligence.

32
How does Intelligent Behavior Differ from
Nonintelligent Behavior

• An intelligent behaving person is one who acts as
  if he or she is pursuing a purpose and has some
  foresights as to how it is to be achieved.
• Nonintelligent behavior arises when a person is
  pushed or pulled about as an inert, nonliving
  object.

33
What is Habit?

• Habit is fluid, effective action arising through
  a person operating on the basis of the insights
  that one possesses.
• Habit is goal-related
• Habit enables one to behave intelligently without
  thinking.

34
What is the Meaning of Cognitive-Field Psychology
for Teaching Learning Situations?

• To understand the behavior of a student, a
  teacher must determine the psychological position
  of the students person in reference to the
  regions.
• Teachers should bear in mind that a self or
  person is in the making constantly as a student
  develops new insights changes old one, and forms
  new habits.

35
What is the Meaning of Cognitive-Field Psychology
for Teaching Learning Situations?

• Teachers who are committed to the application of
  cognitive-field psychology in their teaching may
  encourage students to memorize certain items that
  seem to be worth knowing verbatim, but they will
  strive to teach as much as possible on an
  exploratory-understanding level.