For this week I chose to deepen my understanding of the different types or teaching and learning! Although I have heard about these methods before, it was very interesting to read into them with more depth and examples.. While reflecting on my own experiences is was neat to realize that I have experienced each method many times throughout my life and not only in an an academic classroom setting! Below I have shared a short description of each method and my past experience with each type:

What is the Behaviourism Method? This method is when the teacher uses reinforcement and gives feedback to students to influence their learning. With this method, teachers focus on figuring out which reinforcements are most helpful to their students.

The behaviourism method is one of the methods that I can see being used in classrooms all the time. Although it’s common in a school classroom, my example is from a past dance class. While doing a sport or skilled lesson, it is common that whoever is teaching you how and what to do will use the behaviourism method. With my example, my dance teacher would have us repeat our dance steps with guiding feedback until we were all able to perform the dance fluently.

What is the Cognitivism Method? This method is when the teacher works with the learner to help them find and use the right learning strategies. These teachers help their students make connections to their prior understandings. With this approach, information is made meaningful and the learner starts to organize their learnings with their past understandings.

In my experience, there have been many times that teachers have used a cognitivism method in their teachings. An example I can remember is learning mnemonics to help spell words. For example, when I was younger I learned how to spell “because” the phrase I learned was, “Big Elephants Can Always Use Small Elephants”. This mnemonic has always stuck with me. I catch myself still saying the words while spelling the word just out of habit! This past teaching method is what influenced me to use this learning strategy with other words or concepts. Another example everyone seems to be familiar with is ROYGBIV for the colours of the rainbow!

What is the Constructivism Method? This method is when teachers believe that learners make their own meaning and interpretations through their individual experiences and interactions. This method of teaching would need someone to actively participate in their learning by trying something in a real-world context.

I believe that the constructivism method gets used more in classrooms now than it used to. An example I can think of from my past experience was last semester when I took another EDCI technology course. At the beginning of the semester we got to choose a topic or idea that we found interesting and create weekly blog posts about it, reflecting on our progress of understanding or learning about our free inquiry topic. For my free inquiry, I chose hiking. I would go on at least one hike a week and then reflect on the different aspects of that hike. This project was a great opportunity to encourage me to get outdoors and take the time to adventure throughout the island. Although I am definitely a student who prefers structure and well laid out assignments/ marking rubrics, this free inquiry projected helped me participate in my own learning in a real world context.

After reflecting on these readings, I now have a deeper understanding of each method. It was fun to find examples in my own life that fit into each of these methods and I am sure I will start recognizing these throughout my future of classroom teaching!

For those of you who would prefer to listen to a video instead of reading about each method, I have provided one below: