An elliptical introduction to learning theories for post-grad teacher-training students. Don't look here for factual content, but for orientation.

1. A Framework for Understanding Learning Perspectives PGCE Secondary 9 October 2009 James Atherton www.bedspce.org.uk/2dary

3. What do we need to learn this for? Rather than go on about what my aims and objectives are for a session (because that is teacher-speak, not learner-speak) I prefer to try to answer the question students actually ask

4. How to think like a teacher We are supposed to be covering “learning theories”, but we need to think about the status of that knowledge. Is it just “inert” stuff we know about, or is it something which informs thinking and practice? So I want to offer an orientation to those theories, which will help you to put them in context and use them as you acquire more knowledge about them

5. Some ideas are like “thresholds”—once you get them you can cross to a different level of understanding

6. The Tardis is a great illustration of what happens when you go through some conceptual doors; the space is bigger on the inside than on the outside

7. Health Warning!

8. Not “scientific” If you are a natural scientist or an engineer, you will be disappointed in learning theories. None of them have the predictive capacity you will have come to expect in a theory. Instead, they offer different perspectives which you might find useful. In that sense they are more like “myths”, as the anthropologists use the term. It is more important that they be useful than that they be true.

9. Fads and fashions Which of course makes them prone to influence and abuse, and to the whims of fashion.

11. “ NTL” model Practice by doing Discussion Demonstration Audio-visual Reading Lecture 75% 50% 30% 20% 10% 5% Teachback 90% Take this model which appears in practically every introductory text on learning. It is supposed to be about the proportion of material which can be recalled after being learned under certain conditions. It is attributed to “National Training Laboratories, of Bethel Maine” but even they don’t know where it came from, or what, if any empirical basis it has. But it does look plausible, doesn’t it?

15. Images of Teaching and Learning On other courses I frequently ask people to represent their images of the learning process, graphically. These are some which come up fairly frequently

19. Are empty vessels Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts. Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of child-hood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away. "Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, "I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?" (Dickens, 1854, ch 2) Learners are passive recipients of what authority chooses to fill them with, and have to be made malleable to be formed into whatever the industrial age demands

20. Are empty vessels Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts. Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of child-hood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away. "Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, "I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?" (Dickens, 1854, ch 2) No-one claims this “theory”. It’s just obvious. Innit?

21. Are black boxes ? According to behaviourist theory

34. Growing up Are children just little adults, who have not yet had time to acquire all the knowledge of a grown-up? Or do they think differently, so that learning needs to be tailored to their maturing capabilities?

35. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Piaget has been hugely influential in researching and explicating the latter view.

37. P’s main stages of development JSA Formal logic and abstract thought. Formal Operations 11+ More adult-like but abstract capacities limited Concrete Operations 7-11 Reasoning, but not using adult logic Intuitive 4-7 Using symbols Forming concepts Preoperational : Pre-conceptual 2-4 Sensory and motor experience Start language and symbolic thought (Schemata) Sensorimotor 0-2

38. Egocentrism 1 JSA Doll 1 Piaget & Inhelder (1956) What will Doll 2 see? (Can the child put himself into her position?) Doll 2 Child a b c.

39. Egocentrism 2 JSA Hughes (1975) Where can Teddy hide? Policeman 1 Policeman 2

40. Conservation of volume 1 JSA Which one has the most in it? 1 2 3

41. Conservation of number JSA

42. Do they still have the same amount (sic) or does one have more? JSA

43. Adaptation JSA A really critical and useful idea: read more about it on the linked web-page Assimilation Accommodation

44. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Piaget