IP&T 301: Personal Learning Theory

I believe that in order for learning to take place, one of the most important things that must be present is a desire to learn. When there is a genuine desire to learn a new skill, the learner is then much more likely to put effort into the learning process and will take more meaning away from the experiences he or she has during learning. This desire may come from necessity of possessing a certain skill, or it may also come from simply wanting to know certain skills, knowledge, or other information. One scenario which often induces the development of new knowledge or skills is problem-based learning. In this type of learning, the learner encounters or is presented with a problem. The learner then learns through the process of figuring out a solution to the given problem.

In my experience, one of the most effective ways of learning something new is through interaction with a more knowledgeable other. This person knows more about the topic or skill to be learned, so he or she is able to use modeling to demonstrate to the learner what it is that the learner is learning. Throughout the learning process, the more knowledgeable other can scaffold the learner by guiding the student’s thinking, giving encouragement, and helping the learner to be able to do more with help than he or she would have been able to do without this assistance. I believe that this scaffolding is extremely effective because it helps learners to develop a deeper understanding and gain confidence in their abilities to learn the new task.

I have found that in the earlier years of a person’s life, there is more of a focus on learning through stimuli and responses to these stimuli. As children first begin moving body parts and manipulating objects around them, such as toys, blankets, etc., these children learn that when they move their fingers (stimulus), they can cause objects to move in certain ways (response). Also, children learn through experience that when they cry (stimulus), this will generally cause a parent to come to their assistance and meet their needs or give them the attention they desire (response). Another example of this includes the methods used by many teachers and parents to help children learn what behaviors are acceptable and desired, and which are not. Adults often use positive and negative reinforcement to encourage children to continue doing certain behaviors. Alternately, they utilize positive and negative punishment to discourage children from continuing certain behaviors. Children can also learn which behaviors are desired through vicarious reinforcement, in which the learner sees another person praised for doing a certain behavior and, therefore, tries to do the same behavior in hopes of receiving praise as well. In these examples, the behaviors that are exhibited by the students are the stimuli. These behaviors then cause the teachers to give certain responses, which can be either reinforcement or punishment, depending on whether the behavior was desired or not. By seeing which behaviors the teachers praise and which ones are discouraged by punishment, children then are able to learn which behaviors are acceptable, and they exhibit these behaviors more often because they desire the praise and rewards from their parents and teachers. As people get older, they often start to use more self-reinforcement as they teach and train themselves to continue certain desired behaviors and accomplishments. They also use more self-regulation to encourage themselves to continue working toward desired goals.

As we learn, it is important for the information we bring in to be meaningful so we can have strong connections with the information and use retrieval to easily bring it from the long-term memory into the working memory. In order for this to occur in learning, I believe that it is very important to provide learners with authentic tasks, or tasks that are easily relatable to real-world situations or problems that could arise in the learners’ future experiences. By teaching through these kinds of tasks, the learners are able to feel that the things they are learning are truly meaningful and will help them in their future endeavors.

I believe that learning is a life-long process, and everyone must go through this progression in order to mature and develop. As we are successful in our learning, we are then able to develop a sense of self-efficacy. I have seen in my experiences that this confidence in our own abilities to perform well at certain tasks and to be able to learn new information and skills effectively often determines the amount of effort we will put into learning new things. Our self-efficacy can increase our persistence when attempting to master new skills or concepts, and it can decrease our frustration as we have more patience with ourselves when we learn new things. As we strive to have confidence in our abilities and make our personal learning meaningful, I believe that we will be able to truly come to love learning.