I consider all learning theories including the four ‘Core Principals’ of Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism and Connectivism will continue to be used in schools and classrooms into the future. My understanding is that all four core principals are exactly that, core to the education pathway. I believe that each school plans how these principles are measured in relation to their planning and delivery of the national curriculum. However, the school’s expectation of its teaching staff is to teach the students using their skills and teacher knowledge of how to best use these four core principals within the classroom.
My understandings from all resources thus far are that there needs to be a balance of all four core principals to satisfy the many stakeholders such as governments, education departments, principals, teachers, parents and in all cases the different learning styles presented by students. The balance that I consider to be best for my teaching style to the students I will have in my classroom will differ from the teacher next door with consideration to the age or year level of the students within that classroom. For example, I have been actively involved in my sons prep class last year and again this year, this week in volunteering my time with year 1 students for an hour in the mornings. My role has been to assist students one on one with reading to me at their level, including sight word activities. Due to this young age group and learning the foundation skills for education I have found that ‘Behaviourism’ has been a prominent core principal in my sessions. Children are expected to learn set levels and to keep repeating this level until they have been deemed competent. Once students are competent or have improved, they then progress to the next level of readers and sight words and so on. However, some of the teaching processes leading up to and during my sight word activities use a ‘Syn-nap’ activity using a mini tramp, skipping rope and basketball to assist students with committing information to their memories and brains learning through a ‘Congnitivsm’ approach.
I have seen the class participate in other teacher and learner core principals such as ‘Social Construction’ where the year 1 class has been divided into a grouping of boys and girls where both groups model their learning’s or acknowledge their understandings through scaffolding. The teacher and students are able to participate in activities which provide a SWOT type analysis.
When considering the fourth core principal of ‘Conectivism’, I’m sure my son’s class has looked at many ways to explore information using the interactive smart board in the classroom and also in their computer lab. As a parent of a student in year 1, I have been provided with many different resources, tools and links in which I can further explore ways to improve my son’s learning. Conectivism has also allowed me to use search engines such as Google to find other ways to help with teaching reading, writing and spelling.
