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PEER 1(JACK)

Book name: Learning and Instruction

By: Richard E. Mayer

Chapter 1: Introduction to Learning and Instruction

In this chapter, the Mayer (2008) very clearly depicts the link of the education in the development of any individual as a human being and what role education plays in the psychological development of the individual. The author starts the chapter by opening the story of a boy titled as“Wild boy of Aveyron”, in which he clearly links the chapter’s brief points with the story of the boy that no person can reach their utmost potential level without the proper guidance of any other person, as the other person’s guidance actually builds up your mental minds that lead you to accomplishment of your tasks and aims.

Mayer (2008) highlights this point that learning is actually a continuous process which brings change in the person’s mind and the daily interaction of the individual with their environment actually in return develops the learner thinking level. Different continuous change in the environment helps the learner to bring development and growth in his cognitive power of the mind. Whereas, when learning is compared with the instruction, then the individual takes the instruction as a path which he or she has to follow in achieving their targets and also to enhance their knowledge and polish their skills.

The learning process is also highly affected with the personal traits of any individual’s learning process and how he manipulates the situations to get the best output. The author believes and even defines that to reach the learner’s mind, one has to first learn their psychology map, and in this chapter the author even clearly defines the three phases that shows the relationship between education and the learner’s psychology. The second important point on which the author puts a lot of importance is that if you want to make the learning process very effective, first we have to analyze that how people learn and we should develop an understanding about their cognitive learning process, which states three important points;

· First we need to analyze the channels through which we are providing the learning process,

· Then analyze their capacity, that up to which extent they can absorb the instructions,

· Thirdly, we should know their processing level and mental level, just to know that up to which level their minds can handle multiple tasks.

If we just understand and analyze the above mentioned areas of any individual’s mental map then we can easily make the process of learning and education fast. After analyzing this situation, we also have to characterize our knowledge in to different sections so that we can develop the guideline in transferring those knowledgeable facts in to the minds of the people. To transfer the idea in to the mind of the other people is actually an important goal that needs to be implemented carefully because on this step the whole process of developing learning in other minds is based.

Book name: Psychology of Learning for Instruction

By: Marcy P. Driscoll

Chapter 1: Introduction to Theories of Learning and Instruction

This particular chapter discusses the psychology of learning of the individuals as a whole and the impact that the overall psychology of the individuals have on their learning and understanding. Every individual has a different way of perceiving the things and a completely different way of grasping the concepts that are being explained. This however depends greatly on the age of the individual and the environment to which they are exposed to. This concept is very well explained in this chapter which discusses the psychology of learning of the children and compares it to the psychology of learning of an adult person who is present at a different career path.

Driscoll (2005) further explains how the learning theory definition, According to Driscol’s (2005) definition of learning theory is “A learning theory comprises a set of constructs linking observed changes in performance with what is thought to bring about those changes" (Driscol, 2005, p. 9).  The chapter also explains how the learning theory works and further emphasizes the use of memory that is essential for the learning process. The learning theory is a very important theory that has been highlighted here as it helps in the building of a cognitive process which is very important in learning.

The chapter further takes the reader to the previous years when the process of learning started and the impact that it caused on the society. How the individuals perceive learning is different and this concept was very well studies in the 1800s. The modern learning theory focuses on the similar manner and therefore educates the individuals with regard to how the process of learning takes place and why this learning is different for different individuals. Furthermore, it has been believed that the process of learning is also initiated by the experience that the individuals hold and this experience is very essential for the understanding of various aspects that govern the society. This however is very rightly said because the experience that one holds is the prime important factor that contributes towards learning and knowledge.

Driscoll (2005) further discusses the various experimental approaches that are important for learning and the impact that these approaches have on the society. These approaches are very well explained with the help of examples and the examples that are used by the writer are very practical and highlight the day to day work that the individuals are involved in (Driscol, 2005, p. 15-22).

Overall the chapter depicts the right manner in which the learning is influenced in the society and the manner in which the individuals contribute towards this learning. The society comprises of different individuals who belong to varying age groups and professions, and every individual have a different way of understanding the things and a different way of learning the concepts. This however is very well explained in the chapter with the help of theories and examples that provides a better understanding of the entire concept.

References

Driscoll, Marcy.  (2005).  Pyschology of learning for instruction.  Boston, MA: Pearson.

Mayer, Richard.  (2008).  Learning and instruction.  Columbus, Ohio: Pearson

PEER 2(SAME)

Reading Reflection 1

· (Driscoll, 2005, Chapter 1)

            Children learn faster compared to older people including the athletes that take part in sporting activities. Most children learn through emulating the older people, therefore, the behavior and the intelligence of the older people in the society matters a lot. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge that develops into greater minds. The chapter explains that learning requires a settled mind and a person ready to step up the fears and achieves the greater ideas that improve the way of living. Learning is a gradual procedure that takes a longer time because a person acquires new ideas and knowledge on a daily basis. Knowledgeable people come up with different theories to explain the learning process. The learning theories tend to explain the perceptions of learning to depend on beliefs and hypothesis from previous occurrences.

            The learning theories comprise of principles and laws that help in explaining the learning process. The theories try to influence the knowledge into positively changing the lives of the people. Learning helps acquire knowledge that later helps people work towards developing the living standards. For example, institutions ready to embrace modern computer technology requires developing strategies that would help acquire the necessary knowledge on operating the equipment. Acquisition of knowledge varies daily because people find better means of learning every day because individuals have different knowledge and through interaction, people learn. The learning process and interaction make it easier to widen the knowledge and skills because most people learn through apprenticeship.

            Research is an important aspect of the study because it brings people of different academic achievement together. Measure of the level of knowledge depends on the number of achievements and the level of learning. The society assumes that the level of academic achievement determines the student’s future level of knowledge. Other people do not have the learned knowledge and might have gained knowledge through apprenticeship but are capable of innovating new ideas. Variations in the level of knowledge in the society make the learning process difficult because people think differently. The variations make it difficult for the people to settle on a single idea because each person believes that the knowledge in each particular person is right.

            Researchers are making it easier for the learning process because they collectively bring the variant knowledge into single ideas acceptable to all the people. The researchers make the information independent that every person can access without claiming the inferiority of information. Researchers help inform people on the importance of learning process and the developments in the field. People can come up with new theories in the learning sector if they observe the rules and guidelines of learning. Learning is the basic component that has great influence on the lives of people. Learning gives people knowledge that teaches people how to use the available resources in surplus and live together.

· (Mayer, 2008,Chapter 1)

            The chapter discussions more of approaches on how to research about instructions and learning. The author extensively discusses the various roads to psychology, the learning metaphors and the cognitive theory of successful learning. The chapter focuses on educational psychology and how psychology influences the learning and instructions and helps give answers to the educational practice. The author’s goal is to prove the importance of the education psychology on the learning process and issuing instructions. Majority of the people in the society have embraced learning as an important aspect making it easier to interact. The extensive division and definitions in the chapter prove that the author has achieved the purpose intended to study.

            Analysis in the education program proves that currently people learn with the aspect of satisfying own interest. The author gives an example of a boy born in a poor background and less exposure to the developed world. The boy will learn towards improving the living conditions making it difficult to develop the entire society. The author explains the different roles of instructional programs stating that the program needs to adopt a scientific path. The instructional programs need to acknowledge the different capabilities of the learners. The teachers and the lecturers need to determine the behaviors of the learners and the possible educational influences of the learner. The three learning approaches include behavior approach, cognitive approach and the contextual approach. The three approaches become the backbone of the analysis because the researcher has to follow the procedures before making a conclusion on the analysis. Psychology helps the researchers understand how people come to conquer and how they absorb and gain the necessary knowledge.

            The chapter emphasizes on the importance of the metaphors in learning and instructions because theyhelp in identifying the learner, the teacher and the instructional methods in the works. The learning approacheshelp in identifying the roles of teachers and students in the education system. The author is very keen on thedifferent approaches that influence the learning approaches and the instruction programs. The chapter extendsthe reader's knowledge because the author extensively explains the different perspectives that influence thelearning process. The author explains that all the approaches are influencing the learning and instructionalprogram in details. The extensive elaboration aids the learner and the teacher understands how to interact andwork towards achievements.

References

Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction. Boston, MA: Pearson  Allyn and Bacon.

Mayer, R. E. (2008). Learning and instruction.  Upper  Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

PEER 3(SARAH)

Driscoll Chapter 2

The black box is an interesting metaphor, I do not necessarily agree with Skinner on this concept, but mainly because I teach math and I do care what happens inside the black box. Really in any mathematical class the process is important and although I do want my students to have the correct behavior (or get the correct answer), the thinking and reasons for the right answer are, in many cases, more important.

I remember Figure 2.2 from undergraduate classes, but having spent time in a classroom and being a parent now, I find the information even more helpful. I think the main thing I get out of this table is that there is more than one way to get a person’s behavior to change. It does not always need to be a reward, or a punishment, this type of thinking has helped me greatly as a parent. I am going to give my own example of choosing the wrong reinforcement or a reinforcement that is not helpful for a behavior being strengthened—I teach swim lessons to small children, who are sometimes fearful but most of the time just stubborn. There are times when parents want to help my process along and they tell their child, “Susie, we will get you a toy if you blow bubbles today!” There are a few things wrong with this scenario, first, if Susie does blow a bubble that is ALL she is going to do for the rest of the half our lessons, second, I WILL NOT BE BYING THIS LITTLE GIRL ANYTHING…EVER. Now that her Susie has an unrealistic expectation for a reward and I will still expect her to do things, and although the parents thought they were helping they are actually making swim lessons even harder for Susie.

While giving swim lessons my instructors and I use a chaining approach to teaching concepts. Every skill that we teach builds on another skill—I tell my instructors that if they can get a child to float they can make a swimmer out of him/her. However, often swim instructors expect the young people to learn more complicated skills before they are ready for them, when this is the case swimming looks like a jumbled mess instead of smooth, easy and energy efficient. These are similar problems that I see in mathematics, and one of the reasons I like that my classes are taught in an emporium style. In a traditional math class the instructor teaches a couple sections a day, gives homework (most of which is not graded or not graded in a timely manner), gives quizzes and repeats a number of times until a unit test. Imagine that a student comes to class on day one and does not understand the second concept, cannot complete the homework, and eventually fails the quiz. Once the quiz is graded and given back to the student the teacher has already taught 3 more concepts all building on the second concept. Now the student is in a hole that is at least 5 sections deep. In the emporium class the students do not move on until they have mastered a concept, the class is set up so that if the student needs to take smaller steps to master the material he/she can, it is very important that the class has this chaining aspect.

Luckily for me teaching people how to swim comes with its own little reward—not drowning. Even in mathematics the reward is not failing and understanding numbers a little better. But potty training my son has been a totally different experience. Maintaining the ‘using the potty’ behavior is a current goal of mine for my son, Stuart. We started off with a fixed ratio as far as reinforcement was concerned—every time Stuie used the potty he got a piece of candy, or a sticker. Once he got closer to mastering the skill the rewards became less frequent and now he doesn’t get any reward for going pee in the potty. However, poo is a different story! A reward for putting poo in the potty is great—a tattoo, a special piece of candy, and occasionally a Stuie Potty Parade. The reward here is so great, because, let’s be honest, the reward is really mine! Eventually, the rewards will become more intermittently dispersed; but currently we are still heavily celebrating these events—and yes, I do have these parades on video for use at Stuart’s graduation party in 16 years.  I think the biggest thing to acknowledge here is that when we started the intermittently given rewards for peeing in the potty, we had no accidents. He knew he wasn’t going to get rewarded ever time and had to work harder on not having an accident.

I have actually been in charge of creating a few Behavioral Intervention Plans for students. I think the biggest thing I learned from creating some of these plans is document everything. At first when creating these plans, as you can see from Step 2 from table 2.1 is determine the reinforcers, but eventually, in Step 5, you want to be able to evaluate the progress. I think that part of evaluating the progress is determining the onset of these behaviors.

As I mentioned earlier I am teaching an emporium style class—many of the qualities of the class are similar to those of a PSI structured class. I will say that classroom management is equally important in the emporium classroom, as well as instructional objectives. Without being able to manage a classroom of students my classes could not be a success.

I think that every institution and even small breakdowns within an institution or program can benefit from going through the table in figure 2.8. For instance, each semester the math department should have each of its classes (102, 115, etc) determine the gap between what the students learned and what they should have learned. Then look into what the students need to do to better learn the material, where could there be incentives or rewards, what kind of plan could they create to make these performance goals a success.

Mayer Chapter 2

For me, reading is an escape from realty, it is a pastime that I enjoy on downtime and a method for receiving information. Because of these reasons, part of my undergrad degree was a minor in reading. It is important while working with students to not only understand the difference between learning to read and reading to learn, but to also understand where the students are in regards to these two different aspects of reading.

There were times in the classroom when I was working in a third grade classroom and the students and I were discussing the spelling words.  One student said that if two words rhymed then the end of the words had to be spelled the same. This led the students and me into a discussion on words that rhyme, but do not have the same spelling (rule and pool). The students were not happy with this discovery and one student even said that he would never be able to spell. I honestly felt bad for the students, spelling was something that I had struggled with as well. However, after looking at table 2-1 and knowing there are about 42 different sound units for the English language, I find it completely manageable for the students. I would assume that there are languages out there that have many more sounds units than 42.

Phonological awareness is an essential step before a student can learn how to read. The younger the child is when he or she develops phonological awareness the better off he or she will be while developing their reading ability.

Growing up, I learned to read using phonics. During my undergrad I learned to teach reading using a whole-language approach. I believe that there is a pendulum effect between these two ideas because there are benefits to both types of teaching. I would actually suggest that the best way to teach a child to read is to combine both ideas… I am not sure how or if this can be done successfully, but I would imagine that the results could be successful. I will say that in general phonics rules make me upset—one that was not mentioned—i before e except after c…luckily my computer auto correct their for me.

It is necessary to recognize which of the three stages of development of automaticity, nonaccurate, accuracy, and automatic, a student is at while working with him or her on reading skills. Then develop tasks to move the student forward in his or her ability—even using repeated reading can help a student become competent. It is also helpful for students to listen to someone read a passage before he or she attempts reading the passage.

I have a two and three year old, so the section on meaning access struck a chord with me. I know that my children are learning new words and meanings every day, but I wonder what I can do to help them continue the learning process. Currently it seems like the best option for us is immersion. We should continue to read to them and have them “read” to us, I typically read the story and have Tia read it back, use the pictures to help her remember the story. From now on I will try to get her to use new words while she is telling the story.

References:

Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Mayer, R. E. (2008). Learning and instruction (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

PEER 4 (TOMMY)

* Learning to Read Fluently

By: Richard E. Mayer. 

After reading this chapter I got a lot of new things about reading and I found it very good. First, Mayer began by defined reading and a history of reading research. At this chapter Mayer explained phonological awareness well; there were many tasks that illustrated how reading going. In addition, Mayer mentioned four related steps of learning to read which are recognizing phonemes, decoding words, decoding words rapidly, and accessing meaning of the words. Learners should be able to recognizing the sound of the words “phonemes’’, breakdown the words into parts, and try to find the meaning of this word.

Also, this chapter explained about vocabulary training. I think it is very helpful and effective. This process is useful especially for people who interesting in learning reading process. I read about "changing unfamiliar words in a passage to more familiar synonyms increase children’s comprehension" (P.67) I totally agree with the writer; actually, I used this way when I read any articles; I tried to switch the word to one that I knew very well. It makes the paragraph much understandable to me. Finally, psychological research and instructional implications for reading have not completed yet.

* Radical Behaviorism

By: Marcy P. Driscoll.

J. B. Watson stated “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.” (P. 82). I think this is the famous quotation that describes behavior and how can effect in learners.

This chapter focused on Radical behaviorism theory by B. F. Skinner. A behaviorism. Behavioral theory includes into physical actions; Skinner stated, " All organism are inherently active, emitting responses that operate on their environment." (P.34). I think the environment has a big role in animals' and human's behavior. Driscoll also indicated to the two kinds of reinforce that are Primary reinforcer and Conditioned reinforcer. The primary reinforcer related to biological things that all organism need including food and sleep. For the second type conditioned reinforcer "Conditioned reinforce are those that acquire their reinforcement value through association with a primary reinforce." (P.38).

Premack principle defined, as "it is simply a type of positive reinforcement." (P.39). For example, Most children like to ride a bicycle, and parents use this as reward to their children in doing something good such as do homework, sleep early, etc.

On the other hand, the chapter also explained about the negative reinforcement and punishment and what the differences among them. Negative reinforcement "A response through the removal of an aversive stimulus contingent upon that response." (P.39). For example, child who clean his\her place so his\her mom will not yells anymore. Punishment is used to take the misbehavior away such as a teacher gave a student zero because he cheats in the exam. Also, the behaviorists mentioned that teaching new behaviors should include three principles, which are shaping, chaining, and fading.

Reference

Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Boston, MA: Pearson      Allyn and Bacon.

Mayer, R. E. (2008). Learning and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Watson, J. B. (1930). Behaviorism (Revised edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.