After I finished reading this week’s designated materials, I started to look at learning from another view. In the past, I was a learner. I just needed to learn and remember the knowledge. Now, I need to think about how to impart knowledge. For example, if a high school teacher wants to introduce climate change, how can she teach more efficiently.
The article, ‘Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism’, introduces three types of learning design methods. They are not independent but closely linked. They are like walking. We must take a step before we can take the next step. Behaviorism is like the first step and it is often successful at the beginning period. It will use lots of environmental sources to stimulate learners to set up and strengthen a knowledge system. When they see the relative items, they will remember the relevant knowledge they learned. It is often used in teaching basic information. From the example, the high school teachers should introduce “what is the climate?” and give examples from our lives and help them to identify. After it, they must let students know the influence of climate change in their life. They do not need to care about their learning process but make sure they remember the information.
Cognitivism is the second step. After the influence of behaviorism, learners have set up a system of this item. Cognitivism theories are aimed to emphasize the process of learning and solving problems with the information. This is a more complex theory than the last one. In my opinion, this method is like an experiment. The role of teachers needs to be an experimenter. They need to give a hypothesis and lead students to use current information to explore more knowledge or phenomenon. Now we can go back to the previous climate teaching example. Teachers want to show and explain the process of climate change and let them know “why will the climate change?” and “how will climate change?” During the process, teachers can create questions and let students think about these questions and teach them how to solve them. In the future, when they can face these relevant problems, they can solve them independently.
Constructivism is similar to cognitivism but it is more complicated. It is like the third step of learning. The process of teaching is mostly based on real cases. However, in my opinion, high school teachers do not need to do too many things on this step. Their responsibility is teaching objective truths and giving chances to begin the further research on the speciality. Like the previous example, teachers could invite the relevant officers to make a speech on their jobs and events. If students are interested in, they can introduce the best universities or proper organizations. At these places, they will continue to learn deeper knowledge.
