What I Believe About Learning 

It's very difficult for me to put into words my beliefs about learning. I have been a lifelong learner and I feel very strongly about learning. You never ever stop learning. As a human being that is alive and living in such an ever-changing world, you are always learning. When you turn on the tv, you are learning (even when you watch mindless reality television). When you go to the store, you are learning by reading labels and searching for the foods you want to buy. When you talk to someone on the phone, you are learning things about the person on the phone. Everything you do, everywhere you go, you are learning something. We are ALL lifelong learners, even if we don't know it.

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The Relationship Between Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning go hand in hand. These two words can also be interchanged with the other in many instances. Teachers are always learning and learners are always teaching. 

Teachers are continuously completing new professional development to help them learn the new and innovative ways to teach their students. They often research new ideas and new ways to teach the same content, thus they are always learning. Teaching is not a career that you get a degree for and just start working with no further learning needed. It is a career that demands continual learning. In order to keep up with the others in the teaching career field, lifelong learning is an absolute must. 

Learners are also teachers. I don't think that I have ever taken the time to learn something only to keep it to myself. I enjoy teaching things that I learn with others. Even students like to teach other students what they have learned. According to Thomas & Brown (2018), "people can share experience as well as knowledge. Here, people are not just learning from one another, they are learning with one another" (p. 67). When these students are sharing experience, they are learning from and with the other students. Then they are often teaching others what they had just learned.   

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Me as a Learner

I have always had an urge to learn more and more (everything that is in my power).  I have spent my entire life learning new things. As a student in high school, I was most concerned with bettering my grades and learning new things. As a college student for the first time, I waited tables and bartended so I had to learn the menus and how to make the drinks. I was always looking for new things to learn. At the age of 36, I decided to go back to school to become a teacher- the ultimate learning environment. Then, after 2 year in a teaching position, I got a taste of the GT culture in a school setting. This is when I decided to go back to school for my first master's degree so I could learn how to better serve gifted students. I was a full time teacher/learner for many many years. Fast forward to my 8th year in the classroom. I started to crave that intense learning that comes from a master's degree, so I took another leap and signed up for my second master's degree. I may be crazy, but I LOVE to learn. I enjoy learning everything my brain can handle. I learn so I can teach.

Learning comes in forms other than an educational setting as well. I am the master of google along with other technology based learning. I don't think that a day has gone by that I have not looked up the answer to a question I or one of my student's have. I am a wealth of useless as well as useful knowledge. I crave information and learning and I love to share that information with anyone that is willing to learn from me. 

  

Learning Philosophy vs Teaching Philosophy- What's the Difference?

"Your teaching philosophy is a self-reflective statement of your beliefs about teaching and learning. It's a one to two page narrative that conveys your core ideas about being an effective teacher in the context of your discipline" (Writing Your Teaching Philosophy, n.d.). It is important for every teacher to create and follow their own teaching philosophy. A teacher's teaching philosophy focuses more on how that teacher plans to help the students become successful in their educational career. It includes things such as teaching modalities, your values as a teacher, your beliefs, your goals, your attitudes toward teaching, and how you plan to help your students be successful. Your learning philosophy describes how you view the way you and your students learn. Your learning philosophy helps to shape the way you teach and how you learn yourself.  When you understand how you view your own learning and how you view the way your students learn, you can then create a more comprehensive teaching philosophy.

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Which Learning Theory Fits Me Best?

The more I think about it, the more I have come to understand which learning theory fits me best. I had to sit back and really dig deep to understand why I have chosen the one that fits me best. When I graduated high school back in the 90's and went to college for the very first time, I was a psychology major. I wanted to be a therapist. Through the years of study, I realized that I was leaning more towards cognitive psychology above all others. “Cognitive psychology is meant to help us try to understand the human thought process and how we acquire, process, and store information…A few of the most common - and important - mental processes that cognitive psychologists study include memory, perception, and learning” (How to Become a Cognitive Psychologist, n.d.). If you had asked my learning philosophy back then, i would have said that I was a cognitive learning believer. Then, I became a teacher. I put myself in early learning environments. I realized learning is not entirely about the way we store information, it's more about HOW we learn first that affects learning the most. The more I think about it, the more I mostly follow a constructivist way of learning. 

Constructivism was developed many years ago. My favorite constructivist theorists have to be Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Although they have their differences, I have found that they BOTH have affected me as a learner and a teacher. According to Caruso (2016), "Vygotsky has developed the notion of social constructivism, which is actually a variety of the initial theories that focuses on the relation between a person and the world around him, which is fundamentally social." Jean Piaget is the theorist that started the idea of cognitive constructivism. "Cognitive constructivism states knowledge is something that is actively constructed by learners based on their existing cognitive structures. Therefore, learning is relative to their stage of cognitive development" (McLeod, 2019).

I believe that cognitive and social constructivism together form my very own constructivist learning philosophy. Children are able to learn certain things due to where they are developmentally, and their learning is also affected by their environment. 

Teachers that follow constructivism believe that learners learn well through project based learning, discovery learning, active learning, activating prior knowledge, scaffolding, and differentiation (to name a few). These are all ways that I run my classroom and teach the students in my classroom. 

 

How Does My Learning Theory Fit My Innovation Plan?

My innovation plan that I am proposing is on blended learning. Constructivism learning embodies how I want my students to learn and how I plan to implement my innovation plan.

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Blended learning involves the following components that can be seen as part of constructivist learning:

• student-centered learning

• active learning

• individual learning 

• social learning at times

• scaffolding from previous knowledge

• exploration

• learning by doing

 

Wrapping Up My Thoughts About Learning

I honestly believe that learning is an ever-changing and developing process. There is no one way to look at learning and teaching. I will forever be developing and adapting the way I learn and the way I teach. Here are some videos you can watch to learn more about constructivism in learning.

  

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Annotated Bibliography

Here is a list of the sources that I used with a brief synopsis.

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Caruso, S. J. (2016, 2 12). The pros and cons of constructivism in modern day education. HRDevelopmentinfo.com. https://hrdevelopmentinfo.com/pros-cons-constructivism-modern-day-education/

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       Just like the title states, this is where you can find the pros and cons of a constructivist way of 

     learning and teaching to help you decide if this is the type of learner and teacher you are or want to be.

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How to become a cognitive psychologist. (n.d.). Careers in Psychology. Retrieved April 18, 2022, from https://careersinpsychology.org/becoming-a-cognitive-psychologist/

     

        This is a great site to find information on how to become a cognitive psychologist, what they do and what is involved          in cognitive psychology.

   

McLeod, S. (2019, July 17). Constructivism as a theory for teaching and learning. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/constructivism.html

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       This describes everything constructivism. It speaks of the principles, the main types, and the approaches to teaching.

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Perkins, D. (1999, November). The many faces of constructivism. Educational Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.wou.edu/~girodm/library/Perkins.pdf

 

       This shows that not all constructivist learning is done the same in every student- some are active learners, some are           social, and some are creative learners.
 

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace?

 

       This book opened my eyes more to how important it is to help our students become more self-learners through                   imagination, discovery, and play. I have always followed these ideas in my own teaching, however, I did not know why       and how important these things really are to help our students learn.

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What teachers should know about learning theories. (2018). KB. https://kb.edu.hku.hk/learning_theory_in_practice/

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        This site is where you can go to find the bits and pieces of the top four learning theories so you can compare and                contrast them.

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Writing your teaching philosophy. (n.d.). Center for Educational Innovation. https://cei.umn.edu/writing-your-teaching-philosophy

       

         This is where I found the information on teaching philosophy so I could compare teaching philosophy with learning           philosophy. It is also where I found a teaching philosophy template that I plan to use.

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