Toolbox 1 : Learning theories and styles in my English as a Second Language classroom.
I am currently trying to get my English Language Learners (ELL) to do self-directed collaborative writing online projects. The students doing these projects range from Year 9s to Year 12s. Using the learning theories and styles in my toolbox helps me appreciate and describe the differences between the students doing the same project, after all "learning is multilayered, changes as we get older and does not proceed steadily. Benjamin Bloom and Gagne tried to categorise them into domains of learning: cognitive, affective and psychomotor." (Hill & Martin, 2019). Out of all these projects, four are about soccer done by four different students ranging from 14 to 17 years of age from India, Columbia, Kiribati and Japan. Their levels of maturity are different. All four play soccer as a hobby (psychomotor skills) but struggle to use language to think about the topic deeply (cognitive skills) and discuss the topic as a group (affective skills). Using learning theories when I self-reflect gives me frameworks to choose from and helps me ground my performance experience leading to greater self efficacy.
(taken from https://casebasedlearning.weebly.com/learning-domains.html)
Fred Biddulph and Ken Carr's 1999 table of five influential theories of learning (Hill & Martin 2019) is useful in my teacher's toolbox as it gives insights as I reflect on how the theories coalesce, diverge and replace each other in a teaching module. For example, these writing projects started out based on a humanistic/ affective idea of self-reliance and self directed learning. While picking a topic, these students saw each other’s work and decided to do the same topic, which is a social constructivist/ network idea. They discussed each other’s Google slides and taught each other how to use the slides more effectively by adding Youtube clips. As soccer fans, they transcended linguistic and cultural differences in class, which is a sociocultural/ border-crossing idea. All of them had problems with punctuation so I quickly created exercises to reinforce how full stops and capital letters are used. I then rewarded students who did well in picking out punctuation errors, hence a more behaviourist/ building-block idea. Using learning theories, I am able to identify my own approach to learning and how learning actually occurs in my classroom so that I feel I have a handle on my students' progress.
Figure 1 taken from https://www.tejedastots.com/teaching-different-learning-styles/
Figure 2 taken from https://letshomeschoolhighschool.com/2013/11/04/seven-learning-styles-for-high-school/
As a teacher, an understanding of different learning styles makes me more intentional in choosing teaching methods so that they match those of my students (see Figure 1). Students in my classes need to know their own preferred learning styles and challenge themselves to develop or try other ways of learning in keeping with a growth mindset (see Figure 2). At best trying to engage all learning styles in a teaching module makes for more interesting lessons and engaged students.
One of the greatest challenges as a teacher is that of motivating students especially amongst ELLs who have had a history of negative experiences in schools overseas before arriving in New Zealand. Motivational learning theories have been helpful in giving me ideas and guidance on how to help students develop intrinsic motivation. After learning about Pink’s Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose framework, I was challenged to design and try out these collaborative writing projects this term.
Similar to Pink, Harter also developed a motivational theory in 1981-- a measure of intrinsic and extrinsic classroom motivational orientation, which assesses dimensions such as curiosity, challenge and mastery. It assumes that intrinsic motivation is based on five aspects which I have tried to incorporate into this term’s writing projects:
1. Preference for challenge rather than easy work.
2. Incentive to satisfy one’s own interest and curiosity rather than to please the teacher and to obtain good grades.
3. Independent mastery attempts rather than dependence on the teacher.
4. Independent judgement rather than reliance on the teacher’s judgement.
5. Interior criteria for success and failure rather than external criteria. (Schunk, 2013)
It remains to be seen if my ELLs will stay motivated for the rest of the term. For the moment, I have learnt lots about topics I know little about such as Anime, drawing Maori warriors and gym exercises. Even if this module loses steam after awhile, it certainly is and has been an exciting and emotionally enjoyable learning experience for me as their teacher, an affective response which I would like to replicate in the future (i.e. strengthening my self-efficacy).
References
Hill, Mary. & Trupp, Martin. 2019. The Professional Practice of Teaching in New Zealand. Cengage.
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