Ruthie Stewart

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09/16/2018

The Learner and Learning Reflection

When thinking about how people learn, until very recently I’ve only thought, or rather

only had to think about, myself. I’ve always been very self-reflective about my learning, and the

schools I attended growing up encouraged this. Of course I know I’m just one person, and,

according to my classification growing up, a gifted person, so my experiences aren’t necessarily

going to apply to all people. Still, up until the beginning of August, I hadn’t considered just how

differently other people might approach learning than I do. I tend to speak, think, and process

information very quickly, and being inquisitive and critical come naturally to me. I guess I knew

this about myself before, but in teaching, it’s become very apparent. I often find myself having to

explain concepts twice to students because I went too quickly the first time. Despite all my class

readings about how we learn, I’m still trying to figure out how to apply my knowledge and what

strategies to use as a teacher to help students learn more effectively.

One important piece of being able to help students learn effectively is about

understanding the students themselves– the things they bring to the classroom, both intellectually

and culturally, and how they like to work. If teachers don’t create a classroom environment

where students feel as if they can express themselves, then learning won’t happen as effectively

as is possible. This has been studied extensively over the years, and one of the most notable

names in regards to creating a culturally responsive classroom is Gloria Ladson-Billings.

According to her paper “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy”, learning potential

is hindered when culturally diverse students are forced to conform to the dominant culture of the
classroom, which is not their own (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Of course, I have expectations for

how I would like to see a classroom operating, but the key is, those expectations should be based

on who my students are as people, and not based on an arbitrary idea of what is “correct” in

regards to the dominant culture.

In my placement, all of my students are minorities– mostly African American/black or

latinx. It helps a lot that most teachers at my placement are part of these minority groups as well,

because that cultural competence is there. For example, my mentor teacher is black and I’m

latina, and all of our students are either black/African American or latinx. It helps a lot that we

come from these cultures and can help each other achieve an effective level of cultural

competency for both. At the beginning of the year, I’d help my mentor teacher pronounce

Spanish names correctly, and she’d do the same for me with more traditionally black names. If

both of us didn’t know how to pronounce something, we’d ask the student first and take note

instead of getting it wrong and having to be corrected. In my opinion (and hers) getting names

right is one of the simplest ways we can show we’re paying attention to our students as people.

Beyond that, we try to address the needs of our students as fully as possible by making the class

a comfortable place for students to interact; we don’t discourage the use of African American

Vernacular English or Spanish as long as students are using them to discuss content, and turning

in written work in Standard English. We don’t harp too much on hand-raising before speaking in

class unless we need to have a very structured discussion, and even then, no one gets in real

trouble for forgetting. We want students to be their authentic selves so that they can learn

authentically. In order to prioritize learning, we must first prioritize our students as a complex

and diverse group of human beings. Only then can we ensure students are reaching their learning

potentials.
 Up to this point, I’ve discussed how creating a hospitable class environment is necessary

for effective learning, but what exactly is learning? According to Dr. Jeanne Ormrod, learning

can be defined as “a long-term change in mental representations or associations as a result of

experience” (Ormrod, 2016). So, learning is based on something a person experiences that

transforms their thinking in some way. This definition also implies that learning is continuous–

we as humans have experiences every day, so there’s potential for learning to occur every day,

whether it’s formal and in a classroom, or informal and outside of a classroom. Framing learning

in this way is really helpful for me as a teacher because it helps me to focus on creating

transformative experiences for my students rather than just worrying about directly teaching

content. This kind of thinking as a teacher falls in line with what we know about the way people

learn: active learning has an advantage over passive learning for both content retention and

development of critical thinking skills (Bonwell & Eison, 1991; Gokhale 1995; & Yale Center

for Teaching and Learning, 2018). As teachers, we want our students to perform to the best of

their abilities, and ensuring students are active participants in their education seems to be the key

to accomplishing this goal.

So the question now becomes: how can we provide students with opportunities to have

thought-transforming experiences in the classroom so that we can improve or in some cases even

initiate meaningful learning? To start, meaningful learning must be defined, as it is ineffective to

work towards a goal without knowing exactly what needs to be accomplished. Meaningful

learning “occurs when humans relate new concepts to pre-existing familiar concepts” (Vallori,

2014). In other words, meaningful learning happens when facts are learned within the context of

what we already know, instead of in a disconnected manner. This idea is central to Daniel T.

Willingham’s article Students Remember...What They Think About, where it is argued that facts
themselves are not meaningful, but rather the connections between facts in a person’s mind are

what construct meaning and understanding of concepts (2003). According to Willingham, one of

the best ways to ensure students are gleaning a holistic understanding from lessons is to “design

lessons so that students can’t avoid thinking about the lesson’s goal” (2003). Students should

know what they’re supposed to get from the lesson before starting, so they can make the correct

connections between information along the way.

Sometimes getting students to think about a lesson’s end goal can come in the form of an

essential question that they’re trying to answer or an assignment that is directly related to the

learning goal. At my placement, teachers write the standard being taught that day on the board

and have students write down, discuss and annotate the standard so they themselves know

exactly what they’re supposed to be able to do at the end of the lesson. These strategies make it

so students must take responsibility for their own learning, which is a big part of using active

learning strategies effectively, because being an active participant means a person is making

something happen, not having something happen to them (Bonwell & Eison, 1991).

Now, this isn’t to say students are all on their own. Teachers too, are responsible for

creating an environment that promotes active learning and for ensuring students are getting

credible information with which to make connections. This type of student-teacher sharing of

responsibility is consistent with Vygotsky’s theories of development, and the idea that children

learn most effectively when they are working with an adult to accomplish a task they are not

necessarily able to accomplish on their own (Ormrod, 2016). These types of tasks are said to be

in a child’s “zone of proximal development”, and the way to help children accomplish tasks in

this zone is to provide support, or scaffolding, so that they are able to stretch themselves and

their thinking while still making the right mental connections with the material (Ormrod, 2016).
 For learning science specifically, a lot of the connection-making involves working in the

classroom as scientists would in the lab by using a practical skills to accomplish a certain goal.

Thankfully, the Next Generation Science Standards have emphasized 3 dimensional learning,

which is when teachers ensure their science instruction incorporates and intertwines disciplinary

core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices (NGSS, 2018). In this

3D model, disciplinary core ideas are content, crosscutting concepts are things like being able to

recognize patterns and relationships in data, and science and engineering practices are things like

using models– things professional scientist do as part of knowledge construction/problem

solving (NGSS, 2018). We’ve used both 3D and non-3D instruction in my placement classroom,

and I see a lot more student engagement with 3D instruction. I think it’s because of the active

learning piece required of students in 3D lessons– students have to be able to do something with

their content knowledge rather than simply have the content knowledge. For example, a student

doing an investigation about the rate of a certain reaction under different conditions not only has

to know about rate laws (concepts), but also how to plan and conduction an investigation

(scientific practices) and then use the data from that investigation to identify patterns or trends in

the rates of reaction (crosscutting concepts) (NGSS, 2018). In this sort of investigation, students

are hitting every dimension of a 3D lesson while taking an active role in their learning– they’re

doing things to learn, and by hitting every dimension they’re making lots of connections between

their knowledge. This is fantastic for accomplishing meaningful learning, especially with teacher

guidance to help students stretch their thinking.

Because of the benefits of student-centered instruction like I describe aboce, I’ve recently

been trying to think of myself as less of an “instructor” and more of a “guide” when considering

my own teaching because it seems, according to a lot of my class readings and my own research,
that even though I have the title of “teacher” I should be treating my role as one of facilitation.

As a teacher, I am not the most important person in the room– the students occupy that role. My

students are the learners and therefore most of the class time should be centered around them and

their needs, or they cannot learn effectively. Student-centered learning can look different from

classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher, but when considering how children learn best, it

is clear to me that I should focus heavily on creating a classroom where students are empowered

to express themselves and supported in their exploration of whatever they’re supposed to be

learning.
 References

Bonwell, C. C., & Eison, J. A. (1991). Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom.

ERIC Digest,1-6. Retrieved September 4, 2018, from

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED340272.pdf.

Gokhale, A. A. (1995). Collaborative Learning Enhances Critical Thinking. Journal of

Technology Education,7(1). doi:10.21061/jte.v7i1.a.2

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American

Educational Research Journal,32(3), 465-491. doi:10.2307/1163320

NGSS. (2018). Three Dimensional Learning. Retrieved November 15, 2018, from

https://www.nextgenscience.org/three-dimensions NGSS. (2018). Three Dimensional

Learning. Retrieved November 15, 2018, from https://www.nextgenscience.org/three-

dimensions

Ormrod, J. E. (2016). Human learning(7th ed.). Harlow, Essex, England: Pearson.

Vallori, A. B. (2014). Meaningful Learning in Practice. Journal of Education and Human

Development,3(4), 199-209. Retrieved September 16, 2018, from

http://jehdnet.com/journals/jehd/Vol_3_No_4_December_2014/18.pdf

Willingham, D. T. (2003). Students Remember...What They Think About. American

Educator,77-81.

Yale Center for Teaching and Learning. (2018). Active Learning | Center for Teaching and

Learning. Retrieved September 4, 2018, from https://ctl.yale.edu/ActiveLearning