Workshop 12 Knowing Our Students

                                   Why a teacher must know his or her students?

A teacher must know his/her students because at the moment of evaluate the instructor could judge whether the written word was legible and evaluate it against some criterion or standard, or perhaps even assign it a grade of some sort. None of these actions would be particularly useful to the beginning student. However, the student could profit by having someone watch the performance and critique constructively to help eliminate errors. In the initial stages, early evaluation is usually teacher oriented. It provides a check on teaching effectiveness, can be used to predict eventual student learning proficiency, and can help the teacher locate special problem areas. The observations on which the evaluations are based also can identify the student's strengths and weaknesses, a prerequisite for making constructive criticism.

- A teacher also must know that  students need to belong, to be valued, and to be appreciated on a daily basis.

- Students' cultures have value in the classroom, and these cultural identities must be validated through  lessons and teaching practices.

- A philosophy that demands high expectations of all students is the beginning of empowering students for success.

The teacher's ability to identify with students or understand the cultural identities of students is necessary for addressing the needs of every student. Therefore, teachers must learn as much as possible about their students so that they can structure activities, build curricular materials, and tap into resources that will help all students be academically successful. "Teachers must empower students to succeed by providing them with a 

Learning environment that respects their culture, embraces their diversity, and celebrates their differences."

Furthermore the also must have the knowledge  of motivation  concepts,  principles,  and  theories  should 

be basic  elements  in  a foundations  course  in  educational  psychology,  but  this  is not  really  what  educational  psychology  should  be  about.  Teachers  need  to  know  how  this  conceptual  knowledge  relates  to  the  classroom  and  to  their  in-  structional  role  in  the  classroom.  Teachers  also  need  to  know  how  to  rely  on  this  knowledge  when  dealing  with  issues  that  involve  motivational  concerns
and  when  making  instructional  decisions.

Some of the elements that affect learning are:

Goals an values:

Perceptions depend on one's goals and values. Every experience and sensation which is funneled into one's central nervous system is colored by the individual's own beliefs and value structures. Spectators at a ball game may see an infraction or foul differently depending on which team they support. The precise kinds of commitments and philosophical outlooks which the student holds are important for the instructor to know, since this knowledge will assist in predicting how the student will interpret experiences and instructions.

Goals are also a product of one's value structure. Those things which are more highly valued and cherished are pursued; those which are accorded less value and importance are not sought after.

Self concept:

Self-concept is a powerful determinant in learning. A student's self-image, described in such terms as confident and insecure, has a great influence on the total perceptual process. lf a student's experiences tend to support a favorable self-image, the student tends to remain receptive to subsequent experiences. lf a student has negative experiences which tend to contradict self-concept, there is a tendency to reject additional training.

A negative self-concept inhibits the perceptual processes by introducing psychological barriers which tend to keep the student from perceiving. They may also inhibit the ability to properly implement that which is perceived. That is, self-concept affects the ability to actually perform or do things unfavorable. Students who view themselves positively, on the other hand, are less defensive and more receptive to new experiences, instructions, and demonstrations.

Time and Opportunity:

It takes time and opportunity to perceive. Learning some things depends on other perceptions which have preceded these learnings, and on the availability of time to sense and relate these new things to the earlier perceptions. Thus, sequence and time are necessary.

A student could probably stall an airplane on the first attempt, regardless of previous experience. Stalls cannot really be learned, however, unless some experience in normal flight has been acquired. Even with such experience, time and practice are needed to relate the new sensations and experiences associated with stalls in order to develop a perception of the stall. In general, lengthening an experience and increasing its frequency are the most obvious ways to speed up learning, although this is not always effective. Many factors, in addition to the length and frequency of training periods, affect the rate of learning. The effectiveness of the use of a properly planned training syllabus is proportional to the consideration it gives to the time and opportunity factor in perception.

Workshop 11 Innovative Teacher

Session 9

Questions:

1.- What's the meaning of the phrase "teaching must condition learnes"?
Teacher must condition learners in order to reinforce behavior and learning styles.

2.- Why do you think teachers must present the objectives of the class at the beginning of any activity? 
Because learners only response to the previous stimulus, meaning that first they need to get a clear idea of the activity based on the teacher example and then they can start the activity given.

3.- Why do you think teachers must provide a challenging fearless enviroment? Refer to challenge and fear.
Learners must be inmersed in a challenging  fearless enviroment to prove their skills and abilities also with the "fear" of the enviroment the can built their own personality and character to face new challenges and pursuade their goals. 

4.- According to the video, in the constructivistic and congnitivism approach, information is moved to long term memory. What's the difference between the two approaches in this process? 
Cognitivism: Store information in Long term memory in response to behaviorism.
Constructivism: The knowledge is built by doing. 

Behaviorism:
a)Teacher's role: Teacher must reinforce interactions and knowledge of the students, and also make the objectives clear for them.
b) Source: Flashcards.
c) Precursor: Skinner.

Cognitivism:
a)Teacher's role: Attention-getter, organizer, connector and repeater so the learner can store the information in memory for later recall.
b)Source: Diagrams ( Mind map).
c)Precursor: Vigotsky.

Constructivism:
a)Teacher's role: Model, guide and facilitator.
b)Source: Projects, presentations.
c)Precursors: Vigotsky, J.Piaget, J.Bruner and J.Dewey

Comment: This video shows what a real teacher must do in a classroom, using the resources as posible to fullfil the student knowledge, nevertheless this material could be only used as a reference and not practicing all the time in classrooms, because the whole time teachers must be innovating and preparing new material with new methodologies for a better understanding.

Franco Valdés S.

Session 8 / Behaviorism, Conductivism, Constructivism and Instructional Theory

Behavioriosm says that mindis like a black box, learning is regular and expected to responses, instructions are  repetitions, to reinforce and for make a better practice.

Cognitivism says that mind is like a computer, learning is a recall of stored information ( storage = long term memory), instructions is grab the information and help storage.

Constructivism says that mind is a rhizome which are interconected nodes, learning is building knowledge by doing and instructions is  guiding problem - solving.

Each of these perspectives help us to develop theories, these are two, the first one is the descriptive (what is learning) which attemp to describe learning and the second one is the prescritive theory where the outcome of this is a instructional theory to make foster learning.

Personal model

The model that I prefer is the constructivism which mean that the type of learner is self-directed, creative, and innovative. The purpose in education is to become creative and innovative through analysis, conceptualizations, and synthesis of prior experience to create new knowledge. The educator’s role is to mentor the learner during heuristic problem solving of ill-defined problems by enabling quested learning that may modify existing knowledge and allow for creation of new knowledge. The learning goal is the highest order of learning: heuristic problem solving, metacognitive knowledge, creativity, and originality.

Teaching models

1. Identify the most important teaching models, which are:

Traditional education or back-to-basics refers to long-established customs found in schools that society has traditionally deemed appropriate. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students' needs and self-expression. In the eyes of reformers, traditional teacher-centered methods focused on rote learning and memorization must be abandoned in favor of student-centered and task-based approaches to learning. However, many parents and conservative citizens are concerned with the maintenance of objective educational standards based on testing, which favors a more traditional approach.

Behaviorism, also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior), is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do including acting, thinking, and feeling can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns or modifying the environment. According to behaviorism, individuals' response to different environmental stimuli shapes our behaviors.

Constructivism is the way people create meaning of the world through a series of individual constructs. Constructs are the different types of filters we choose to place over our realities to change our reality from chaos to order. Von Glasersfeld describes constructivism as, “a theory of knowledge with roots in philosophy, psychology, and cybernetics”. Simply stated, it is a learning process which allows a student to experience an environment first-hand, thereby, giving the student reliable, trust-worthy knowledge. The student is required to act upon the environment to both acquire and test new knowledge.

2. Mention 3 precursors for each model:

Traditional education: John Dewey - George Santayana - Horace Mann

Behaviorism: Edward Lee Thorndike - John B. Watson - B.F Skinner

Constructivism: María Montesori - Ernst Von Glasersfeld - Humberto Maturana

3 What do they have in common?

They think that the student is a very important element in the teaching-learning process, and that the teacher's role is only a secondary one to help and guide the pupils to adquire more knowledge.

4. What are the main differences among them?

The main differences among these Social Pedagogics, Traditionalists, and Experimentalists are the main thought the give to didactics in general, such as methods, motivational objectives, etc.

The most sifnificant difference is the role the teacher and the student have in each model.

The student has e very passive and secondary role in the traditional model. This changes during the behaviorism towards a more active and even "critical" role. The final model sees the student as the main character of the teaching-learning process and puts the teacher behind the main scene.

Personal Reflection about the subject (workshop 3)

In this workshop I realize that Paulo Freire was one of the most important person in the history of education, primarily focusing, on the society, also he is well known as a sociologist who's main subject was the education as well.
During his life he published a book called the Pedagogy of the oppresed were he express how oppression has been justified and how it is overcome through a mutual process between the "oppressor" and the "oppressed"Examining how the balance of power between the colonizer and the colonized remains relatively stable, Freire admits that the powerless in society can be frightened of freedom. He writes, "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion". 
Freire leaves a very important topic of how a teacher must be in the classroom and how get the attention of this with new methodologies