What Is the Connection between Theory and Practice - Essay Example

Assignments Pg. 17 – Chapter 2 2 What is the connection between theory and practice? Understanding theory allows a person to make better decisions regarding learning experiences and desirable outcomes. For example a consultant or any professional can better choose among various alternative solutions by having various theoretical backgrounds to choose from. Theories can help a person follow a learning path that is congruent with a person personal perspective and belief system. 2.2 Why should practitioners care about theory? Practitioners should care about theory for a variety of reasons. First of all when a practitioner is performing any type of research the person needs a starting point to establish their hypothesis, this starting point is based in theory and theories are the proof needed to help validate any hypothesis. Managers utilize theory in order to make assumptions which are utilized in their analysis of problems. Theories help people increased their understanding of literature and real world applications. 2.3 What is the essential difference between the concepts of education and learning? Education is an organized activity initiated by one or more individuals in order to help a person, group or community acquired a new set of abilities, skills and knowledge about a particular subject matter. It is different from learning because learning is the individual act of a particular and the action taken by this person in order to instill a behavioral change that leads to the acquisition of new attitudes, abilities, skills or knowledge among other factors that are learned. 2.4 What definition about learning or key points about learning presented in the chapter have the most meaning to you? Why? The learning concept depicted in the book that has the most meaning to me is that learning is that is it is a process by which an activity originates or it is changed that occurs through encounters with different situations provided that the characteristics of the change can not be explained by tendencies, maturation or temporary states of the organism. I like this definition because it eliminates or separates the learning process from personal habits. Chapter 8 pg.182 8.3. From your experience how does learning connect with performance? Speak of performance at various levels (Individual, work process, organizational)? There is direct correlation between learning and performance. From my own experience I’ve seen how learning things has allowed me to become a more efficient person at the various jobs I’ve had, in home shores and in my school work. An example of how learning allowed me to increase my productivity at work was a job a few ago. I worked as clothes salesperson in a department store. I got paid extra commission for sales above a minimum mandatory quota. I noticed how I learned to read the customer and what things they wanted to hear. After a couple of months my salary went up because I was making more income from sales commissions. I became a more productive employee. Many work process are learned by the person. Manual job of a repetitive nature are performed at greater productivity levels as the employee learns through time how to be more efficient. Organization become better at things due a concept called the learning curve. The more years a company is established, the more organizational knowledge that is acquired which leads to more leaning, greater productivity and higher profitability. 8.4 Discuss the relative use and difficulty of adults controlling the various learning phases (need, create, implement, and evaluate) The need phase of learning is at time difficult to control depending the profile of the person. The key in this phase is to have established goals in life. Once goals are establish then the needs are based on the things the person needs to learn to achieve those goals. Creating a strategy can lead to some confusion and decision making. For example a person that wants to obtain a college degree has a variety of option to choose from as far as schools or system. The person can choose to study on campus or may choose to take college course online. The next step is to implement the chosen strategy. Every person knows their capabilities and what environment is suitable for them in order to learn. A person may be better at learning by reading articles related to the subject matter, others may like going out in the field and learning about the subject, etc. The final phase is the evaluation phase. The learned needs to assess if actual learning took place during the learning journey the person embark on. An evaluation center is good way to access the skills a person has acquired after undergoing a learning process. Pg. 33 1. In your own words explain why is it important for instructional designers to be able to describe and explain the philosophical and theory basis on their field. Philosophical concepts and theory are the basic tool that create a basis that allow instructional designers to come with ideas for their work. Theory allows the professional in this field to get in touch with the history of its profession and with other scholars of the past as well as people currently practicing in the educational field as well as other professions. Theories and philosophical concepts are also the root that allows scholars, managers and any type of professional to solve problems. 2. Discuss how the major philosophies of constructivism/rationalism, empiricism, and pragmatism relate to behaviorism and cognitive behavior. The constructive/rationalism theories stipulate that behavior of people follows a path based on reason and the reality that surrounds people is constructed rather discovered. Constructive scholars believe that the perspective that learners bring to the learning situation may extend beyond what designers typically considered to be specific prior knowledge. A second theory is called the empiricism theory. This theory suggests that knowledge is acquired through time by the experiences people live. Reality is single and follows an objective path. A third theory is called pragmatism. This theory is a middle ground between the other two theories. Pragmatism believes knowledge is acquired through experience and it interpreted through reason in a tentative and temporary manner. 3. Describe the major differences between behaviorism and cognitive learning theories. Behaviorism views that the only things that are important about the human learning experience are things that can be observed. Cognitive learning theories are completely different that behaviorism views because they have a different focus. These theories focuses on explaining the development of cognitive structures, process are representation that mediate instruction and learning. 4. Ted is sitting in class listening to his teacher explain the difference between concepts “liberal” and “conservative”. Using the model of information processing described in this chapter, explain how this information flows through Ted’s cognitive processes and structures. Give particular attention to the processes of selective perception, encoding and retrieval. Ted is sitting in his chair looking and listening to the words being spoken by the teacher on the liberal and conservative subjects. According to information processing theory something is occurring inside Ted brain that allows him to process the information. In this case the teacher is the person sending the information to Ted via verbal communication. The messages travel in the in waves and Ted is the receptor of the sound waves. The first thing that occurs in Ted’s brain is a function called sensory register and selective perception. The ear is one of many sensory receptor of the brain that pickup the messages which originally go to brain and are sent to an area of the brain called the sensory register. A lot of information enters to the register sensory, but the brain selects perceives and fully process only information it perceives to be important. If the brain paid attention to certain messages and perceived it was important this means that the message enter the area of the brain called working memory or short term memory. The brain’s short term memory storage works very similar to RAM memory of a computer. All the information that is stored in the brain at some point in originally passed through a short term memory thought. The information may follow one of two paths. It can be disgarded by short term memory as unimportant information or it may be transferred to long-term memory. Long term memory is the most important process in the learning process. If the information enters this area it does not necessarily means a person will be able to retrieve the data when needed. Learning is a decoding process that allows humans to gain access to the data that is being stored in the brain main hard drive, long term memory. Pgs 146-148 1. Following are descriptions of events that occurred during a lesson. Identify whether the strategy leans more on the side of generative strategy (G) or a supplantive strategy (S). a. Students underline key points in a print based lesson (S) b. Students create their own mythical countries that exemplify the concept “facism” (G) c. Students watch a video based summary of factors leading to the civil war (S) d. Students select from a number of instances those that represent the concept “loose constructionism” (G) f. Student run a number of computer programs using subroutines and determine which procedural rules must be used to make programs that don’t “crash” (S) 2. Strategies A and Strategy B (Generative or Supplantive). Strategy A is more Supplantive. The teacher ran the show the entire lesson. The teacher provided the examples, the theory and the comparisons for the students to visualize the instruments and learned about them. Strategy B is more Generative because free thought and abstract thinking from the students perspective was incorporated into this lesson. 3. Discuss as completely as you can the comparative advantages and disadvantages of more generative and more supplantive strategies. Use examples from question 2 to provide context to your answer. Suppplantive strategies guide the students is direct path towards learning the things that are needed in a particular subject matter. Certain courses such as mathematics are better taught utilizing this strategy since numbers and problem follows a particular path towards a solution. There is no ambiguity involved in solving a math problem such as an integration problem in Calculus. In the first scenario / strategy of problem 2 the teacher demonstrates how to do something and then let the students practice by utilizing the method the teacher provided. The supplantive style has many attributes, but it also limits the student ability to think freely, it may become too structured and sometimes its methodology of following a particular path towards learning may bore students. Generative strategies open new doors and paths toward learning. The teacher demonstrates the lesson in a way that student get involved in the learning process and participate a lot. The student’s opinion is very valuable in this strategy and teachers are able to customize their lessons based on the input received from the students. The first student statement of strategy B of question number two demonstrates how the student pickup up a characteristic of the instrument himself and then asks the teacher about it in from of the class so everyone would learn this new information. This method is more diversified and gets students more involved. A great assumption is made with this strategy, which is that the students have some knowledge about the subject matter. Students starting out on a new subject of which they nothing about and had no idea about any would be group in which generative strategies would be inefficient. Read More