Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Week 8, Human Development-How can a teacher effectuate learning?
I think it is important for a teacher to present students with various and challenging learning opportunities that allow students to use the cognitive skills that they posses at their operational level, and that will stretch those abilities. By stretching these abilities they can start transitioning into more advanced operational stages. Refering back to the example of my four year old daughter (see previous post), my wife and I are trying to challenge my daughters current abilities so that she can start to transition into concrete operations. We are trying to accomplish this by teaching her concepts such as sharing with others. Sharing can be hard for her sometimes, but when she does, we try to show her how it makes others happy and how rewarding it can be to help other people be happy. By teaching her the concept of sharing, she is able to start looking outside of herself, and see things from other perspectives. This whole process that we are taking her through is stretching her current abilities and helping her to progress toward more concrete operations.
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It sounds as if you have a really great understanding of Piaget's Human Development theorys. I like the example of your daughter and the way you as parents are helping her learn the concept of sharing with others. You are indeed helping her stretch her ideas and develop important concrete operations.
ReplyDeletethat is very interesting about you teaching your daughter to share. Parents play such a big role in their children's cognitive development.
ReplyDeleteI think good teachers look for teaching moments anytime they can. I know I do it all the time. Be it with my own child, peers, family, or friends, I constantly look for ways to relate challenges we face to how what we do affects our future. This could be as simple as teaching someone a concrete skill such as changing a light bulb. Once they do it once, then they can do it again.
ReplyDeleteIt could also entail teaching appropriate communication skills to a young person. When a preshcooler uses inappropriate tones, it is very feasable to stop the presses and use that moment to teach why that may be inapproprite.
I have worked at a couple different rehab/treatment centers. Utilizing teaching moments seems to be one of the most effective ways to teach adolescents. When the world stops, for just that moment, and the spotlight is on them - even if they respond poorly - they will take something out of it.