Week Four

 Provide a brief summary of your understanding of the three learning theories introduced in the readings (behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism). How can you connect these learning theories with the models of curriculum (product, process, and praxis in particular) that we have discussed? What learning theories did you see reflected in your own schooling experiences?

As I've noticed throughout all the reading this week, the three learning theories are really linked to the models of curriculum. Firstly, behaviorism, as I've read about on the BC Campus site, is the idea that certain behavioral responses become associated in a mechanistic and invariant way with specific stimuli. I thought it was important to note that behaviorism puts an emphasis on reward and punishment as drivers of learning and on pre-defined and measurable outcomes, and generally rejects reference to unmeasurable states, such as feelings, attitudes, and consciousness. Ralph Tyler was a behavioral psychologist, and we connect him to the curriculum as a product. It makes complete sense because, in behaviorism, there's an expected result just like how product has expectations of student learning. 
Cognitivism, on the other hand, identifies mental processes that are considered essential for human learning. I'm reminded of curriculum as a process when I read about cognitivism because an individual is seen as an active agent in the learning process, deliberately trying to process and categorize the stream of information fed into him by the external world, and we're trying to make sense of this as teachers. Essentially, cognitivism looks at the factors and influences that make a student learn the way they learn, and curriculum as a process tells us there's an interaction or a collaboration between teachers and students on the knowledge they share. Cognitivism also reminds me a little of curriculum as praxis because in studying an individual's mental processes, we might see social factors and influences from their environment.

Constructivists emphasize the importance of consciousness, free will, and social influences on learning. This argues that meaning or understanding is achieved by assimilating information, relating it to our existing knowledge, and cognitively processing it. I think constructivism is a blend of curriculum as a process and praxis. Not only is there the statement that constructivists believe learning is seen as essentially a social process, requiring communication between learner, teacher, and others, but they also believe individuals consciously strive for meaning to make sense of their environment in terms of past experience and their present state.

I've experienced a lot of behaviorism during my school career. Here's an example: my French immersion classes all used this ticket reward system under different names, but they all reward students who continue to show a willingness to speak French outside of French classes. Actually, the whole school implemented a bigger reward system for doing good deeds. These reward systems put forth the idea that in order to receive this reward, the student must first fulfill the expected behavior.