Piaget Theory

   Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is made up of four stages.  The first stage is from birth to two years of age and is called the sensorimotor stage.   The baby learns to coordinate seeing and hearing with movement.  The second one is six to seven years of age, which is named as the preoperational stage.   During this stage the child understands objects and images.  Next is the concrete operational stage, which starts at age eleven and ends at age twelve.   The child can develop proper logic.  The last stage is from age twelve to adulthood, which is called the formal operations stage.   When the individual is faced with a problem he/she is able to contemplate all possible answers which are called hypothetic-deductive reasoning.

Lev Vygotsky theory

 

    Lev Vygotsky was a soviet psychologist that came up with term Zone of Proximal Development or “ZPD”.  This term identifies the range of tasks that a child can properly complete with or without the guidance and assistance of a parent or more capable child.  If the child has a lower the limit of ZPD a child has is the higher their ability to work independently.  If the child has a higher limit of ZPD then he/she has a lower ability to work without guidance and assistance.  Scaffolding is very similar to this but it’s the adjusting of guidance depending on the child recent performance.  An example of this would be a parent teaching a child how to ride a bike by keeping them balanced on the seat while the child pedals.  As the child learns how to balance on the bike while pedaling the parent slowly lets go as the child adjust to the ability to keep balance and pedal at the same time.

Attribution Theory

 

The Attribution Theory is the theory that individuals feel the need to explain the world to others and ourselves.  We tend to explain the cause of the events that takes place in the world thus giving us a sense of control.  This theory is made up of three elements.  The first element is called locus or the location of cause.  This means that when we are successful we are overcome with a feeling of pride but when we fail are self esteem becomes diminished.  The second element is called stability, which deals with the expectations of the future.  This means that if we attribute out failure with the difficulty of what we have failed we will expect to fail in the future.  The third level is controllability, which is the control of the cause.  If we fail a task we can’t really control we feel shame or anger.

Kohlberg Theory

Lawrence Kohlberg created the stages of moral development. In this theory explains that moral reasoning has six developmental stages.  Kohlberg theory was further grouped into three levels with two stages each. The first level is called the pre-conventional. The first stage of this level is obedience and learning how to avoid punishment and the second is the self-interest where the individual is motivated by moral judgment that satisfies his/her own needs. The second level is called the conventional level. The first stage is the avoidance of disapproval or rejection of others. The second stage is more focused on a need not to be criticized by authority. The final level is called post-conventional. The first stage is motivated by the respect of social order and laws.  The second stage is motivated by an individual’s conscience. It is said that you cannot regress in stages nor can you skip stages because each stage provides new perspective.

Carroll’s Theory

In 1962 John Carroll presented the model of school learning. It explained the effort spent in relation to the effort needed. There were six elements to this model. It started with aptitude, which is defined as the time needed. Then it translates into 4 different elements. The first is the opportunity to learn which is the time available to learn in and outside the classroom. The second is the ability to understand instruction that is given, which depends on the learning skills of the student. The third is the quality of instructional events, which means if quality of instruction is bad time needed to complete a task, will increase. The last is perseverance, which is the time a student is willing to spend learning. From these four elements only one output element is present which academic achievement is. He also wrote “The model of school learning assumes that students differ in the amount of learning time they need. If these differences are to be adequately taken account of, considerable skill in classroom management is required of teachers”.

Maslow’s theory

The lowest stage of Maslow’s stage of personality development is physiological which is the most basic. For example it deals with the needs of food, water, and sleep. The next step is safety, which is the security of health, property and employment. The third level is love, which has to do with family and friendship. The fourth level is esteem which focuses on confidence and acceptance. The last level is very similar and is called self-actualization, which deals with the acceptance of facts creativity and morality. Self-actualization is a strong desire of fulfillment and full realization of one’s potential and capabilities. In order to achieve self-actualization all basic needs are must be met. You come into the realization of what you’re capable of becoming.

Pavlov's Theory

A Russian physiologist and researcher Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning.  Classical conditioning is the type in which a neutral stimulus comes to bring about a response after it’s paired with a stimulus that naturally brings out that response.   Classical conditioning is a step-by-step process that starts with a neutral stimulus (NS), which is a stimulus that produces no response.  Then the neutral stimulus is combined with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), which is a stimulus that naturally initiates a response thus resulting in an unconditioned response (UCR). Next a conditioned stimulus is created it (CS).  A conditioned stimulus is the end result of a neutral stimulus that was added to an unconditioned stimulus.  Finally this stimulus results in a conditioned response (CR), which is the learned response.  An example of the process of classical conditioning is if your ex-lover always wore a certain brand of cologne now every time you smell that scent you think of him/ or her and are overcome by a feeling of sadness.  The neutral stimulus is cologne.  The unconditioned stimulus is your ex-lover.  The unconditioned response is you associating your ex-lover to that fragrance. The conditioned stimulus is associating your ex-lover to that fragrance every time you smell it.  The conditioned response is a feeling of sadness every time you smell that aroma.

Hawthorne Effect

           The Hawthorne Effect is a form of reactivity in which an individual becomes more productive as a result of being singled out. The term Hawthorne effect comes from a factory called Hawthorne Works where experiments on factory workers took place from 1924 to 1932. The experiment was to see if the workers became more productive in higher levels of light rather than a lower level of life. An example for the Hawthorne effect is the video that my teacher showed the class with the people jaywalking in the middle of the street. A lower amount of people jaywalked when the kid held up the poster board telling them don’t jaywalk. This means that people don’t do certain things when they are being watched or feel like they are receiving unwanted attention.

Operant conditioning

Operant conditioning is a method of modifying behavior by rewarding or punishing an individual. The well-known behaviorist B.F Skinner brought about this method. There are four main contexts of operant conditioning. In these four contexts the words positive and negative mean the addition or subtraction of a stimulus. The first is positive reinforcement, which is when a rewarding stimulus is granted after behavior. Negative reinforcement is when an aversive stimulus is removed after the correct behavior takes place. The third is positive punishment is when a behavior is followed by a bothersome stimulus thus resulting into a decrease of that particular behavior. The fourth procedure is negative punishment, which occurs when a bad behavior is followed by a removal of a positive stimulus in order to correct behavior.

Student centered

 

Student centered learning is defined as the focus on the needs of students. It’s centered on the implications of what the child is interested in doing, the happiness of the child and how the teacher is able to accommodate the student’s wants and needs. The student becomes the most active and important role because they are given a lot more power in the classroom. Students also have an active participation in the evaluation of their own learning. This learning method is believed to increase student motivation, peer communication, parent teacher relations and decrease disruptive behavior. The student centered learning method has also been considered effective in higher education. Overall scholars learn how to behave and interact in a respectful way in a much more carefree environment.

Teacher centered

Teacher centered learning is the most common form of learning in the classroom. The teacher is the most active role and students’ fall into more of a receptive role in the classroom. The instructor has the responsibility of monitoring, instructing, and disciplining the students. Their responsibility doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to assist the students with the work they have given them. A lot of teachers may tend to lecture rather than discuss the curriculum. This method of learning has a lot of advantages. One important advantage is the discipline that it teaches students. When a teacher is in charge of a classroom an order of respect and superiority is formed and the student is forced to address the teacher in a certain manner. Another important advantage is that teacher is the expert learner in the classroom and therefore when having control of the students’ knowledge can be passed on in the most accurate way possible.

Freedom writers

My reaction on the movie freedom writers was very good. The movie taught me how different races act when they need to protect their self’s from gangs and other violent people. In this movie these students was giving a wonderful teacher that was able to help them see the light to a future. These students did not see their self graduating high school or even making it to the next age. The teacher change their whole prospective of the world. For example with the girl and how she felt that begin in a gang was the only way she will make it far and get respect from her father. I feel that was just bad parenting. The teacher gave every student a book and told them to write in to the book everyday what ever you feel like writing and they did. I feel that the writing really helped them over come there life problem. For example when something is wrong with a person they want to get it off their chest because when they keep it in the problem only hurt them more. This was a really good movie and I learned a lot.