Adopting and adapting
teaching and learning
styles
Neil Denby
Learning
Behavioural (Skinner, Thorndike)
• Learning is a change in observable behaviour
• Change existing classroom behaviours
• Shape observable learning outcomes
• Shape new skills
Four approaches
Contiguity
• Two stimuli become associated when they repeatedly
occur together
Classical conditioning
• The pairing of an automatic response (emotional)
(positive or negative) with a certain stimulus
Operant conditioning
• The type and timing of reinforcement affects learned
behaviour
Social learning
• Learning by observing other behaviours
Contiguity
• Two stimuli become associated when they
repeatedly occur together
Task: Give examples from your subject
• Matching games, battleships, missing words,
bingo, concentration-type games
• Discourage incorrect matches: It is imperative
that wrong notions are not initially given!
Classical conditioning
The pairing of an automatic response (emotional)
(positive or negative) with a certain stimulus
e.g.:
• Fear, anxiety, worry – associated with ‘difficult’
concepts, examinations, etc. …
• Confidence, pride, comfort associated with ‘easy’
concepts, ‘fun’ lessons
Task: Give examples from your subject
Learning experiences …
• Enjoyable, positive so that positive outcomes are
associated with the subject
• Learning tasks must be hard enough to challenge,
but not so hard that failure is inevitable
• Use cooperative team structures to establish new
ideas
• Minimise individual competition (tests are for
progress, not competition)
• Use familiar and relevant case study material so
that study is associated with everyday life
Operant conditioning
The type and timing of reinforcement affects
learned behaviour, e.g.:
• An unpredictable series of reinforcement promotes
persistence at a learning task
• Reward good ‘learning’ behaviour
• Reinforce new learning: Apply previously learned
knowledge to a local issue or make relevant by collecting
current data
• Use unpredictable reinforcement
• Use plenty of praise when learning new concepts
(construction of praise is important – give reasons)
• Surprise tests are better than scheduled ones
Social learning
Learning by observing other behaviours.
(attention; retention; reproduction; motivation):
• Attention is paid to things that are interesting,
exciting, enthusiastic, engaging
• Use of props, newspaper clippings, stories
• Reproduction: Model behaviour to be reproduced
(‘talking through’ difficult concepts)
• Motivation: Positive reinforcement – grades, marks,
praise motivates
Cognitive
• Change in observable behaviour is a reflection of
a more important internal change
• Learning is the result of one’s attempts to make
sense of the world
• Learner is an active source of plans, goals,
intentions and emotions, which are used to sort
incoming stimuli and construct meaning and
knowledge
• Cognitive learning is often experiential
(Piaget et al.)
Experiential learning
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On-the-job experience
Mini enterprise
Role play
Problem solving:
o Understand the problem
o Have enough prior knowledge to solve the problem
o Visually portray the problem
• Encourage role taking and opinion forming
• Encourage different perspectives
• Encourage ownership
Perception and attention
Which stimuli are attended to, and which are
ignored? Depends on:
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Rules
Knowledge
Patterns
Beliefs
Expectations
Give examples from your own subject
Different perceptions
• Different outputs possible from the same input
(different perceptions)
• Teachers (you) can help pupils to attend to (focus on)
relevance
• Provide a context:
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Purpose and main ideas of the lesson
Repeat and review main ideas
State ideas in student’s own words
Identify important central concepts and supporting
examples
• Use of headings and sub-headings
Arouse curiosity
For each of the following, give examples from
your own subject:
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Use surprise
Use novel ideas or approaches
Set up a puzzle or open-ended issue
Raise a question or issue before
knowledge/answer
Memory
Information storage consists of:
• Words, concepts, skills, strategies (verbalised)
• Pictures, imagination (images)
• Meanings, perceptions (interpretation)
Networks
• Networks of ideas, etc., form the basis of
memory, and are reinforced with examples,
relationships and sub-concepts
• New ideas are integrated into the existing
network
Retrieval
Help students to retrieve prior knowledge before
proceeding
For each of the following, give examples from your
own subject:
• Brainstorm existing knowledge
• Hierarchical classification (what I knew, what I know
now, both together)
• Pupils make mental images of new ideas
• Rephrase, give examples, develop graphic
representations
• Pupils to be active participants