Learning Journal Unit 2

PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

What I have learnt through this Unit....

Education For All

• education for all means all of the positive philosophy learning that includes educational exclusivity is totally contrary to youth in development work, which rests soundly on the notions of social justice for all.
• in development work educations for all is the keystone to successful youth.

Lifelong learning

• can be defined as all forms of and needs for learning , both within and outside the formal education system.
• the concept is overlaps with the concept of adult education because the latter illustrates the use of lifelong learning opportunities.
• adult are involved in both.
• not necessity to discuss lifelong separately.
• age is not the consideration.
• the philosophy of lifelong learning is meant to serve a purpose much broader economic necessity.
• formal education is considered a preparation for lifelong learning, for self-realisation. It has to impart skills, attitudes and interests and a whole set of personality characeteristic that will be enable learners to continue to extend their personal potential throughout life.
• lifelong learning is essential when combined with the ideas of autonomy, individual responsiblity and need to abolish privilege.
• the ability to select, plan, execute and evalute learning activities both from the individual and the social points views are the examples of the skill that relevant to the long term process of growth and development.
• Personality characeteristic that contribute to lifelong learning are self awareness, interest in the world, interest in other people and desire to achieve and internalise standards or criterior for making judgements.

Maturation and readiness to learn

• another important aspect to consider as part of a positive philosophy of learning.
• the physiological and psychological changes that occur with maturation are associated with various age levels and readiness to learn.
• the stage of development indicates : an individual's level if readiness , their ability to make use of instruction and the types of instruction that would motivate learners and help them achieve learning abjectives ( Piaget, Bruner and Erikson - mapping out the development states of infants, children, adolesencents and adults)
  

Learners Needs and Motivations

Motivated behaviour is characterised by :

• a high level of emotinal involvement
• energetic activity, and
• goal-directed behaviour

Motivated behaviour indicates that the individual is conscious or aware of a definite goal to be achieve. This awareness provides the context of an direction to behaviour.

Participation not Just Preparation

Adult should have the ability and right to participate in anything that affects them, especially their own learning which means more than just preparation for a job.

• The concept of education as preparation comes the connotations given to the word in different languages.
• Looking at the education as participation necessarily means that educator need to create an environment that is conducive to participation. (conducive environment)
• Learners gets the opportunity to contribute from personal experience . They function as resources within a cultural framework that is familiar to them .

Teaching as Guidance rather than Instruction

• The guidance model of education is one that is based on the principles of justice, liberty and personhood
• The concept of education as instruction conjures a picture of the learner as one who sits on a relatively passive fashion learning.
• When teaching is looked upon as guidance, the role of the teacher assumes a different focus.
• The purpose of the process is known to the educator, and it is their task to guide learners into the process, which in the case of the adult is necessarily a self educative process.

Discovery and Experiential Learning

Learning through experience enables learners to :

• discover satisfactory solutions to problems
• find out, independently, the methods used to : learn through discovery and arrive at solution to problems.

Learning Journal Unit 1

WHAT IS LEARNING ?

What I have learnt from this Unit ?

Learning is something that we want to study or have studied and get an opportunities from what we have learnt.

Learning can be define as :

" .. a relatively permanent change in the potential for performance as the result of our post interaction with the environment. (Lovell, K.1982)

".. a change in human disposition or capability which persists over a period of time, and which is not simply ascribable to process of growth. (Gagne, R.W., 1977)

".. the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of expereince. (Kolb,1984).

" .. the process which individuals go through as they attempt to change or enrich their knowledge, values, skills, strategies and behaviour possesed by each individual. (Brundagaend Macker, 1980).

What are the common elements in these Three of the definitions :
i. Lovel , Gagne and Brundage and Mackercher : use the term "change".
ii. Kolb : use the term " transformation".


Transformation is an important word because of its implications. An English Educator, J Britton said that for him learning consists of ...reconstucting your previous knowledge in a new form and then thinking about this new form and seeing where it needs.

Definition of learning indicate that :

• learning is a process and not an end result
• prevent learning is always based on previous learning, and
• learning is a continous process taking place throughout one's lifetime.
  

An Inner Process.

• Learning is a personal inner process. It is a process of internal change and can only be observed by others in the form of a change in behaviour or performance.

Performance.

• It is important to distinghuish between learning (the inner process) and performance (behaviour that is observable) by someone else). From a change in performance, we can infer that learning has taken place.
• Not everything what we have learnt will necessaily be demonstrated , eg: a child may have learned how to feed herself with a spoon, but chooses not to. There must internal or external motivation to perform.

Learning is not always the result of teaching.

• Learning does not necessarily take place as a result of teaching.
• Learning could be intentional or deliberate, but most occurs informally at an unconciuous level and may be unintentional.

Intentional learning (Formal learning)

Occur is a person consciously decides they want to acquire a skill or understanding and deliberately pursues it :

• through their own efforts, e.g. taking up a hobby of following up an interest in a library, or
• by taking a specific course of study.

Unintentional learning

Occurs all the time in informal settings and often goes unrecognised because we are not conscious of it. Many of skills, we take granted, like speaking our mother toungue, are the result of unintentional, unconscious laerning.

There are three main types of theories :

• simple behaviourist approaches that see learning in terms of stimulus and response
• cognitive theories on types of learning, information processing and memory, and learning to learn, and
• humanist theorist that focus on the individual and the importance of linking feelings and perceptions to thought.