Mini-Analysis: Basic Principles of Learning Theory

Topic: Basic Principles of Learning Theory

Audience:
This course will be designed as a refresher course for elementary school teachers currently working in the field. Secondary audiences could be undergraduate students pursuing degrees in education and first year teachers.

Mini-Analysis:
I created a “Basic Learning Theory Inventory” and gathered responses by phone from seven teachers with various backgrounds. A majority of these teachers have been working in the classroom for five years or more. The survey consisted of 65 multiple choice questions and 39 matching questions.

Here is a sample of questions from the survey:
•How actively engaged and interested are your students in their own learning?
•How often are you able to facilitate student learning on an individual level with the
same child within a week?
•In your opinion, what percentage of your school’s curriculum is best for children
according to learning theory?
•How often do your students get to choose what to learn about?
•How often do you feel that learning is rushed, where the teacher must move to the
next lesson regardless of whether or not all students have achieved mastery?
•How often do your students teach each other?
•How many times per day do you need to stop what you are doing to redirect
student behavior?
•How often do your students use technology in the classroom?
•On the whole, you most frequently base your grades on which of the following…
•How often do you use rubrics?
•How often are your students allowed to grade themselves?
•On average, how many minutes does it take for you to transition from one subject
to another?
•What percentage of teachers at your school would you consider to be high quality
teachers?
•Which of these learning theories do you identify with most?

The matching section asked teachers to match various theorists with their respective research interests. Theories were grouped from the oldest to the newest. I asked that instead of guessing, teachers give responses to only pairs they were sure about.

Results:
•100% of teachers surveyed felt that a majority of their students were actively
engaged and interested in their own learning from 70 to 90%
of the time.
•57% were only able to facilitate individual learning with the same student twice per
week.
•57% believed that 71 to 80% of their school’s curriculum was best for children
according to learning theory.
•86% stated that their students almost never got to choose what to learnabout.
•71% felt that learning was rushed where lessons moved on without giviing
adequate time for mastery.
•86% responded that children were able to teach each other sometimes, but not too
often.
•71% of teachers had to stop what they were doing to redirect student behavior
more than five times per day.
•86% responded that students were able to use technology in the class room twice
per week or less.
•71% based their grades on multiple choice.
•71% used rubrics for grading half of the time or less.
•28% often allowed students to grade their own work, and the rest sometimes or
never did.
•71% needed three minutes or more to transition between subjects.
•28% of teachers felt that 81% or more teachers at their school could be
considered high quality educators.
•100% of teachers were unsure which learning theories they identified with most.
•Teachers were able to successfully match 8 of the 39 pairs.
•The theories of Maslow, Freud, Bloom, and Gardner were the most often recognized
of the 8.
•Therefore, 100% of the teachers did not recognize 31 of 39 theorist/theories.(80%)

Application:
Based on these results, I would like to design a distance learning refresher course for teachers that will help them to remember and apply educational psychology in the classroom. Some teachers vaguely remembered hearing about the older theories in college. However, most teachers had not heard or read much about learning theory since graduating from college and could not recognize newer models. Therefore, I would also use the course to bring veteran teachers up to date on current research in the profession.