Motivational Factors

Motivational factors are all around in the classroom. Throughout my internships and practicum so far I have seen quite a few examples. The first one that really sticks out to me is goals. I was in a 1^st and 3^rd grade classroom. At the beginning of the year, both teachers talked with their classes about what the classroom goals were. They talked through each one and modeled what each one would look like throughout the year. At first the teachers were a little easy on the rules, but as the year went on they got more and more strict. On the list of goals was another motivational factor, respect for the teacher. Respect for the teacher seems to be a big one in classrooms. I have also seen cases where home environment plays a role in how students behave during the school day. This is where teacher as student relationships come into play. One of my teachers that I was working with noticed that things were not great at home for one of her students so she formed a great relationship with that student. I know there are many more factors that play into the everyday classroom, but those were a quick few that I had time for  J

Something I do, but don't know why...

Something I do ALL the time and don’t know why would have to be when I  see a car that looks like someone else’s I know I check to see if they are the person driving it. I clearly know that my friends are not in town right now because they are all at different colleges, but for some reason I look anyway. It also never fails that when I notice it is not them I am somewhat disappointed, as if I expect them to come surprise me or something.  I love my friends, so it makes sense that I look for them, but really aren’t I smarter than that? I guess I could connect this by CLT maybe, but that could be a little shaky. My schema tends to tell me that my friends are still here, just like they were this summer. It also helps me recognize the same color and make of cars that they drive when I see them around, hence why I look for my friends when I see those specific cars. My schema hasn’t caught up to the fact that they are no longer here and won’t be back unless they visit until Christmas break.  Until it decides to catch up, I will probably still continue to look for them in those cars. Other than possibly connecting that to CLT, I guess I don’t really know how else to connect it to any of the other learning theories.

Thinking Out Loud

When Professor Kruse asked us to blog this week about how a friend would explain a topic we would someday like to teach I thought the assignment was easy. I decided to pick a broad subject hoping to get lots of information from my roommate. However, as I later found out picking my roommate who is working on a biology major might not have been such a great idea.

                I asked my roommate for 5 minutes of her time, and she willingly agreed thinking it was to talk about our normal subjects we tend to bitch about. However when I explained to her that I needed her to tell me everything she knew about sociology she seemed a little less interested. She explained to me that the only background knowledge she could go off of was what she learned back in high school. These were the things she recalled and could tell me about:

·         Studying serial killers and they way other people think their brains work

·         Studying different cultures

·         Sociology is related to psychology

·         Studying human behavior within a society

·         What people see as “norms” and how they make their lifestyles fit into those norms.

We could hold a pretty good conversation about those topics, and I think she used some of the learning theories we have talked about a little bit, obviously without knowing she was using them. The theory that jumps right out at me is CLT, because my friend used her schema and background knowledge to tell me about what she remembered learning in high school. She was able to connect the information she already knew with information that I supplied her with during our conversation. I think she also used SLT, but I could be stretching that a little bit. She really emphasized that sociology is studying how people interact with other people and everything else around them. She even knew some facts that I hadn’t learned in my sociology class, so she became the “more knowledgeable peer” at one point. Overall, she gave me some good information and key points that she remembered, but next time I think I will test these theories on someone else. Sorry roomie.

Any Topic

Given the choice to pick any topic for this week’s blog post I decided that I would pick psychology and the men who came up with all of the theories we are now taught today in intro to psychology classes. The four men that we learn the most about are Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotski. These men all have different theories that students need to memorize if they plan on being a psychology or education major. So using DLT and SLT to teach the theories to them could be very helpful when trying to get the information across.


When using DLT to teach them about these men I obviously could not give them a complete concrete representation, because the concrete representation would be to actually have the men in my classroom. However, we all know that they are all dead, and therefore could not be present during the lesson. Professor Kruse said that next to the real thing would be a video and picture. So I think I would split my students into groups and supply them with four pictures, one of each theorist, and their four names. Then I would give them a few minutes to try to match the picture and name correctly without giving them any background information on any of them. Then I would pick one theorist after the other to teach and go down the DLT spectrum. After getting through all four theorists and their theories I would then try to review in the most concrete terms possible, in order to try to get the information I just taught to stick in my students heads. Of course I’m sure just doing so wouldn’t be enough for my students to remember everything after one time of talking about it, so multiple lessons of reviewing the information would be necessary.

When using SLT to teach my students about the Theorists and their views, I would be considered the “more knowledgeable peer.” This means that I have / know all of the information I want my students to learn and retain. Therefore, when teaching I would need to put emphasis on the language I use and how I use it to construct my lesson. I would also need to interact with my students by walking around the room, answering any questions they have, and finding ways to help them understand my information in terms that they can relate to and already understand. Hopefully by doing so, some of my students will retain the information I teach them, and also become more knowledgeable peers to their classmates. If so, then the students who understand can help the students who don’t better than I can.

In a perfect world using DLT and SLT to teach this lesson would go smoothly, but we all know that doesn’t always happen. I really hope that when I have to teach those four theorists someday my students catch on quickly, or at least some of them do so that way they can help me teach.

DLT informs all aspects of teaching

The last few class periods have been mostly about Developmental Learning Theory, which to me is sometimes a hard concept to grasp. There doesn’t seem to be an exact definition for DLT on the internet, and when we try to come up with a definition in class Professor Kruse often directs our attention to something else which makes defining DLT unclear. At one point during our last class period I found myself being confused after we had been given multiple questions to talk about with our table groups. Maybe it takes me longer to process all of this DLT information, but slowly I’m sure I will get the hang out it.


Our question for this week was: how does DLT inform all aspects of teaching? When I first thought about this question right after class I couldn’t quite get what Professor Kruse was getting at. For example, what exactly does the word “inform” mean in this case? I came up with inform meaning to supply knowledge, but how do I know that is right? Of course there are many meanings for the word inform, just like there seems to be with DLT. We were told that DLT is a representation, meaning it represents how the topic being taught is explained. So I am guessing that the question is asking how Developmental Learning Theory represents and supplies knowledge about aspects of teaching. However, teaching can be anything and everything, so there could be many answers to this question.

Supplying knowledge to students across all aspects of teaching seems like it would possibly take more time to explain than the teacher might have time for. The teacher would have to find a way to represent the information in a concrete way so their students could grasp the idea at first. Then he or she could slowly move across the spectrum using more abstract ideas. The instructor could do so by introducing videos, pictures, and more text into their lesson plan. However, if these abstract ideas are introduced to the students too soon, then they might not be able to fully grasp all parts of the given information like the teacher would like. Using DLT can not only help the teacher find ways to give new information to their students, but it can also help allow students to learn information in multiple ways.