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.
It's always interesting to see how other people think of topics in completely different ways than we do. I had to laugh when I read the first point about serial killers. But like you said, she was using CLT and relying on her previously learned schemas to try to give you the information you were asking for.
ReplyDeleteI also like the fact that you said she became the more knowledgeable peer at some points of the conversation. I think this is an important point to keep in mind. Just because we will be the teachers in our classrooms doesn't mean that we can't still learn a lot from our students. There may be a student in our class that has a personal experience about the topic we are teaching that they can share with the class to provide them with a better understanding of the topic.
haha sad to hear that you did not enjoy the assignment too much! :( However, I was not assigned to do this particular blog, so I'm not too sure if I would have had access to a better topic either. lol Overall, from my understanding, even though you did not want to discuss the topic at hand, you still learned soemthing from your roommate. That's what really counts! :)
ReplyDeleteIt's very helpful to see that in everything we learn we can point out examples of each learning theory. Though I have to take a step back and think about it sometimes, it's reassuring to know that the learning theories can easily inform our teaching. Using them effectively will be the key thing. If I were the person asking I would be interested to hear more about how my roommate learned these facts and how she remembered them. Did she simply read a text book and memorize the needed facts for a class or was it class discussion. Looking into this history could serve as more examples of how the learning theories help students learn and remember information for more than a few days or months.
ReplyDeleteInstead of saying your friend "used" the learning theories, consider how "Learning theories would explain her thinking by saying..." more accurately reflects what learning theories do. This is not huge point, but something worth considering.
ReplyDeleteYou picked an interesting subject to ask your friend to explain because sociology is a subject that I've seen taught without any consideration to Developmental Learning Theory. I'm interested as to why your friend remembered some things but forgot others. Regarding Constructivist Learning Theory, I have to wonder if what she recalled was correct or just part of her schema that wasn't reconstructed by an instructor.
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