Defining how we learn and how we think of learning has always been an important insight into how we want to promote cognitively and change behavior. Learning theory provides instructional designers with a variety of instructional strategies and techniques to facilitate learning, as well as the basis for strategy selection. The way of learning is very important, there are three most practical and efficient learning methods which are behavioralist, cognitivist and constructivist.
I grew up in China, in the old days, Chinese traditional learning is to transfer knowledge from teachers’ mind to students’ notebooks. After I understood what constructivism is, I love it. Constructivism is a branch of cognitive psychology. There are many interesting contents of constructivist theory, but the core of constructivist can be summarized in one sentence: it centers on student copy, emphasizing students’ active exploration of knowledge, and active discovery and active construction of the meaning of what they have learned. Let students as the center.
When I was in high school, there was a lesson that impressed me deeply. It was a biology class, learning about the life cycle of insects. Different insects have different habits and life cycles. To impress us with this knowledge, our teacher took us to a local entomological museum. Although I don’t really love biology class, this action made me very curious and look forward to knowing the knowledge of insects. In the entomological museum, I learned more about the subject of this class through the vivid explanation of the teacher and the explainer as well as my own observation. If these insects only appeared in pictures and textbooks, I might have no interest in learning about them and would not be active in memorizing them. Even after this class, I became very interested in insects. When I see a fly, I even look closely at its structure and behavior. This is the result of typical constructivism.
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