Learning Theories? How do they and have they impacted me in my education journey?

When thinking about my past and current experiences as a student and teacher I can point to a couple key moments where I had big “Aha” moments. These specific experiences completely changed and in some cases strengthened pre-existing ideologies I had or have about education. Reflecting on these experiences it is clear that many learning theories were and are extremely relevant in what has shaped my current ideologies.

I have always come from a very behaviorist centered style of learning through my childhood where things were meant to be practiced and imitated countless times. Especially coming from an Asian background, my mom reinforced this heavily. However, I have always felt that my learning could have been improved greatly had I been given more autonomy and creativity to my learning process. It was not until I got to university that I really experienced any constructivism or cognitive approaches to learning. This is a very significant reason why I wanted to become a teacher and a language arts teacher in the first place. I felt that I could make a difference and improve on many of my experiences that I had myself as learner.

Unbelievably old photo of me back in my varsity playing days…

Basketball and sports has been a significant part of my life since I was little and through playing and coaching I saw countless different ways to learn and educate yourself. Thinking back to my days playing on a varsity sports team, elements of behaviorist theory were thoroughly ingrained in my mind, to the point where many things became second nature to me. Being a varsity player I experienced a fairly old school way of learning from my coaches, where rather than learning to think on my own and constructing my knowledge, like in cognitive and constructivist approaches to teaching, I did what I was told to a tee and did not question it whatsoever. Specifically, in practice we would practice the same plays, with little to no freedom in what we were doing, completely adopting our coaches ideas and style rather than developing our own styles and ideas.

Video of me now reliving glory days 😅

Another significant experience for me has not been as a learner, but as a mentor and teacher for English second language(ESL) students. Teaching ESL has been an incredible experience for me and is personal to a certain extent because of my mixed heritage of Chinese and Canada. Thinking of the ways I have tried to teach my classes, I have always thought of an easy-going environment and student centered learning as core things I wanted to have in my identity of a teacher. These things directly correlate to many of the core learning theories such as behaviorist, cognitive and constructivist. It goes to show that despite my gripes in my earlier days with some behaviorist learning elements, for me implementing aspects of all of them has been the key for my teaching identity.

I did not want to show any pictures of my students here without their consent, so here is a fun image of a multicultural ESL logo 🙃

Especially when teaching ESL I try to make learning English something is fun and something that they can do during their everyday life, and not something that they have to go and copy and paste and forget by the next class. Encouraging my students to do things they already do, but to try to do them in English, such as use social media (In their case WeChat), playing video games or watching their favorite T.V. shows.  These things correlate directly to some of the B.C. curriculum for language arts. Specifically, when talking about big ideas such as story and language can be a source of creativity and joy. Writing and doing assignments that the students are invested, rather than something they could not care less about, always in my mind takes learning to the next level. As well looking at components of the curriculum where texts are socially, historically and culturally constructed is another huge concept for me when teaching ESL. Taking short stories that are relevant to the students own personal experiences is another thing that I try to do.

This is an example of kinds of text that have been used to try to relate to the students own experiences: TwoKindsByAmyTan

Overall, the my experiences have had numerous connections to the learning theories that are being introduced to us in our program, and it will only enhance and improve my identity as a teacher. Especially, when considering many of the core big ideas found in the B.C. language arts curriculum.

Thanks for reading

Mat 😊