Attending
science classes is so beneficial; I have observed many different things.
Observing a teacher’s way, experience and model creates a critical thinking on
our thinking to judge him/her whether he/she is acting well or not, or if I was
on his/her shoes, would I act on that way or not… One important issue I could
value and analyze is the teacher’s model he/she uses. I have attended a biology class at grade eight in a private
school on my village at Al-Bekaa valley and observed the model the teacher have
used. It’s really funny to evaluate other teachers and learn from their experience!
When the teacher entered a class, he had
some types of routines by giving students few time to put their books in front
of them and prepare their stuffs (pens, Papers,…) and get ready for
explanation. The teacher alerted them that he will start explanation so the
whole eyes were looking on the board then. The lesson’s title was “Non Specific
Immune Response”. He started by an open-ended question from real life. Each
student was answering and responding with him, like how can we stay away from
pathogens? How can we protect our bodies against them?... Then made questions
more specific; who is responsible for defending these pathogens and keep us
safe from them?... by explaining each word’s meaning in Arabic. By this way,
the teacher put them in the mood of the lesson and made for them a general idea
about what the lesson is about to search for these questions and find the
answers through explanation. After that, the teacher started with the first
part of the lesson which is about the outer barrier on our body which is the
skin, later on inner barriers found in some body systems. While explaining new
ideas, he was asking students different questions triggering their previous
knowledge and building the new ones based on their experience. He followed this
strategy till the end of the explained information during that period.
It’s obvious that this teacher has used
the cognitive theory where he was applying different basic principles regarding
this theory. His learning and development strategy were based on learners
experience by recalling their prior knowledge through asking different
questions while explaining. Also, learners were constructing understanding in
an effort to make sense of experience so that their understanding was depending
on what they already know. It is important to create an atmosphere of
cooperation among students by discussing some answers and different point of
views specially the answers of the questions regarding their pre-knowledge, so
by this way, constructing understanding was facilitated by this way of social
interaction through loudly thinking among students. Furthermore, the real life
questions allowed students to do well what they practice doing and to link the
new explained information to many small details they faced through their daily
life, so that the learning experience they acquired is concrete and connected
to the real world. I can summarize what I observed about this theory is that
learners do not passively record what they see, hear, or read. Rather, they
build and construct understanding of these experiences that makes sense to
them, so that the understanding they construct depends on their existing
knowledge, and social interaction. In contradiction for behaviorism, where
learning occurs when a student respond to questions based on experience only
and where the number of correct responses depends on reinforcement and
punishment, which is on in my opinion, a traditional theory that needs some development
and adjustment.
Motivation to learn also requires an
orderly learning environment instruction that helps learners succeed on
activities they perceive. So success on these activities can be increased with
concrete and personalized examples, high levels of involvement, and detailed
feedback about learning progress. (Eggen & Kauchak, 2002). This what
cognitive theory serves where motivating students to answer and discuss their
ideas even if it’s wrong or irrelevant, but creating the sense of sharing,
discussing and challenging will lead them to reach new tasks and activities
easily and with high spirits. Sincero claimed that the cognitive learning theory explains
why the brain is the most incredible network of information processing and
interpretation in the body as we learn things (2001). So cognitive theory is
dependent on the work of our brains. By motivating students to answer, they
will bring their pre-information from their long term memory into the short
term memory, integrate it with the new information creating new ideas then send
it back for the long term memory. All shows the importance of using the
cognitive theory through our teaching systems.
As a conclusion, the cognitive theory
must be applied in teaching strategies to help our students build their ideas
and own critical thinking by making them able to analyze things around them.
Eggen and Kauchak claimed that teachers who believe that they can get students
to learn regardless of circumstances, who model their own interest in the
topics they teach, who are caring, and who have positive expectations for their
students increase students’ motivation to learn (2002). Thus a teacher must believe
on him/herself that a change can happen by their work and effort to make each
student able to observe and analyze everything around them they face through
their daily life.
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