Ganama, J.Z.

My Personal Learning Theory

April 1st, 2019
My personal learning theory evolves somewhat every time I write about it. Today, I will be looking at it from a much more personal point of view. Here goes…

I think people have an internal barometer that guides their learning. Using my own experience, I am going to say learning works most for me when I am not afraid of appearing stupid or asking questions. I just want to be able to say, ‘hey, this is what I know and this is what I don’t know.’ Like when I was a kid, I would ask why the sky was blue and where babies came from. There was such a naiveté about my learning back then but there was also some form of sincerity in that. It was all organic. I think largely it was because I wasn’t burdened with imposed expectations (of myself or from others) and I just wanted to know for knowing sake. As I’ve grown up, I’ve come to terms with multiple motives for learning. To please our parents, to please society, to move forward in our careers, to satisfy curiosities, because we are information junkies and so on. However, perhaps stripping all of this other learning motives and focusing on the essence might make the process be as effective as it is utopic.

So how can this effective form of learning be achieved? Allow me to look to the world of habits and productivity for inspiration. Some known web names in this space are Malcolm Gladwell, Leo Babauta and Cal Newton. These aren’t academic researchers in the field, just folks who have been writing on these kinds of topics long enough to have some authority on it. One common thread that has emerged is their understanding that habits develop over time. The most effective way to develop a habit is to make one little change consistently until it sticks, rather than a radical behavior overhaul. For instance, when setting fitness goals, it is easier to start by walking one minute a day, then two minutes, and gradually increasing the intensity/frequency. We are less likely to give up that way. Borrowing on this precept, can we consider the learning to be a habit then? If this is the case, it means we can handle information slowly, chewing on a little bit at a time until we become more adept at dealing with more. This outlook has accents of conditioning from the behaviorism family all over it.

Another viewpoint that is just as important is the reward aspect of learning. Using the fitness analogy, one can only walk so much without seeing a difference before he or she starts to wonder. The benefits don’t have to be physical as obviously expected, some people may be doing it for the mental aspects or otherwise. My point is, these people may be more likely to disengage if they are not getting anything out of it. One can argue that even the most altruistic acts in life have some self-serving aspects to them; e.g the feeling of being needed. I digress. Long term learning can be enhanced if there is some personally rewarding aspect to the learner. When grad schools ask for personal statements, I guess this is what they are essentially aiming for but in a bit more dressed up attire, isn’t it? They want to ascertain that we have what it takes to pursue knowledge at such an advanced level. This self-efficacy approach is an imprint that Bandura addresses in his social cognitive theory. There is also another widely cited seminal work by Zimmerman and Manuel on the subject.

All of this said, I propose first my understanding of learning, and then my personal learning theory.

When does learning occur? When there is a shift from not knowing to knowing. This could be as simple as asking about somebody’s name or as complex as studying the biological make up of aliens. Whenever we get new information that we weren’t previously familiar with, we have learned. I realize this maybe a tad simplistic but I hope it makes sense. Of course this isn’t even strictly relegated to knowledge in the theoretical sense, but in skills as well. E.g a child learning to walk, to talk, to ride a bike. Sometimes learning isn’t occurring in the space where there is complete unfamiliarity with the subject. It could also occur when the degree of familiarity increases. So cue the example about a toddler learning to walk. They do not just take ten steps at a time, they take one, then may be three and eventually they are running and we wish for the days when they were immobile (only half-kidding, sort of). It could be the same with knowledge, we could learn the definition today, an example tomorrow, another form of application the next and so on.

Learning is an all-encompassing process that requires that totality of ones experiences as a human to handle information. This handling process involves,
- creation: ability to put out information into the world
- perception: ability to read information from the world
- comprehension: ability to understand and process information
- retention: ability to retain information in the long term
This means of information handling isn’t strictly delineated in practice. It is more of a continuum than a process with finite starting and end points. Also, the combination of these facets (creation, perception, comprehension and retention) could be engaged in simultaneously. For instance, one could be perceiving and creating in a single event e.g music production.

Learning requires the totality of our being, we bring all of who we are subconsciously or consciously into the learning space. How we see life, how we live, our attitudes, our make up all inform how we learn. And though we can perhaps group learners based on some shared patterns we have observed, actual learning varies from person to person. I am not saying that no two people learn exactly alike. I am not saying the opposite either. I am just saying that an individualized learning experience is far too nuanced to be succinctly captured in one brush stroke. We see things differently, interpret differently, so it is not far fetched to presume that we could also learn just as differently.

My personal learning theory then is that we learn best when we handle information a little bit at a time and when that information personally serves us; the manner in which this happens is unique to each individual. Much of this school of thought is shared by gestalt theorists.
On Behaviorism

March 1st, 2019

My understanding about the behaviorist learning theory is this, if we are our observable actions, then learning-wise; the measure of our learning is judged by it’s visibility. Put another way, the more we appear to learn, then the more we have learned. This is like the proverbial duck test; ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.’ This school of thought assumes that everything ‘above the hood’ is just as ‘everything beneath the hood’. But this form of abductive reasoning does not wholly apply to learning at least based on anecdotal evidence. First, knowledge in != knowledge out. Second, knowledge present != knowledge always present.
Knowledge in != Knowledge out

A student’s demonstrated performance is not always indicative of the measure of knowledge they have gained; in actuality, it could be significantly more or less. Consider for example the dichotomy of my educational experience as a teacher and student. As a teacher, most of my learning measurement metrics rely on behavioral indicators by way of scores on tests and assignments. The A students are the brightest right? Right. Or are they? As a student I know that so many factors can affect my grade on a given course. It could be how much workload I have at the time of enrollment, my interest in the material I am learning and whether I have a stomach flu on test day. There is clearly a disconnect between the evaluation of knowledge and the assimilation of knowledge using the behaviorist approach.
Knowledge present != Knowledge always present

That a student can demonstrate some evidence of knowledge right now, doesn’t mean they have retained that information. This means that asides from being unable to measure how much knowledge has been gained, they could simply be studying for the grades. And they could discard all that information altogether as soon as that assessment is up. For example; if I promise my toddler ice-cream for behaving well, I cannot guarantee that he has really adopted the new attitude or is just there for the sugar. Given such a situation, one cannot say real learning has occurred.

This is not however to say, behaviorism is all bad. I have utilized behaviorist measures as a teacher because it is what seems to work for the end users of the information (students, school administration, policy makers etc). Students use scores to judge their own learning, whether or not it accurately reflects it. Schools want to know the score break down of their students for their public profile. Policy makers take behavior modification approaches to provide educational reform e.g. (more standardized tests, rationing scholarship opportunities by such scores, et cetera).

Additionally, behaviorism approaches have worked tremendously with those that have limited ways of communicating change or information e.g the older generation, young children with minimal verbal skills, special populations and those suffering from cognitive disorders. It is also useful for those that struggle with addiction. The strength of this behaviorism application is in its reliance on conditioning through positive/negative reinforcement or positive/negative punishment. It recognizes that true change happens over time and not all at once. On this account, it is still a strong voice in psychology. That said, the conditioning aspects of behaviorism can be beneficial when used responsibly, but caution must be applied. In extreme cases, conditioning is simply a pseudonym for mind control especially among vulnerable persons. Especially when we consider that some of the founding stimulus-response experiments in this domain have been tainted with ethical concerns.

With all of its faults and blessings; the behaviorist theory has paved the way for other learning theories that draw on it such as Bandura’s social learning theory or the theories that dissent it like that of cognitivist learning. I personally do not consider myself to be a radical behaviorist; that behavior is independent of the mind. I am a cocktail of as many theories as I find to complementarily explain the complex process of learning. Learning to me is an all-consuming affair that involves behavior as well as thinking, feeling, knowing, et cetera. However, all of this leaves me with some uncertainty as regards the mind-body problem; how much gap lies between the mind and the body when it comes to learning?
What is True Learning Anyway?

February 1st, 2019

I reckon that learning takes place when there is an active engagement of one’s cognition resulting in a permanent shift of their mental model. It is usually observable through the learner’s directed course of action and/or testable through an appropriate form of evaluation.

For such true learning to occur, it has to come with an effective method. The best teacher isn’t necessarily one who is always available by email/office hours, a PhD holder or gives the most elaborate assignments. Although all those may be bonus factors, the best teacher synthesizes the best of the learning environment to achieve the learning outcomes. He/she leverages whatever is the course content, student’s expertise in the knowledge area or lack thereof, available tools, learning styles and other limitations to meet the goals. Overall, the best teacher doesn’t just teach students to give them knowledge but enables the students to give/seek out of knowledge for themselves. That creates resultant learning beyond the classroom walls.

With the aforementioned discussion of learning and teachers, it is fairly square to pick what spectrum learning theory they belong in. Though various experts propose and advocate one learning theory or the other, the extremes seem to be objectivism and constructivism. In my viewpoint, holistic learning, over the years and especially in terms of higher education seems to be a progression from objectivism to constructivism. It begins in early pre-k and such that when students are taught the alphabets or nursery rhymes, they simply regurgitate information without much thought as to the hows or whys. As such students advance in educational pursuits there is a gradual shift from mirroring information to knowledge creation which peaks at the doctoral and post-doctoral levels. The latter is closely associated with constructivism, with it’s emphasis on knowledge creation.

For those of us studying learning, our strategies have to be flexible. We can be proponents of a particular theory in so far as it allows careful empirical investigation. But we must not be tightly bound by these, that we fail to evolve with anecdotal nuances. This is because the subjects and systems we study, humans and learning, are ever changing anyway. Additionally, issues of anthropological relevance are not to be neglected in such matters. For instance, what is proven to be relevant in one sociocultural setting, may not buttressed in a different setting because it does not provide the same accommodations.

I have a very ‘hippie’ unconventional view to learning; anyone can learn anything, anywhere, at anytime. I think learning itself is unstructured, and education is the ‘structuralization’ of it. This is from my own experience as a part of the learning system in various capacities as a participant (student), a support system (parent), and a subject matter expert (instructor). Thus, my personal philosophy can be surmised as this; learning is far too complex to be boxed into either objectivism, constructivism or sociocultural theories because it combines aspects of all three. One can learn from an expert, self or group; by replicating and/or constructing. Given the right context, each will find its effective place.

My Personal Learning Theory

On Behaviorism

What is True Learning Anyway?