what is process in education

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3 The learning process

When my son Michael was old enough to talk, and being an eager but naïve dad, I decided to bring Michael to my educational psychology class to demonstrate to my students “how children learn”. In one task I poured water from a tall drinking glass to a wide glass pie plate, which according to Michael changed the “amount” of water—there was less now than it was in the pie plate. I told him that, on the contrary, the amount of water had stayed the same whether it was in the glass or the pie plate. He looked at me a bit strangely, but complied with my point of view—agreeing at first that, yes, the amount had stayed the same. But by the end of the class session he had reverted to his original position: there was less water, he said, when it was poured into the pie plate compared to being poured into the drinking glass. So much for demonstrating “learning”!

(Kelvin Seifert)

Learning is generally defined as relatively permanent changes in behavior, skills, knowledge, or attitudes resulting from identifiable psychological or social experiences. A key feature is permanence: changes do not count as learning if they are temporary. You do not “learn” a phone number if you forget it the minute after you dial the number; you do not “learn” to eat vegetables if you only do it when forced. The change has to last. Notice, though, that learning can be physical, social, or emotional as well as cognitive. You do not “learn” to sneeze simply by catching cold, but you do learn many skills and behaviors that are physically based, such as riding a bicycle or throwing a ball. You can also learn to like (or dislike) a person, even though this change may not happen deliberately.

Each year after that first visit to my students, while Michael was still a preschooler, I returned with him to my ed-psych class to do the same “learning demonstrations”. And each year Michael came along happily, but would again fail the task about the drinking glass and the pie plate. He would comply briefly if I “suggested” that the amount of water stayed the same no matter which way it was poured, but in the end he would still assert that the amount had changed. He was not learning this bit of conventional knowledge, in spite of my repeated efforts.

But the year he turned six, things changed. When I told him it was time to visit my ed-psych class again, he readily agreed and asked: “Are you going to ask me about the water in the drinking glass and pie plate again?” I said yes, I was indeed planning to do that task again. “That’s good”, he responded, “because I know that the amount stays the same even after you pour it. But do you want me to fake it this time? For your students’ sake?”

Teachers’ perspectives on learning

For teachers, learning usually refers to things that happen in schools or classrooms, even though every teacher can of course describe examples of learning that happen outside of these places. Even Michael, at age 6, had begun realizing that what counted as “learning” in his dad’s educator-type mind was something that happened in a classroom, under the supervision of a teacher (me). For me, as for many educators, the term has a more specific meaning than for many people less involved in schools. In particular, teachers’ perspectives on learning often emphasize three ideas, and sometimes even take them for granted: (1) curriculum content and academic achievement, (2) sequencing and readiness, and (3) the importance of transferring learning to new or future situations.

Viewing learning as dependent on curriculum

When teachers speak of learning, they tend to emphasize whatever is taught in schools deliberately, including both the official curriculum and the various behaviors and routines that make classrooms run smoothly. In practice, defining learning in this way often means that teachers equate learning with the major forms of academic achievement—especially language and mathematics—and to a lesser extent musical skill, physical coordination, or social sensitivity (Gardner, 1999, 2006). The imbalance occurs not because the goals of public education make teachers responsible for certain content and activities (like books and reading) and the skills which these activities require (like answering teachers’ questions and writing essays). It does happen not (thankfully!) because teachers are biased, insensitive, or unaware that students often learn a lot outside of school.

A side effect of thinking of learning as related only to curriculum or academics is that classroom social interactions and behaviors become issues for teachers—become things that they need to manage. In particular, having dozens of students in one room makes it more likely that I, as a teacher, think of “learning” as something that either takes concentration (to avoid being distracted by others) or that benefits from collaboration (to take advantage of their presence). In the small space of a classroom, no other viewpoint about social interaction makes sense. Yet in the wider world outside of school, learning often does happen incidentally, “accidentally” and without conscious interference or input from others: I “learn” what a friend’s personality is like, for example, without either of us deliberately trying to make this happen. As teachers, we sometimes see incidental learning in classrooms as well, and often welcome it; but our responsibility for curriculum goals more often focuses our efforts on what students can learn through conscious, deliberate effort. In a classroom, unlike in many other human settings, it is always necessary to ask whether classmates are helping or hindering individual students’ learning.

Focusing learning on changes in classrooms has several other effects. One, for example, is that it can tempt teachers to think that what is taught is equivalent to what is learned—even though most teachers know that doing so is a mistake, and that teaching and learning can be quite different. If I assign a reading to my students about the Russian Revolution, it would be nice to assume not only that they have read the same words, but also learned the same content. But that assumption is not usually the reality. Some students may have read and learned all of what I assigned; others may have read everything but misunderstood the material or remembered only some of it; and still others, unfortunately, may have neither read nor learned much of anything. Chances are that my students would confirm this picture, if asked confidentially. There are ways, of course, to deal helpfully with such diversity of outcomes; for suggestions, see especially Chapter 11 “Planning instruction” and Chapter 12 “Teacher-made assessment strategies”. But whatever instructional strategies I adopt, they cannot include assuming that what I teach is the same as what students understand or retain of what I teach.

Viewing learning as dependent on sequencing and readiness

The distinction between teaching and learning creates a secondary issue for teachers, that of educational readiness . Traditionally the concept referred to students’ preparedness to cope with or profit from the activities and expectations of school. A kindergarten child was “ready” to start school, for example, if he or she was in good health, showed moderately good social skills, could take care of personal physical needs (like eating lunch or going to the bathroom unsupervised), could use a pencil to make simple drawings, and so on. Table 2   shows a similar set of criteria for determining whether a child is “ready” to learn to read (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006). At older ages (such as in high school or university), the term readiness is often replaced by a more specific term, prerequisites. To take a course in physics, for example, a student must first have certain prerequisite experiences, such as studying advanced algebra or calculus. To begin work as a public school teacher, a person must first engage in practice teaching for a period of time (not to mention also studying educational psychology!).

Table 2: Reading readiness in students vs in teachers

Note that this traditional meaning, of readiness as preparedness, focuses attention on students’ adjustment to school and away from the reverse: the possibility that schools and teachers also have a responsibility for adjusting to students. But the latter idea is in fact a legitimate, second meaning for readiness: If 5-year-old children normally need to play a lot and keep active, then it is fair to say that their kindergarten teacher needs to be “ready” for this behavior by planning for a program that allows a lot of play and physical activity. If she cannot or will not do so (whatever the reason may be), then in a very real sense this failure is not the children’s responsibility. Among older students, the second, teacher-oriented meaning of readiness makes sense as well. If a teacher has a student with a disability (for example, the student is visually impaired), then the teacher has to adjust her approach in appropriate ways—not simply expect a visually impaired child to “sink or swim”. As you might expect, this sense of readiness is very important for special education, so I discuss it further in Chapter 6 “Students with special educational needs”. But the issue of readiness also figures importantly whenever students are diverse (which is most of the time), so it also comes up in Chapter 5 “Student diversity”.

Viewing transfer as a crucial outcome of learning

Still another result of focusing the concept of learning on classrooms is that it raises issues of usefulness or transfer, which is the ability to use knowledge or skill in situations beyond the ones in which they are acquired. Learning to read and learning to solve arithmetic problems, for example, are major goals of the elementary school curriculum because those skills are meant to be used not only inside the classroom, but outside as well. We teachers intend, that is, for reading and arithmetic skills to “transfer”, even though we also do our best to make the skills enjoyable while they are still being learned. In the world inhabited by teachers, even more than in other worlds, making learning fun is certainly a good thing to do, but making learning useful as well as fun is even better. Combining enjoyment and usefulness, in fact, is a “gold standard” of teaching: we generally seek it for students, even though we may not succeed at providing it all of the time.

Major theories and models of learning

Several ideas and priorities, then, affect how we teachers think about learning, including the curriculum, the difference between teaching and learning, sequencing, readiness, and transfer. The ideas form a “screen” through which to understand and evaluate whatever psychology has to offer education. As it turns out, many theories, concepts, and ideas from educational psychology do make it through the “screen” of education, meaning that they are consistent with the professional priorities of teachers and helpful in solving important problems of classroom teaching. In the case of issues about classroom learning, for example, educational psychologists have developed a number of theories and concepts that are relevant to classrooms, in that they describe at least some of what usually happens there and offer guidance for assisting learning. It is helpful to group the theories according to whether they focus on changes in behavior or in thinking. The distinction is rough and inexact, but a good place to begin. For starters, therefore, consider two perspectives about learning, called behaviorism (learning as changes in overt behavior) and constructivism, (learning as changes in thinking). The second category can be further divided into psychological constructivism (changes in thinking resulting from individual experiences), and social constructivism, (changes in thinking due to assistance from others). The rest of this chapter describes key ideas from each of these viewpoints. As I hope you will see, each describes some aspects of learning not just in general, but as it happens in classrooms in particular. So each perspective suggests things that you might do in your classroom to make students’ learning more productive.

Behaviorism: changes in what students do

Behaviorism is a perspective on learning that focuses on changes in individuals’ observable behaviors— changes in what people say or do. At some point we all use this perspective, whether we call it “behaviorism” or something else. The first time that I drove a car, for example, I was concerned primarily with whether I could actually do the driving, not with whether I could describe or explain how to drive. For another example: when I reached the point in life where I began cooking meals for myself, I was more focused on whether I could actually produce edible food in a kitchen than with whether I could explain my recipes and cooking procedures to others. And still another example—one often relevant to new teachers: when I began my first year of teaching, I was more focused on doing the job of teaching—on day-to-day survival—than on pausing to reflect on what I was doing.

Note that in all of these examples, focusing attention on behavior instead of on “thoughts” may have been desirable at that moment, but not necessarily desirable indefinitely or all of the time. Even as a beginner, there are times when it is more important to be able to describe how to drive or to cook than to actually do these things. And there definitely are many times when reflecting on and thinking about teaching can improve teaching itself. (As a teacher-friend once said to me: “Don’t just do something; stand there!”) But neither is focusing on behavior which is not necessarily less desirable than focusing on students’ “inner” changes, such as gains in their knowledge or their personal attitudes. If you are teaching, you will need to attend to all forms of learning in students, whether inner or outward.

In classrooms, behaviorism is most useful for identifying relationships between specific actions by a student and the immediate precursors and consequences of the actions. It is less useful for understanding changes in students’ thinking; for this purpose we need a more cognitive (or thinking-oriented) theory, like the ones described later in this chapter. This fact is not really a criticism of behaviorism as a perspective, but just a clarification of its particular strength or source of usefulness, which is to highlight observable relationships among actions, precursors and consequences. Behaviorists use particular terms (or “lingo”, some might say) for these relationships. They also rely primarily on two basic images or models of behavioral learning, called respondent (or “classical”) conditioning and operant conditioning. The names are derived partly from the major learning mechanisms highlighted by each type, which I describe next.

Respondent conditioning: learning new associations with prior behaviors

As originally conceived, respondent conditioning (sometimes also called classical conditioning) begins with the involuntary responses to particular sights, sounds, or other sensations (Lavond, 2003). When I receive an injection from a nurse or doctor, for example, I cringe, tighten my muscles, and even perspire a bit. Whenever a contented, happy baby looks at me, on the other hand, I invariably smile in response. I cannot help myself in either case; both of the responses are automatic. In humans as well as other animals, there is a repertoire or variety of such specific, involuntary behaviors. At the sound of a sudden loud noise, for example, most of us show a “startle” response—we drop what we are doing (sometimes literally!), our heart rate shoots up temporarily, and we look for the source of the sound. Cats, dogs and many other animals (even fish in an aquarium) show similar or equivalent responses.

Involuntary stimuli and responses were first studied systematically early in the twentieth-century by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov (1927). Pavlov’s most well-known work did not involve humans, but dogs, and specifically their involuntary tendency to salivate when eating. He attached a small tube to the side of dogs’ mouths that allowed him to measure how much the dogs salivated when fed ( Exhibit 1 shows a photograph of one of Pavlov’s dogs). But he soon noticed a “problem” with the procedure: as the dogs gained experience with the experiment, they often salivated before they began eating. In fact the most experienced dogs sometimes began salivating before they even saw any food, simply when Pavlov himself entered the room! The sight of the experimenter, which had originally been a neutral experience for the dogs, became associated with the dogs’ original salivation response. Eventually, in fact, the dogs would salivate at the sight of Pavlov even if he did not feed them.

This change in the dogs’ involuntary response, and especially its growing independence from the food as stimulus, eventually became the focus of Pavlov’s research. Psychologists named the process respondent conditioning because it describes changes in responses to stimuli (though some have also called it “classical conditioning” because it was historically the first form of behavioral learning to be studied systematically). Respondent conditioning has several elements, each with a special name. To understand these, look at and imagine a dog (perhaps even mine, named Ginger) prior to any conditioning. At the beginning Ginger salivates (an unconditioned response (UR) ) only when she actually tastes her dinner (an unconditioned stimulus (US) ). As time goes by, however, a neutral stimulus—such as the sound of opening a bag containing fresh dog food

—is continually paired with the eating/tasting experience. Eventually the neutral stimulus becomes able to elicit salivation even before any dog food is offered to Ginger, or even if the bag of food is empty! At this point the neutral stimulus is called a conditioned stimulus (UCS) and the original response is renamed as a conditioned response (CR). Now, after conditioning, Ginger salivates merely at the sound of opening any large bag, regardless of its contents. (I might add that Ginger also engages in other conditioned responses, such as looking hopeful and following me around the house at dinner time.)

Exhibit 1: Classical conditioning of Ginger, the dog. Before conditioning, Ginger salivates only to the taste of food and the bell has no effect. After conditioning, she salivates even when the bell is presented by itself.

Respondent Conditioning and Students

“OK,” you may be thinking, “Respondent conditioning may happen to animals. But does anything like it happen in classrooms?” It might seem like not much would, since teaching is usually about influencing students’ conscious words and thoughts, and not their involuntary behaviors. But remember that schooling is not just about encouraging thinking and talking. Teachers, like parents and the public, also seek positive changes in students’ attitudes and feelings—attitudes like a love for learning, for example, and feelings like self-confidence. It turns out that respondent conditioning describes these kinds of changes relatively well.  Consider, for example, a child who responds happily whenever meeting a new person who is warm and friendly, but who also responds cautiously or at least neutrally in any new situation. Suppose further that the “new, friendly person” in question is you, his teacher. Initially the child’s response to you is like an unconditioned stimulus: you smile (the unconditioned stimulus) and in response he perks up, breathes easier, and smiles (the unconditioned response). This exchange is not the whole story, however, but merely the setting for an important bit of behavior change: suppose you smile at him while standing in your classroom, a “new situation” and therefore one to which he normally responds cautiously. Now respondent learning can occur. The initially neutral stimulus (your classroom) becomes associated repeatedly with the original unconditioned stimulus (your smile) and the child’s unconditioned response (his smile). Eventually, if all goes well, the classroom becomes a conditioned stimulus in its own right: it can elicit the child’s smiles and other “happy behaviors” even without your immediate presence or stimulus. Exhibit 2 diagrams the situation graphically. When the change in behavior happens, you might say that the child has “learned” to like being in your classroom. Truly a pleasing outcome for both of you!

Exhibit 2: Respondent conditioning of student to classroom.

Before Conditioning:

(UCS)  Seeing Teacher Smile →       Student Smiles (UR) (UCS) Seeing Classroom    → No response (UR)

During Conditioning:

Seeing Teaching Smile + Seeing Classroom → Student Smiles

After Conditioning:

(CS) Seeing Classroom → Student Smiles (CR)

Exhibit 2: Respondent conditioning of student to classroom. Before conditioning, the student smiles only when he sees the teacher smile, and the sight of the classroom has no effect. After conditioning, the student smiles at the sight of the classroom even without the teacher present.

But less positive or desirable examples of respondent conditioning also can happen. Consider a modification of the example that I just gave. Suppose the child that I just mentioned did not have the good fortune of being placed in your classroom. Instead he found himself with a less likeable teacher, whom we could simply call Mr Horrible. Instead of smiling a lot and eliciting the child’s unconditioned “happy response”, Mr Horrible often frowns and scowls at the child. In this case, therefore, the child’s initial unconditioned response is negative: whenever Mr Horrible directs a frown or scowl at the child, the child automatically cringes a little, his eyes widen in fear, and his heart beat races. If the child sees Mr Horrible doing most of his frowning and scowling in the classroom, eventually the classroom itself will acquire power as a negative conditioned stimulus. Eventually, that is, the child will not need Mr Horrible to be present in order to feel apprehensive; simply being in the classroom will be enough. Exhibit 3 diagrams this unfortunate situation. Obviously it is an outcome to be avoided, and in fact does not usually happen in such an extreme way. But hopefully it makes the point: any stimulus that is initially neutral, but that gets associated with an unconditioned stimulus and response, can eventually acquire the ability to elicit the response by itself. Anything —whether it is desirable or not.

Exhibit 3: Respondent conditioning of student to classroom.

( UCS) Mr Horrible Frowns → Student Cringes (UCR)

Mr Horrible’s Classroom → No response

Mr Horrible Frowns + Sight of Classroom → Student Cringes

( CS) Seeing Classroom → Student Cringes ( CR)

Exhibit 3: Respondent conditioning of student to classroom. Before conditioning, the student cringes only when he sees Mr Horrible smile, and the sight of the classroom has no effect. After conditioning, the student cringes at the sight of the classroom even without Mr Horrible present.

The changes described in these two examples are important because they can affect students’ attitude about school, and therefore also their motivation to learn. In the positive case, the child becomes more inclined to please the teacher and to attend to what he or she has to offer; in the negative case, the opposite occurs. Since the changes in attitude happen “inside” the child, they are best thought of as one way that a child can acquire i intrinsic motivation , meaning a desire or tendency to direct attention and energy in a particular way that originates from the child himself or herself. Intrinsic motivation is sometimes contrasted to extrinsic motivation, a tendency to direct attention and energy that originates from outside of the child. As we will see, classical conditioning can influence students’ intrinsic motivation in directions that are either positive or negative. As you might suspect, there are other ways to influence motivation as well. Many of these are described in Chapter 7 (“Student motivation”). First, though, let us look at three other features of classical conditioning that complicate the picture a bit, but also render conditioning a bit more accurate, an appropriate description of students’ learning.

Three key ideas about respondent conditioning

Extinction: This term does not refer to the fate of dinosaurs, but to the disappearance of a link between the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response. Imagine a third variation on the conditioning “story” described above. Suppose, as I suggested above, that the child begins by associating your happy behaviors—your smiles—to his being present in the classroom, so that the classroom itself becomes enough to elicit his own smiles. But now suppose there is a sad turn of events: you become sick and must therefore leave the classroom in the middle of the school year. A substitute is called in who is not Mr Horrible, but simply someone who is not very expressive, someone we can call Ms Neutral. At first the child continues to feel good (that is, to smile) whenever present in the classroom. But because the link between the classroom and your particular smile is no longer repeated or associated, the child’s response gradually extinguishes, or fades until it has disappeared entirely. In a sense the child’s initial learning is “unlearned”. Extinction can also happen with negative examples of classical conditioning. If Mr Horrible leaves mid-year (perhaps because no one could stand working with him any longer!), then the child’s negative responses (cringing, eyes widening, heart beat racing, and so on) will also extinguish eventually. Note, though, that whether the conditioned stimulus is positive or negative, extinction does not happen suddenly or immediately, but unfolds over time. This fact can sometimes obscure the process if you are a busy teacher attending to many students.

Generalization: When Pavlov studied conditioning in dogs, he noticed that the original conditioned stimulus was not the only neutral stimulus that elicited the conditioned response. If he paired a particular bell with the sight of food, for example, so that the bell became a conditioned stimulus for salivation, then it turned out that other bells, perhaps with a different pitch or type or sound, also acquired some ability to trigger salivation—though not as much as the original bell. Psychologists call this process generalization, or the tendency for similar stimuli to elicit a conditioned response. The child being conditioned to your smile, for example, might learn to associate your smile not only with being present in your classroom, but also to being present in other, similar classrooms. His conditioned smiles may be strongest where he learned them initially (that is, in your own room), but nonetheless visible to a significant extent in other teachers’ classrooms. To the extent that this happens, he has generalized his learning. It is of course good news; it means that we can say that the child is beginning to “learn to like school” in general, and not just your particular room. Unfortunately, the opposite can also happen: if a child learns negative associations from Mr Horrible, the child’s fear, caution, and stress might generalize to other classrooms as well. The lesson for teachers is therefore clear: we have a responsibility, wherever possible, to make classrooms pleasant places to be.

Discrimination: Generalization among similar stimuli can be reduced if only one of the similar stimuli is associated consistently with the unconditioned response, while the others are not. When this happens, psychologists say that discrimination learning has occurred, meaning that the individual has learned to distinguish or respond differently to one stimulus than to another. From an educational point of view, discrimination learning can be either desirable or not, depending on the particulars of the situation. Imagine again (for the fourth time!) the child who learns to associate your classroom with your smiles, so that he eventually produces smiles of his own whenever present in your room. But now imagine yet another variation on his story: the child is old enough to attend middle school, and therefore has several teachers across the day. You—with your smiles—are one, but so are Mr Horrible and Ms Neutral. At first the child may generalize his classically conditioned smiles to the other teachers’ classrooms. But the other teachers do not smile like you do, and this fact causes the child’s smiling to extinguish somewhat in their rooms. Meanwhile, you keep smiling in your room. Eventually the child is smiling only in your room and not in the other rooms. When this happens, we say that discrimination has occurred, meaning that the conditioned associations happen only to a single version of the unconditioned stimuli— in this case, only to your smiles, and not to the (rather rare) occurrences of smiles in the other classrooms. Judging by his behavior, the child is making a distinction between your room and others.

In one sense the discrimination in this story is unfortunate in that it prevents the child from acquiring a liking for school that is generalized. But notice that an opposing, more desirable process is happening at the same time: the child is also prevented from acquiring a generalized dislike of school. The fear-producing stimuli from Mr Horrible, in particular, become discriminated from the happiness-producing smiles from you, so the child’s learns to confine his fearful responses to that particular classroom, and does not generalize them to other “innocent” classrooms, including your own. This is still not an ideal situation for the student, but maybe it is more desirable than disliking school altogether.

Operant conditioning: new behaviors because of new consequences

Instead of focusing on associations between stimuli and responses, operant conditioning focuses on how the effects of consequences on behaviors. The operant model of learning begins with the idea that certain consequences tend to make certain behaviors happen more frequently. If I compliment a student for a good comment during a discussion, there is more of a chance that I will hear comments from the student more often in the future (and hopefully they will also be good ones!). If a student tells a joke to several classmates and they laugh at it, then the student is more likely to tell additional jokes in the future and so on.

As with respondent conditioning, the original research about this model of learning was not done with people, but with animals. One of the pioneers in the field was a Harvard professor named B. F. Skinner, who published numerous books and articles about the details of the process and who pointed out many parallels between operant conditioning in animals and operant conditioning in humans (1938, 1948, 1988). Skinner observed the behavior of rather tame laboratory rats (not the unpleasant kind that sometimes live in garbage dumps). He or his assistants would put them in a cage that contained little except a lever and a small tray just big enough to hold a small amount of food. ( Exhibit 4 shows the basic set-up, which is sometimes nicknamed a “Skinner box”.) At first the rat would sniff and “putter around” the cage at random, but sooner or later it would happen upon the lever and eventually happen to press it. Presto! The lever released a small pellet of food, which the rat would promptly eat. Gradually the rat would spend more time near the lever and press the lever more frequently, getting food more frequently.

Eventually it would spend most of its time at the lever and eating its fill of food. The rat had “discovered” that the consequence of pressing the level was to receive food. Skinner called the changes in the rat’s behavior an example of operant conditioning, and gave special names to the different parts of the process. He called the food pellets the reinforcement and the lever-pressing the operant (because it “operated” on the rat’s environment). See below.

Exhibit 4: Operant conditioning with a laboratory rat

Skinner and other behavioral psychologists experimented with using various reinforcers and operants. They also experimented with various patterns of reinforcement (or schedules of reinforcement ), as well as with various cues or signals to the animal about when reinforcement was available . It turned out that all of these factors—the operant, the reinforcement, the schedule, and the cues—affected how easily and thoroughly operant conditioning occurred. For example, reinforcement was more effective if it came immediately after the crucial operant behavior, rather than being delayed, and reinforcements that happened intermittently (only part of the time) caused learning to take longer, but also caused it to last longer.

Operant conditioning and students’ learning: As with respondent conditioning, it is important to ask whether operant conditioning also describes learning in human beings, and especially in students in classrooms. On this point the answer seems to be clearly “yes”. There are countless classroom examples of consequences affecting students’ behavior in ways that resemble operant conditioning, although the process certainly does not account for all forms of student learning (Alberto & Troutman, 2005). Consider the following examples. In most of them the operant behavior tends to become more frequent on repeated occasions:

• A seventh-grade boy makes a silly face (the operant) at the girl sitting next to him. Classmates sitting around them giggle in response (the reinforcement).
• A kindergarten child raises her hand in response to the teacher’s question about a story (the operant). The teacher calls on her and she makes her comment (the reinforcement).
• Another kindergarten child blurts out her comment without being called on (the operant). The teacher frowns, ignores this behavior, but before the teacher calls on a different student, classmates are listening attentively (the reinforcement) to the student even though he did not raise his hand as he should have.
• A twelfth-grade student—a member of the track team—runs one mile during practice (the operant). He notes the time it takes him as well as his increase in speed since joining the team (the reinforcement).
• A child who is usually very restless sits for five minutes doing an assignment (the operant). The teaching assistant compliments him for working hard (the reinforcement).
• A sixth-grader takes home a book from the classroom library to read overnight (the operant). When she returns the book the next morning, her teacher puts a gold star by her name on a chart posted in the room (the reinforcement).

Hopefully these examples are enough to make four points about operant conditioning. First, the process is widespread in classrooms—probably more widespread than respondent conditioning. This fact makes sense, given the nature of public education: to a large extent, teaching is about making certain consequences for students (like praise or marks) depend on students’ engaging in certain activities (like reading certain material or doing assignments). Second, learning by operant conditioning is not confined to any particular grade, subject area, or style of teaching, but by nature happens in nearly every imaginable classroom. Third, teachers are not the only persons controlling reinforcements. Sometimes they are controlled by the activity itself (as in the track team example), or by classmates (as in the “giggling” example). A result of all of the above points is the fourth: that multiple examples of operant conditioning often happen at the same time. The skill builder for this chapter (The decline and fall of Jane Gladstone) suggests how this happened to someone completing student teaching.

Because operant conditioning happens so widely, its effects on motivation are a bit more complex than the effects of respondent conditioning. As in respondent conditioning, operant conditioning can encourage intrinsic motivation to the extent that the reinforcement for an activity can sometimes be the activity itself. When a student reads a book for the sheer enjoyment of reading, for example, he is reinforced by the reading itself; then we often say that his reading is “intrinsically motivated”. More often, however, operant conditioning stimulates both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation at the same time. The combining of both is noticeable in the examples that I listed above. In each example, it is reasonable to assume that the student felt intrinsically motivated to some partial extent, even when reward came from outside the student as well. This was because part of what reinforced their behavior was the behavior itself—whether it was making faces, running a mile, or contributing to a discussion. At the same time, though, note that each student probably was also extrinsically motivated, meaning that another part of the reinforcement came from consequences or experiences not inherently part of the activity or behavior itself. The boy who made a face was reinforced not only by the pleasure of making a face, for example, but also by the giggles of classmates. The track student was reinforced not only by the pleasure of running itself, but also by knowledge of his improved times and speeds. Even the usually restless child sitting still for five minutes may have been reinforced partly by this brief experience of unusually focused activity, even if he was also reinforced by the teacher aide’s compliment. Note that the extrinsic part of the reinforcement may sometimes be more easily observed or noticed than the intrinsic part, which by definition may sometimes only be experienced within the individual and not also displayed outwardly. This latter fact may contribute to an impression that sometimes occurs, that operant conditioning is really just “bribery in disguise”, that only the external reinforcements operate on students’ behavior. It is true that external reinforcement may sometimes alter the nature or strength of internal (or intrinsic) reinforcement, but this is not the same as saying that it destroys or replaces intrinsic reinforcement. But more about this issue later! (See especially Chapter 7, “Student motivation”.)

Comparing operant conditioning and respondent conditioning: Operant conditioning is made more complicated, but also more realistic, by many of the same concepts as used in respondent conditioning. In most cases, however, the additional concepts have slightly different meanings in each model of learning. Since this circumstance can make the terms confusing, let me explain the differences for three major concepts used in both models—extinction, generalization, and discrimination. Then I will comment on two additional concepts— schedules of reinforcement and cues—that are sometimes also used in talking about both forms of conditioning, but that are important primarily for understanding operant conditioning. The explanations and comments are also summarized in Table 3  .

Table 3: Comparison of terms common to operant and respondent conditioning

In both respondent and operant conditioning, extinction refers to the disappearance of “something”. In operant conditioning, what disappears is the operant behavior because of a lack of reinforcement. A student who stops receiving gold stars or compliments for prolific reading of library books, for example, may extinguish (i.e. decrease or stop) book-reading behavior. In respondent conditioning, on the other hand, what disappears is association between the conditioned stimulus (the CS) and the conditioned response (CR). If you stop smiling at a student, then the student may extinguish her association between you and her pleasurable response to your smile, or between your classroom and the student’s pleasurable response to your smile.

In both forms of conditioning, generalization means that something “extra” gets conditioned if it is somehow similar to “something”. In operant conditioning, the extra conditioning is to behaviors similar to the original operant . If getting gold stars results in my reading more library books, then I may generalize this behavior to other similar activities, such as reading the newspaper, even if the activity is not reinforced directly. In respondent conditioning, however, the extra conditioning refers to stimuli similar to the original conditioned stimulus. If I am a student and I respond happily to my teacher’s smiles, then I may find myself responding happily to other people (like my other teachers) to some extent, even if they do not smile at me. Generalization is a lot like the concept of transfer that I discussed early in this chapter, in that it is about extending prior learning to new situations or contexts. From the perspective of operant conditioning, though, what is being extended (or “transferred” or generalized) is a behavior, not knowledge or skill.

In both forms of conditioning, discrimination means learning not to generalize. In operant conditioning, though, what is not being overgeneralized is the operant behavior. If I am a student who is being complimented (reinforced) for contributing to discussions, I must also learn to discriminate when to make verbal contributions from when not to make verbal contributions—such as when classmates or the teacher are busy with other tasks. In respondent conditioning, what are not being overgeneralized are the conditioned stimuli that elicit the conditioned response. If I, as a student, learn to associate the mere sight of a smiling teacher with my own happy, contented behavior, then I also have to learn not to associate this same happy response with similar, but slightly different sights, such as a teacher looking annoyed.

In both forms of conditioning, the schedule of reinforcement refers to the pattern or frequency by which “something” is paired with “something else”. In operant conditioning, what is being paired is the pattern by which reinforcement is linked with the operant. If a teacher praises me for my work, does she do it every time, or only sometimes? Frequently or only once in awhile? In respondent conditioning, however, the schedule in question is the pattern by which the conditioned stimulus is paired with the unconditioned stimulus. If I am student with Mr Horrible as my teacher, does he scowl every time he is in the classroom, or only sometimes? Frequently or rarely?

Behavioral psychologists have studied schedules of reinforcement extensively (for example, Ferster, et al., 1997; Mazur, 2005), and found a number of interesting effects of different schedules. For teachers, however, the most important finding may be this: partial or intermittent schedules of reinforcement generally cause learning to take longer, but also cause extinction of learning to take longer. This dual principle is important for teachers because so much of the reinforcement we give is partial or intermittent. Typically, if I am teaching, I can compliment a student a lot of the time, for example, but there will inevitably be occasions when I cannot do so because I am busy elsewhere in the classroom. For teachers concerned both about motivating students and about minimizing inappropriate behaviors, this is both good news and bad. The good news is that the benefits of my praising students’ constructive behavior will be more lasting, because they will not extinguish their constructive behaviors immediately if I fail to support them every single time they happen. The bad news is that students’ negative behaviors may take longer to extinguish as well, because those too may have developed through partial reinforcement. A student who clowns around inappropriately in class, for example, may not be “supported” by classmates’ laughter every time it happens, but only some of the time. Once the inappropriate behavior is learned, though, it will take somewhat longer to disappear even if everyone—both teacher and classmates—make a concerted effort to ignore (or extinguish) it.

Finally, behavioral psychologists have studied the effects of cues. In operant conditioning, a cue is a stimulus that happens just prior to the operant behavior and that signals that performing the behavior may lead to reinforcement. Its effect is much like discrimination learning in respondent conditioning, except that what is “discriminated” in this case is not a conditioned behavior that is reflex-like, but a voluntary action, the operant. In the original conditioning experiments, Skinner’s rats were sometimes cued by the presence or absence of a small electric light in their cage. Reinforcement was associated with pressing a lever when, and only when, the light was on. In classrooms, cues are sometimes provided by the teacher or simply by the established routines of the class. Calling on a student to speak, for example, can be a cue that if the student does say something at that moment, then he or she may be reinforced with praise or acknowledgment. But if that cue does not occur—if the student is not called on—speaking may not be rewarded. In more everyday, non-behaviorist terms, the cue allows the student to learn when it is acceptable to speak, and when it is not.

Constructivism: changes in how students think

Behaviorist models of learning may be helpful in understanding and influencing what students do, but teachers usually also want to know what students are thinking, and how to enrich what students are thinking. For this goal of teaching, some of the best help comes from constructivism, which is a perspective on learning focused on how students actively create (or “construct”) knowledge out of experiences. Constructivist models of learning differ about how much a learner constructs knowledge independently, compared to how much he or she takes cues from people who may be more of an expert and who help the learner’s efforts (Fosnot, 2005; Rockmore, 2005). For convenience these are called psychological constructivism and social constructivism, even though both versions are in a sense explanations about thinking within individuals.

Psychological constructivism: the independent investigator

The main idea of psychological constructivism is that a person learns by mentally organizing and reorganizing new information or experiences. The organization happens partly by relating new experiences to prior knowledge that is already meaningful and well understood. Stated in this general form, individual constructivism is sometimes associated with a well-known educational philosopher of the early twentieth century, John Dewey (1938-1998). Although Dewey himself did not use the term constructivism in most of his writing, his point of view amounted to a type of constructivism, and he discussed in detail its implications for educators. He argued, for example, that if students indeed learn primarily by building their own knowledge, then teachers should adjust the curriculum to fit students’ prior knowledge and interests as fully as possible. He also argued that a curriculum could only be justified if it related as fully as possible to the activities and responsibilities that students will probably have later, after leaving school. To many educators these days, his ideas may seem merely like good common sense, but they were indeed innovative and progressive at the beginning of the twentieth century.

A more recent example of psychological constructivism is the cognitive theory of Jean Piaget (Piaget, 2001; Gruber & Voneche, 1995). Piaget described learning as interplay between two mental activities that he called assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the interpretation of new information in terms of pre-existing concepts, information or ideas. A preschool child who already understands the concept of bird, for example, might initially label any flying object with this term—even butterflies or mosquitoes. Assimilation is therefore a bit like the idea of generalization in operant conditioning, or the idea of transfer described at the beginning of this chapter. In Piaget’s viewpoint, though, what is being transferred to a new setting is not simply a behavior (Skinner’s “operant” in operant conditioning), but a mental representation for an object or experience.

Assimilation operates jointly with accommodation, which is the revision or modification of pre-existing concepts in terms of new information or experience. The preschooler who initially generalizes the concept of bird to include any flying object, for example, eventually revises the concept to include only particular kinds of flying objects, such as robins and sparrows, and not others, like mosquitoes or airplanes. For Piaget, assimilation and accommodation work together to enrich a child’s thinking and to create what Piaget called cognitive equilibrium , which is a balance between reliance on prior information and openness to new information. At any given time, cognitive equilibrium consists of an ever-growing repertoire of mental representations for objects and experiences. Piaget called each mental representation a schema (all of them together—the plural—was called schemata ). A schema was not merely a concept, but an elaborated mixture of vocabulary, actions, and experience related to the concept. A child’s schema for bird, for example, includes not only the relevant verbal knowledge (like knowing how to define the word “bird”), but also the child’s experiences with birds, pictures of birds, and conversations about birds. As assimilation and accommodation about birds and other flying objects operate together over time, the child does not just revise and add to his vocabulary (such as acquiring a new word, “butterfly”), but also adds and remembers relevant new experiences and actions. From these collective revisions and additions the child gradually constructs whole new schemata about birds, butterflies, and other flying objects. In more everyday (but also less precise) terms, Piaget might then say that “the child has learned more about birds”.

Learning According to Piaget:Assimilation + Accommodation → Equilibrium → Schemata The upper part of Exhibit 5 diagrams the relationships among the Piagetian version of psychological constructivist learning. Note that the model of learning in the Exhibit is rather “individualistic”, in the sense that it does not say much about how other people involved with the learner might assist in assimilating or accommodating information. Parents and teachers, it would seem, are left lingering on the sidelines, with few significant responsibilities for helping learners to construct knowledge. But the Piagetian picture does nonetheless imply a role for helpful others: someone, after all, has to tell or model the vocabulary needed to talk about and compare birds from airplanes and butterflies! Piaget did recognize the importance of helpful others in his writings and theorizing, calling the process of support or assistance social transmission. But he did not emphasize this aspect of constructivism. Piaget was more interested in what children and youth could figure out on their own, so to speak, than in how teachers or parents might be able to help the young to figure out (Salkind, 2004). Partly for this reason, his theory is often considered less about learning and more about development, which is long-term change in a person resulting from multiple experiences. For the same reason, educators have often found Piaget’s ideas especially helpful for thinking about students’ readiness to learn, another one of the lasting educational issues that I discussed at the beginning of this chapter. I will therefore return to Piaget later to discuss development and its importance for teaching in more detail.

Exhibit 5: Constructivist models of learning

Learning According to Piaget:

Assimilation + Accommodation → Equilibrium → Schemata

Learning According to Vygotsky:

Novice      → Zone of Proximal Development ← Expert (ZPD)

Social Constructivism: assisted performance

Unlike Piaget’s rather individually oriented version of constructivism, some psychologists and educators have explicitly focused on the relationships and interactions between a learner and more knowledgeable and experienced individuals. One early expression of this viewpoint came from the American psychologist Jerome Bruner (1960, 1966, 1996), who became convinced that students could usually learn more than had been traditionally expected as long as they were given appropriate guidance and resources. He called such support instructional scaffolding — literally meaning a temporary framework, like one used in constructing a building, that allows a much stronger structure to be built within it. In a comment that has been quoted widely (and sometimes disputed), he wrote: “We [constructivist educators] begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.” (1960, p. 33). The reason for such a bold assertion was Bruner’s belief in scaffolding—his belief in the importance of providing guidance in the right way and at the right time. When scaffolding is provided, students seem more competent and “intelligent,” and they learn more.

Similar ideas were proposed independently by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978), whose writing focused on how a child’s or novice’s thinking is influenced by relationships with others who are more capable, knowledgeable, or expert than the learner. Vygotsky proposed that when a child (or any novice) is learning a new skill or solving a new problem, he or she can perform better if accompanied and helped by an expert than if performing alone—though still not as well as the expert. Someone who has played very little chess, for example, will probably compete against an opponent better if helped by an expert chess player than if competing alone against an opponent. Vygotsky called the difference between solo performance and assisted performance the zone of proximal development (or ZPD for short)—meaning the place or area (figuratively speaking) of immediate change. From this perspective learning is like assisted performance (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). Initially during learning, knowledge or skill is found mostly “in” the expert helper. If the expert is skilled and motivated to help, then the expert arranges experiences that allow the novice to practice crucial skills or to construct new knowledge. In this regard the expert is a bit like the coach of an athlete—offering help and suggesting ways of practicing, but never doing the actual athletic work himself or herself. Gradually, by providing continued experiences matched to the novice learner’s emerging competencies, the expert-coach makes it possible for the novice or apprentice to appropriate (or make his or her own) the skills or knowledge that originally resided only with the expert. These relationships are diagrammed in the lower part of Exhibit 5 .

In both the psychological and social versions of constructivist learning, the novice is not really “taught” so much as just allowed to learn. The social version of constructivism, however, highlights the responsibility of the expert for making learning possible. He or she must not only have knowledge and skill, but also know how to arrange experiences that make it easy and safe for learners to gain knowledge and skill themselves. These requirements sound, of course, a lot like the requirements for classroom teaching. In addition to knowing what is to be learned, the expert (i.e. the teacher) also has to break the content into manageable parts, offer the parts in a sensible sequence, provide for suitable and successful practice, bring the parts back together again at the end, and somehow relate the entire experience to knowledge and skills already meaningful to the learner. But of course, no one said that teaching is easy!

Implications of constructivism for teaching

Fortunately there are strategies that teachers can use for giving students this kind of help—in fact they constitute a major portion of this book, and are a major theme throughout the entire preservice teacher education programs. For now, let me just point briefly to two of them, saving a complete discussion for later. One strategy that teachers often find helpful is to organize the content to be learned as systematically as possible, because doing this allows the teacher to select and devise learning activities that are more effective. One of the most widely used frameworks for organizing content, for example, is a classification scheme proposed by the educator Benjamin Bloom, published with the somewhat imposing title of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook #1: Cognitive Domain (Bloom, et al., 1956; Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Bloom’s taxonomy , as it is usually called, describes six kinds of learning goals that teachers can in principle expect from students, ranging from simple recall of knowledge to complex evaluation of knowledge. (The levels are defined briefly in Table 2.3 with examples from Goldilocks and the Three Bears .)

Bloom’s taxonomy makes useful distinctions among possible kinds of knowledge needed by students, and therefore potentially helps in selecting activities that truly target students’ “zones of proximal development” in the sense meant by Vygotsky. A student who knows few terms for the species studied in biology unit (a problem at Bloom’s knowledge and comprehension levels), for example, may initially need support at remembering and defining the terms before he or she can make useful comparisons among species (Bloom’s analysis level). Pinpointing the most appropriate learning activities to accomplish this objective remains the job of the teacher- expert (that’s you ), but the learning itself has to be accomplished by the student. Put in more social constructivist terms, the teacher arranges a zone of proximal development that allows the student to compare species successfully, but the student still has to construct or appropriate the comparisons for him or herself.

Table 4: Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives: cognitive domain

A second strategy may be coupled with the first. As students gain experience as students, they become able to think about how they themselves learn best, and you (as the teacher) can encourage such self-reflection as one of your goals for their learning. These changes allow you to transfer some of your responsibilities for arranging learning to the students themselves. For the biology student mentioned above, for example, you may be able not only to plan activities that support comparing species, but also to devise ways for the student to think about how he or she might learn the same information independently. The resulting self-assessment and self-direction of learning often goes by the name of metacognition —an ability to think about and regulate one’s own thinking (Israel, 2005). Metacognition can sometimes be difficult for students to achieve, but it is an important goal for social constructivist learning because it gradually frees learners from dependence on expert teachers to guide their learning. Reflective learners, you might say, become their own expert guides. Like with using Bloom’s taxonomy, though, promoting metacognition and self-directed learning is important enough that I will come back to it later in more detail (especially in Chapter 10, “Facilitating complex thinking”).

By assigning a more visible role to expert helpers—and by implication also to teachers—than does the psychological constructivism, social constructivism is seemingly more complete as a description of what teachers usually do in classrooms, and of what they usually hope students will experience there. As we will see in the next chapter, however, there are more uses to a theory than whether it describes the moment-to-moment interactions between teacher and students. As I explain there, some theories can be helpful for planning instruction rather than for doing it. It turns out that this is the case for psychological constructivism, which offers important ideas about the appropriate sequencing of learning and development. This fact makes the psychological constructivism valuable in its own way, even though it (and a few other learning theories as well) seem to “omit” mentioning teachers, parents, or experts in detail. So do not make up your mind about the relative merits of different learning theories yet!

Chapter summary

Although the term learning has many possible meanings, the term as used by teachers emphasizes its relationship to curriculum, to teaching, and to the issues of sequencing, readiness, and transfer. Viewed in this light, the two major psychological perspectives of learning—behaviorist and constructivist—have important ideas to offer educators. Within the behaviorist perspective are two major theories or models of learning, called respondent conditioning and operant conditioning. Respondent conditioning describes how previously neutral associations can acquire the power to elicit significant responses in students. Operant conditioning describes how the consequences and cues for a behavior can cause the behavior to become more frequent. In either case, from a teacher’s point of view, the learned behaviors or responses can be either desirable or unwanted.

The other major psychological perspective—constructivism—describes how individuals build or “construct” knowledge by engaging actively with their experiences. The psychological version of constructivism emphasizes the learners’ individual responses to experience—their tendency both to assimilate it and to accommodate to it. The social version of constructivism emphasizes how other, more expert individuals can create opportunities for the learner to construct new knowledge. Social constructivism suggests that a teacher’s role must include deliberate instructional planning, such as facilitated by Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives, but also that teachers need to encourage metacognition, which is students’ ability to monitor their own learning.

On the Internet

< http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jaba > This is the website for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, and as such it is an excellent source of examples of how behaviorist learning principles can be applied to a wide variety of behavior-related difficulties. Any article older than one year is available in full-text, free of charge from the website. (If it is from the most recent three issues, however, you have to subscribe to the journal.)

< www.piaget.org > This is the website for the Jean Piaget Society, which in spite of its name is not just about Piaget, but about all forms of constructivist research about learning and development, including social constructivist versions. They have excellent brief publications about this perspective, available free of charge at the website, as well as information about how to find additional information.

Alberto, P. & Troutman, A. (2005). Applied behavior analysis for teachers, 7th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Anderson, L. & Krathwohl, D. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.

Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Copple, C. & Bredekamp, S. (2006). Basics of developmentally appropriate practice. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Dewey, J. (1938/1998). How we think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Ferster, C., Skinner, B. F., Cheney, C., Morse, W., & Dews, D. Schedules of reinforcement. New York: Copley Publishing Group.

Fosnot, C. (Ed.). (2005). Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice, 2nd edition. New York: Teachers College Press.

Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (2006). The development and education of the mind. New York: Routledge.

Goldman, J. (2006). Web-based designed activities for young people in health education: A constructivist approach. Health Education Journal 65 (1), 14-27.

Gruber, H. & Voneche, J. (Eds.). (1995). The essential Piaget. New York: Basic Books. Israel, S. (Ed.). (2005). Metacognition in literacy learning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lavond, D. & Steinmetz, J. (2003). Handbook of classical conditioning. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishing.

Mazur, J. (2005). Learning and behavior, 6th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Onslow, M., Menzies, R., & Packman, A. (2001). An operant intervention for early stuttering. Behavior modification 25 (1), 116-139.

Pavlov, I. (1927). Conditioned reflexes. London, UK: Oxford University Press. Piaget, J. (2001). The  psychology of intelligence. London, UK: Routledge.

Rockmore, T. (2005). On constructivist epistemology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Salkind, N. (2004). An introduction to theories of human development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Skinner, B. F. (1948). Walden Two. New York: Macmillan.

Skinner, B. F. (1988). The selection of behavior: The operant behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tharp, R. & Gallimore, R. (1991). Rousing minds to life: Teaching, learning, and schooling in social context. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Educational Psychology Copyright © 2019 by Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Additional Chapters

The learning process.

The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot. —Audre Lorde, writer and civil rights activist

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify the stages of the learning process
• Define learning styles, and identify your preferred learning style(s)
• Define multimodal learning
• Describe how you might apply your preferred learning strategies to classroom scenarios

Stages of the Learning Process

Consider experiences you’ve had with learning something new, such as learning to tie your shoes or drive a car. You probably began by showing interest in the process, and after some struggling it became second nature. These experiences were all part of the learning process, which can be described in the four stages:

• Unconscious incompetence : This will likely be the easiest learning stage—you don’t know what you don’t know yet. During this stage, a learner mainly shows interest in something or prepares for learning. For example, if you wanted to learn how to dance, you might watch a video, talk to an instructor, or sign up for a future class. Stage 1 might not take long.
• Conscious incompetence : This stage can be the most difficult for learners, because you begin to register how much you need to learn—you know what you don’t know. Think about the saying “It’s easier said than done.” In stage 1 the learner only has to discuss or show interest in a new experience, but in stage 2, he or she begins to apply new skills that contribute to reaching the learning goal. In the dance example above, you would now be learning basic dance steps. Successful completion of this stage relies on practice.
• Conscious competence : You are beginning to master some parts of the learning goal and are feeling some confidence about what you do know. For example, you might now be able to complete basic dance steps with few mistakes and without your instructor reminding you how to do them. Stage 3 requires skill repetition.
• Unconscious competence : This is the final stage in which learners have successfully practiced and repeated the process they learned so many times that they can do it almost without thinking. At this point in your dancing, you might be able to apply your dance skills to a freestyle dance routine that you create yourself. However, to feel you are a “master” of a particular skill by the time you reach stage 4, you still need to practice constantly and reevaluate which stage you are in so you can keep learning. For example, if you now felt confident in basic dance skills and could perform your own dance routine, perhaps you’d want to explore other kinds of dance, such as tango or swing. That would return you to stage 1 or 2, but you might progress through the stages more quickly this time on account of the dance skills you acquired earlier. [1]

Kyle was excited to take a beginning Spanish class to prepare for a semester abroad in Spain. Before his first vocabulary quiz, he reviewed his notes many times. Kyle took the quiz, but when he got the results, he was surprised to see that he had earned a B-, despite having studied so much. 

Identifying Learning Styles

Many of us, like Kyle, are accustomed to very traditional learning styles as a result of our experience as K–12 students. For instance, we can all remember listening to a teacher talk, and copying notes off the chalkboard. However, when it comes to learning, one size doesn’t fit all. People have different learning styles and preferences, and these can vary from subject to subject. For example, while Kyle might prefer listening to recordings to help him learn Spanish, he might prefer hands-on activities like labs to master the concepts in his biology course. But what are learning styles, and where does the idea come from?

Learning styles are also called  learning modalities . Walter Burke Barbe and his colleagues proposed the following three learning modalities (often identified by the acronym VAK):

• Kinesthetic

Examples of these modalities are shown in the table, below.

Neil Fleming’s VARK model expanded on the three modalities described above and added “Read/Write Learning” as a fourth.

The four sensory modalities in Fleming’s model are:

• Visual learning
• Auditory learning
• Read/write learning
• Kinesthetic learning

Fleming claimed that visual learners have a preference for seeing (visual aids that represent ideas using methods other than words, such as graphs, charts, diagrams, symbols, etc.). Auditory learners best learn through listening (lectures, discussions, tapes, etc.). Read/write learners have a preference for written words (readings, dictionaries, reference works, research, etc.) Tactile/kinesthetic learners prefer to learn via experience—moving, touching, and doing (active exploration of the world, science projects, experiments, etc.).

The VAK/VARK models can be a helpful way of thinking about different learning styles and preferences, but they are certainly not the last word on how people learn or prefer to learn. Many educators consider the distinctions useful, finding that students benefit from having access to a blend of learning approaches. Others find the idea of three or four “styles” to be distracting or limiting.

In the college setting, you’ll probably discover that instructors teach their course materials according to the method they think will be most effective for all students. Thus, regardless of your individual learning preference, you will probably be asked to engage in all types of learning. For instance, even though you consider yourself to be a “visual learner,” you will still probably have to write papers in some of your classes. Research suggests that it’s good for the brain to learn in new ways and that learning in different modalities can help learners become more well-rounded. Consider the following statistics on how much content students absorb through different learning methods:

• 10 percent of content they read
• 20 percent of content they hear
• 30 percent of content they visualize
• 50 percent of what they both visualize and hear
• 70 percent of what they say
• 90 percent of what they say and do

The range of these results underscores the importance of mixing up the ways in which you study and engage with learning materials.

Activity: Identifying Preferred Learning Styles

• Define learning styles, and recognize your preferred learning style(s)
• Now it’s time to consider your preferred learning style(s). Take the VARK Questionnaire here .
• Review the types of learning preferences.
• Identify three different classes and describe what types of activities you typically do in these classes. Which learning style(s) do these activities relate to?
• Describe what you think your preferred learning style(s) is/are. How do you know?
• Explain how you could apply your preferred learning style(s) to studying.
• What might your preferred learning style(s) tell you about your interests? Consider which subjects and eventual careers you might like.
• Follow your instructor’s guidelines for submitting your assignment.

Defining Multimodal Learning

While completing the learning-styles activity, you might have discovered that you prefer more than one learning style. Applying more than one learning style is known as multimodal learning. This strategy is useful not only for students who prefer to combine learning styles but also for those who may not know which learning style works best for them. It’s also a good way to mix things up and keep learning fun.

For example, consider how you might combine visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles to a biology class. For visual learning, you could create flash cards containing images of individual animals and the species name. For auditory learning, you could have a friend quiz you on the flash cards. For kinesthetic learning, you could move the flash cards around on a board to show a food web (food chain).

The following video will help you review the types of learning styles and see how they might relate to your study habits:

The next assignment can help you extend and apply what you’ve learned about multimodal learning to current classes and studying.

Activity: Applying Learning Styles to Class

• Apply your preferred learning styles to classroom scenarios
• Review the three main learning styles and the definition of multimodal learning.
• Identify a class you are currently taking that requires studying.
• Describe how you could study for this class using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile learning skills.
• Follow your instructor’s guidelines for submitting your activity.
• Mansaray, David. "The Four Stages of Learning: The Path to Becoming an Expert." DavidMansaray.com . 2011. Web. 10 Feb 2016. ↵
• The Learning Process. Authored by : Jolene Carr. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Learning Styles. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• SU13_KentLeach_MT_Edit (29 of 65). Provided by : UC Davis College of Engineering. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/ucdaviscoe/9731984405/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• The Process of Learning - Kristos. Authored by : calikristos. Located at : https://youtu.be/G1eQ6JWAi9Q . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Discover Your Learning Style and Optimize Your Self Study. Authored by : Langfocus. Located at : https://youtu.be/dvMex7KXLvM . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

education, community-building and change

What is education? A definition and discussion

Education is the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning and change undertaken in the belief that we all should have the chance to share in life.

Mark k smith explores the meaning of education and suggests it is a process of being with others and inviting truth and possibility., contents : introduction • education – cultivating hopeful environments and relationships for learning • education, respect and wisdom • education – acting so all may share in life • conclusion – what is education • further reading and references • acknowledgements • how to cite this piece, introduction.

When talking about education people often confuse it with schooling. Many think of places like schools or colleges when seeing or hearing the word. They might also look to particular jobs like teacher or tutor. The problem with this is that while looking to help people learn, the way a lot of schools and teachers operate is not necessarily something we can properly call education. They have chosen or fallen or been pushed into ‘schooling’ – trying to drill learning into people according to some plan often drawn up by others. Paulo Freire (1973) famously called this banking – making deposits of knowledge. Such ‘schooling’ too easily descends into treating learners like objects, things to be acted upon rather than people to be related to.

Education, as we understand it here, is a process of inviting truth and possibility, of encouraging and giving time to discovery. It is, as John Dewey (1916) put it, a social process – ‘a process of living and not a preparation for future living’. In this view educators look to learning and being with others rather than acting upon them. Their task is to educe (related to the Greek notion of educere ), to bring out or develop potential both in themselves and others. Such education is:

• Deliberate and hopeful. It is learning we set out to make happen in the belief that we all can ‘be more’;
• Informed, respectful and wise. A process of inviting truth and possibility.
• Grounded in a desire that at all may flourish and share in life . It is a cooperative and inclusive activity that looks to help us to live our lives as well as we can.

In what follows we will try to answer the question ‘what is education?’ by exploring these dimensions and the processes involved.

Education – cultivating hopeful environments and relationships for learning

It is often said that we are learning all the time and that we may not be conscious of it happening. Learning is both a process and an outcome. As a process, it is part of being and living in the world, part of the way our bodies work. As an outcome, it is a new understanding or appreciation of something.

In recent years, developments in neuroscience have shown us how learning takes place both in the body and as a social activity. We are social animals. As a result, educators need to focus on creating environments and relationships for learning rather than trying to drill knowledge into themselves and others.

Teachers are losing the education war because our adolescents are distracted by the social world. Naturally, the students don’t see it that way. It wasn’t their choice to get endless instruction on topics that don’t seem relevant to them. They desperately want to learn, but what they want to learn about is their social world—how it works and how they can secure a place in it that will maximize their social rewards and minimize the social pain they feel. Their brains are built to feel these strong social motivations and to use the mentalizing system to help them along. Evolutionarily, the social interest of adolescents is no distraction. Rather, it is the most important thing they can learn well. (Lieberman 2013: 282)

The cultivation of learning is a cognitive and emotional and social activity (Illeris 2002)

Alison Gopnik (2016) has provided a helpful way of understanding this orientation. It is that educators, pedagogues and practitioners need to be gardeners rather than carpenters. A key theme emerging from her research over the last 30 years or so that runs in parallel with Lieberman, is that children learn by actively engaging their social and physical environments – not by passively absorbing information. They learn from other people, not because they are being taught – but because people are doing and talking about interesting things. The emphasis in a lot of the literature about parenting (and teaching) presents the roles much like that of a carpenter.

You should pay some attention to the kind of material you are working with, and it may have some influence on what you try to do. But essentially your job is to shape that material into a final product that will fit the scheme you had in mind to begin with.

Instead, Gopnik argues, the evidence points to being a gardener.

When we garden, on the other hand, we create a protected and nurturing space for plants to flourish. It takes hard labor and the sweat of our brows, with a lot of exhausted digging and wallowing in manure. And as any gardener knows, our specific plans are always thwarted. The poppy comes up neon orange instead of pale pink, the rose that was supposed to climb the fence stubbornly remains a foot from the ground, black spot and rust and aphids can never be defeated.

Education is deliberate. We act with a purpose – to build understanding and judgement and enable action. We may do this for ourselves, for example, learning what different road signs mean so that we can get a license to drive; or watching wildlife programmes on television because we are interested in animal behaviour. This process is sometimes called self-education or teaching yourself. We join with the journey that the writer, presenter or expert is making, think about it and develop our understanding. Hopefully, we bring that process and understanding into play when we need to act. We also seek to encourage learning in others (while being open to learning ourselves). Examples here include parents and carers showing their children how to use a knife and fork or ride a bike; schoolteachers introducing students to a foreign language; and animators and pedagogues helping a group to work together.

Sometimes as educators, we have a clear idea of what we’d like to see achieved; at others, we do not and should not. In the case of the former, we might be working to a curriculum, have a session or lesson plan with clear objectives, and have a high degree of control over the learning environment. This is what we often mean by ‘formal education’. In the latter, for example, when working with a community group, the setting is theirs and, as educators, we are present as guests. This is an example of informal education and here two things are happening.

First, the group may well be clear on what it wants to achieve e.g. putting on an event, but unclear about what they need to learn to do it. They know learning is involved – it is something necessary to achieve what they want – but it is not the main focus. Such ‘incidental learning’ is not accidental. People know they need to learn something but cannot necessarily specify it in advance (Brookfield 1984).

Second, this learning activity works largely through conversation – and conversation takes unpredictable turns. It is a dialogical rather than curricula form of education.

In both forms, educators set out to create environments and relationships where people can explore their, and other’s, experiences of situations, ideas and feelings. This exploration lies, as John Dewey argued, at the heart of the ‘business of education’. Educators set out to emancipate and enlarge experience (1933: 340). How closely the subject matter is defined in advance, and by whom, differs from situation to situation. John Ellis (1990) has developed a useful continuum – arguing that most education involves a mix of the informal and formal, of conversation and curriculum (i.e. between points X and Y).

Those that describe themselves as informal educators, social pedagogues or as animators of community learning and development tend to work towards the X; those working as subject teachers or lecturers tend to the Y. Educators when facilitating tutor groups might, overall, work somewhere in the middle.

Acting in hope

Underpinning intention is an attitude or virtue – hopefulness. As educators ‘we believe that learning is possible, that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way to know’ (hooks 2003: xiv) . In other words, we invite people to learn and act in the belief that change for the good is possible. This openness to possibility isn’t blind or over-optimistic. It looks to evidence and experience, and is born of an appreciation of the world’s limitations (Halpin 2003: 19-20).

We can quickly see how such hope is both a part of the fabric of education – and, for many, an aim of education. Mary Warnock (1986:182) puts it this way:

I think that of all the attributes that I would like to see in my children or in my pupils, the attribute of hope would come high, even top, of the list. To lose hope is to lose the capacity to want or desire anything; to lose, in fact, the wish to live. Hope is akin to energy, to curi­osity, to the belief that things are worth doing. An education which leaves a child without hope is an education that has failed.

But hope is not easy to define or describe. It is:

An emotion . Hope, John Macquarrie (1978 11) suggests, ‘consists in an outgoing and trusting mood toward the environment’. We do not know what will happen but take a gamble. ‘It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk’ (Solnit 2016: 21).

A choice or intention to act . Hope ‘promotes affirmative courses of action’ (Macquarrie 1978: 11). Hope alone will not transform the world. Action ‘undertaken in that kind of naïveté’, wrote Paulo Freire (1994: 8), ‘is an excellent route to hopelessness, pessimism, and fatalism’. Hope and action are linked. Rebecca Solnit (2016: 22) put it this way, ‘Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope… To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable’.

An intellectual activity . Hope is not just feeling or striving, according to McQuarrie it has a cognitive or intellectual aspect. ‘[I]t carries in itself a definite way of understanding both ourselves – and the environing processes within which human life has its setting’ ( op. cit. ).

This provides us with a language to help make sense of things and to imagine change for the better – a ‘vocabulary of hope’. It helps us to critique the world as it is and our part in it, and not to just imagine change but also to plan it (Moltman 1967, 1971). It also allows us, and others, to ask questions of our hopes, to request evidence for our claims. (See, what is hope? ).

Education – being respectful, informed and wise

Education is wrapped up with who we are as learners and facilitators of learning – and how we are experienced by learners. In order to think about this, it is helpful to look back at a basic distinction made by Erich Fromm (1979), amongst others, between having and being. Fromm approaches these as fundamental modes of existence. He saw them as two different ways of understanding ourselves and the world in which we live.

Having is concerned with owning, possessing and controlling. In it we want to ‘make everybody and everything’, including ourselves, our property (Fromm 1979: 33). It looks to objects and material possessions.

Being is rooted in love according to Fromm. It is concerned with shared experience and productive activity. Rather than seeking to possess and control, in this mode, we engage with the world. We do not impose ourselves on others nor ‘interfere’ in their lives (see Smith and Smith 2008: 16-17).

These different orientations involve contrasting approaches to learning.

Students in the having mode must have but one aim; to hold onto what they have ‘learned’, either by entrusting it firmly to their memories or by carefully guarding their notes. They do not have to produce or create something new…. The process of learning has an entirely different quality for students in the being mode… Instead of being passive receptacles of words and ideas, they listen, they hear , and most important, they receive and they respond in an active, productive way. (Fromm 1979: 37-38)

In many ways, this difference mirrors that between education and schooling. Schooling entails transmitting knowledge in manageable lumps so it can be stored and then used so that students can pass tests and have qualifications. Education involves engaging with others and the world. It entails being with   others in a particular way. Here I want to explore three aspects – being respectful, informed and wise.

Being respectful

The process of education flows from a basic orientation of respect – respect for truth, others and themselves, and the world. It is an attitude or feeling which is carried through into concrete action, into the way we treat people, for example. Respect, as R. S. Dillon (2014) has reminded us, is derived from the Latin respicere , meaning ‘to look back at’ or ‘to look again’ at something. In other words, when we respect something we value it enough to make it our focus and to try to see it for what it is, rather than what we might want it to be. It is so important that it calls for our recognition and our regard – and we choose to respond.

We can see this at work in our everyday relationships. When we think highly of someone we may well talk about respecting them – and listen carefully to what they say or value the example they give. Here, though, we are also concerned with a more abstract idea – that of moral worth or value. Rather than looking at why we respect this person or that, the interest is in why we should respect people in general (or truth, or creation, or ourselves).

First, we expect educators to hold truth dearly . We expect that they will look beneath the surface, try to challenge misrepresentation and lies, and be open to alternatives. They should display the ‘two basic virtues of truth’: sincerity and accuracy (Williams 2002: 11). There are strong religious reasons for this. Bearing false witness, within Christian traditions, can be seen as challenging the foundations of God’s covenant. There are also strongly practical reasons for truthfulness. Without it, the development of knowledge would not be possible – we could not evaluate one claim against another. Nor could we conduct much of life. For example, as Paul Seabright (2010) has argued, truthfulness allows us to trust strangers. In the process, we can build complex societies, trade and cooperate.

Educators, as with other respecters of truth, should do their best to acquire ‘true beliefs’ and to ensure what they say actually reveals what they believe (Williams 2002: 11). Their authority, ‘must be rooted in their truthfulness in both these respects: they take care, and they do not lie’ op. cit.).

Second, educators should display fundamental respect for others (and themselves) . There is a straightforward theological argument for this. There is also a fundamental philosophical argument for ‘respect for persons’. Irrespective of what they have done, the people they are or their social position, it is argued, people are deserving of some essential level of regard. The philosopher most closely associated with this idea is Immanuel Kant – and his thinking has become a central pillar of humanism. Kant’s position was that people were deserving of respect because they are people – free, rational beings. They are ends in themselves with an absolute dignity

Alongside respect for others comes respect for self. Without it, it is difficult to see how we can flourish – and whether we can be educators. Self-respect is not to be confused with qualities like self-esteem or self-confidence; rather it is to do with our intrinsic worth as a person and a sense of ourselves as mattering. It involves a ‘secure conviction that [our] conception of the good, [our] plan of life, is worth carrying out’ (Rawls 1972: 440). For some, respect for ourselves is simply the other side of the coin from respect for others. It flows from respect for persons. For others, like John Rawls, it is vital for happiness and must be supported as a matter of justice.

Third, educators should respect the Earth . This is sometimes talked about as respect for nature, or respect for all things or care for creation. Again there is a strong theological argument here – in much religious thinking humans are understood as stewards of the earth. Our task is to cultivate and care for it (see, for example, Genesis 2:15). However, there is also a strong case grounded in human experience. For example, Miller (2000) argues that ‘each person finds identity, meaning, and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to spiritual values such as compassion and peace’. Respect for the world is central to the thinking of those arguing for a more holistic vision of education and to the thinking of educationalists such as Montessori . Her vision of ‘cosmic education’ puts appreciating the wholeness of life at the core.

Since it has been seen to be necessary to give so much to the child, let us give him a vision of the whole universe. The universe is an imposing reality, and an answer to all questions. We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity. This idea helps the mind of the child to become fixed, to stop wandering in an aimless quest for knowledge. He is satisfied, having found the universal centre of himself with all things’. (Montessori 2000)

Last, and certainly not least, there is a basic practical concern. We face an environmental crisis of catastrophic proportions. As Emmett (among many others) has pointed out, it is likely that we are looking at a global average rise of over four degrees Centigrade. This ‘will lead to runaway climate change, capable of tipping the planet into an entirely different state, rapidly. Earth would become a hell hole’ (2013: 143).

Being informed

To facilitate learning we must have some understanding of the subject matter being explored, and the impact study could have on those involved. In other words, facilitation is intelligent.

We expect, quite reasonably, that when people describe themselves as teachers or educators, they know something about the subjects they are talking about. In this respect, our ‘subject area’ as educators is wide. It can involve particular aspects of knowledge and activity such as those associated with maths or history. However, it is also concerned with happiness and relationships, the issues and problems of everyday life in communities, and questions around how people are best to live their lives. In some respects, it is wisdom that is required – not so much in the sense that we know a lot or are learned – but rather we are able to help people make good judgements about problems and situations.

We also assume that teachers and educators know how to help people learn. The forms of education we are exploring here are sophisticated. They can embrace the techniques of classroom management and of teaching to a curriculum that has been the mainstay of schooling. However, they move well beyond this into experiential learning, working with groups, and forms of working with individuals that draw upon insights from counselling and therapy.

In short, we look to teachers and educators as experts, We expect them to apply their expertise to help people learn. However, things don’t stop there. Many look for something more – wisdom.

Wisdom is not something that we can generally claim for ourselves – but a quality recognized by others. Sometimes when people are described as wise what is meant is that they are scholarly or learned. More often, I suspect, when others are described as ‘being wise’ it that people have experienced their questions or judgement helpful and sound when exploring a problem or difficult situation (see Smith and Smith 2008: 57-69). This entails:

• appreciating what can make people flourish
• being open to truth in its various guises and allowing subjects to speak to us
• developing the capacity to reflect
• 
  being knowledgeable, especially about ourselves, around ‘what makes people tick’ and the systems of which we are a part
• being discerning – able to evaluate and judge situations. ( op. cit. : 68)

This combination of qualities, when put alongside being respectful and informed, comes close to what Martin Buber talked about as the ‘real teacher’. The real teacher, he believed:

… teaches most successfully when he is not consciously trying to teach at all, but when he acts spontaneously out of his own life. Then he can gain the pupil’s confidence; he can convince the adolescent that there is human truth, that existence has a meaning. And when the pupil’s confidence has been won, ‘his resistance against being educated gives way to a singular happening: he accepts the educator as a person. He feels he may trust this man, that this man is taking part in his life, accepting him before desiring to influence him. And so he learns to ask…. (Hodes 1972: 136)

Education – acting so that all may share in life

Thus far in answering the question ‘what is education?’ we have seen how it can be thought of as the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning. Here we will explore the claim that education should be undertaken in the belief that all should have the chance to share in life. This commitment to the good of all and of each individual is central to the vision of education explored here, but it could be argued that it is possible to be involved in education without this. We could take out concern for others. We could just focus on process – the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning – and not state to whom this applies and the direction it takes.

Looking beyond process

First, we need to answer the question ‘if we act wisely, hopefully, and respectfully as educators do we need to have a further purpose?’ Our guide here will again be John Dewey. He approached the question a century ago by arguing that ‘the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth’ (Dewey 1916: 100). Education, for him, entailed the continuous ‘reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases the ability to direct the course of subsequent experience. (Dewey 1916: 76). His next step was to consider the social relationships in which this can take place and the degree of control that learners and educators have over the process. Just as Freire (1972) argued later, relationships for learning need to be mutual, and individual and social change possible.

In our search for aims in education, we are not concerned… with finding an end outside of the educative process to which education is subordinate. Our whole conception forbids. We are rather concerned with the contrast which exists when aims belong within the process in which they operate and when they are set up from without. And the latter state of affairs must obtain when social relationships are not equitably balanced. For in that case, some portions of the whole social group will find their aims determined by an external dictation; their aims will not arise from the free growth of their own experience, and their nominal aims will be means to more ulterior ends of others rather than truly their own. (Dewey 1916: 100-101)

In other words, where there are equitable relationships, control over the learning process, and the possibilities of fundamental change we needn’t look beyond the process. However, we have to work for much of the time in situations and societies where this level of democracy and social justice does not exist. Hence the need to make clear a wider purpose. Dewey (1916: 7) argued, thus, that our ‘chief business’ as educators is to enable people ‘to share in a common life’. I want to widen this and to argue that all should have a chance to share in life.

Having the chance to share in life

We will explore, briefly, three overlapping approaches to making the case – via religious belief, human rights and scientific exploration.

Religious belief. Historically it has been a religious rationale that has underpinned much thinking about this question. If we were to look at Catholic social teaching, for example, we find that at its heart lays a concern for human dignity . This starts from the position that, ‘human beings, created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27), have by their very existence an inherent value, worth, and distinction’ (Groody 2007). Each life is considered sacred and cannot be ignored or excluded. As we saw earlier, Kant argued something similar with regard to ‘respect for persons’. All are worthy of respect and the chance to flourish.

To human dignity a concern for solidarity is often added (especially within contemporary Catholic social teaching). Solidarity:

… is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all. On Social Concern ( Sollicitudo rei Socialis . . . ), #38

Another element, fundamental to the formation of the groups, networks and associations necessary for the ‘common life’ that Dewey describes, is subsidiarity . This principle, which first found its institutional voice in a papal encyclical in 1881, holds that human affairs are best handled at the ‘lowest’ possible level, closest to those affected (Kaylor 2015). It is a principle that can both strengthen civil society and the possibility of more mutual relationships for learning.

Together, these can provide a powerful and inclusive rationale for looking beyond particular individuals or groups when thinking about educational activity.

Human rights. Beside religious arguments lie others that are born of agreed principle or norm rather than faith. Perhaps the best known of these relate to what have become known as human rights. The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it this way:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 26 further states:

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms….

These fundamental and inalienable rights are the entitlement of all human beings regardless of their nation, location, language, religion, ethnic origin or any other status (Article 2).

Scientific exploration. Lastly, I want to look at the results of scientific investigation into our nature as humans. More specifically we need to reflect on what it means when humans are described as social animals.

As we have already seen there is a significant amount of research showing just how dependent we are in everyday life on having trusting relationships in a society. Without them even the most basic exchanges cannot take place. We also know that in those societies where there is stronger concern for others and relatively narrow gaps between rich and poor people are generally happier (see, for example, Halpern 2010). On the basis of this material we could make a case for educators to look to the needs and experiences of all. Political, social and economic institutions depend on mass participation or at least benign consent – and the detail of this has to be learnt. However, with our growing appreciation of how our brains work and with the development of, for example, social cognitive neuroscience, we have a different avenue for exploration. We look to the needs and experience of others because we are hard-wired to do so. As Matthew D. Lieberman (2013) has put it:

Our basic urges include the need to belong, right along with the need for food and water. Our pain and pleasure systems do not merely respond to sensory inputs that can produce physical harm and reward. They are also exquisitely tuned to the sweet and bitter tastes delivered from the social world—a world of connection and threat to connection. (Lieberman 2013: 299)

Our survival as a species is dependent upon on looking to the needs and experiences of others. We dependent upon:

  Connecting: We have ‘evolved the capacity to feel social pains and pleasures, forever linking our well-being to our social connectedness. Infants embody this deep need to stay connected, but it is present through our entire lives’ ( op. cit. : 10) Mindreading: Primates have developed an unparalleled ability to understand the actions and thoughts of those around them, enhancing their ability to stay connected and interact strategically… This capacity allows humans to create groups that can implement nearly any idea and to anticipate the needs and wants of those around us, keeping our groups moving smoothly ( op. cit. : 10) Harmonizing: Although the self may appear to be a mechanism for distinguishing us from others and perhaps accentuating our selfishness, the self actually operates as a powerful force for social cohesiveness. Whereas   connection   is about our desire to be social, harmonizing   refers to the neural adaptations that allow group beliefs and values to influence our own. ( op. cit. : 11)

One of the key issues around these processes is the extent to which they can act to become exclusionary i.e. people can become closely attached to one particular group, community or nation and begin to treat others as somehow lesser or alien. In so doing relationships that are necessary to our survival – and that of the planet – become compromised. We need to develop relationships that are both bonding and bridging (see social capital ) – and this involves being and interacting with others who may not share our interests and concerns.

Education is more than fostering understanding and an appreciation of emotions and feelings. It is also concerned with change – ‘with how people can act with understanding and sensitivity to improve their lives and those of others’ (Smith and Smith 2008: 104). As Karl Marx (1977: 157-8) famously put it ‘all social life is practical…. philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; ‘the point is to change it’. Developing an understanding of an experience or a situation is one thing, working out what is good and wanting to do something about it is quite another. ‘For appropriate action to occur there needs to be commitment’ (Smith and Smith 2008: 105).

This combination of reflection; looking to what might be good and making it our own; and seeking to change ourselves and the world we live in is what Freire (1973) talked about as  praxis. It involves us, as educators, working with people to create and sustain environments and relationships where it is possible to:

• Go back to experiences . Learning doesn’t take place in a vacuum. We have to look to the past as well as the present and the future. It is necessary to put things in their place by returning to, or recalling, events and happenings that seem relevant.
• Attend and connect to feelings . Our ability to think and act is wrapped up with our feelings. Appreciating what might be going on for us (and for others) at a particular moment; thinking about the ways our emotions may be affecting things; and being open to what our instincts or intuitions are telling us are important elements of such reflection. (See Boud et. al. 1985).
• Develop understandings . Alongside attending to feelings and experiences, we need to examine the theories and understandings we are using. We also need to build new interpretations where needed. We should be looking to integrating new knowledge into our conceptual framework.
• Commit . Education is something ‘higher’ according to John Henry Newman. It is concerned not just with what we know and can do, but also with who we are, what we value, and our capacity to live life as well as we can . We need space to engage with these questions and help to appreciate the things we value. As we learn to frame our beliefs we can better appreciate how they breathe life into our relationships and encounters, become our own, and move us to act.
• Act . Education is forward-looking and hopeful. It looks to change for the better. In the end our efforts at facilitating learning have to be judged by the extent to which they further the capacity to flourish and to share in life. For this reason we need also to attend to the concrete, the actual steps that can be taken to improve things.

As such education is a deeply practical activity – something that we can do for ourselves (what we could call self-education), and with others.

Conclusion – so what is education?

It is in this way that we end up with a definition of education as ‘the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning undertaken in the belief that all should have the chance to share in life’. What does education involve?

We can begin with what Aristotle discusses as hexis – a readiness to sense and know. This is a state – or what Joe Sachs (2001) talks about as an ‘active condition’. It allows us to take a step forward – both in terms of the processes discussed above, and in what we might seek to do when working with learners and participants. Such qualities can be seen as being at the core of the haltung and processes of pedagogues and educators (see below). There is a strong emphasis upon being in touch with feelings, attending to intuitions and seeking evidence to confirm or question what we might be sensing. A further element is also present – a concern not to take things for granted or at their face value (See, also, Pierre Bourdieu on education , Bourdieu 1972|1977: 214 n1).

Beyond that, we can see a guiding eidos or leading idea. This is the belief that all share in life and a picture of what might allow people to be happy and flourish. Alongside is a disposition or haltung   (a concern to act respectfully, knowledgeably and wisely) and interaction (joining with others to build relationships and environments for learning). Finally, there is praxis – informed, committed action (Carr and Kemmis 1986; Grundy 1987).

The process of education

At first glance, this way of answering the question ‘what is education?’ – with its roots in the thinking of  Aristotle , Rousseau , Pestalozzi and Dewey (to name a few) – is part of the progressive tradition of educational practice. It seems very different from ‘formal tradition’ or ‘traditional education’.

If there is a core theme to the formal position it is that education is about passing on information; for formalists, culture and civilization represent a store of ideas and wisdom which have to be handed on to new generations. Teaching is at the heart of this transmission; and the process of transmission is education…

While progressive educators stress the child’s development from within, formalists put the emphasis, by contrast, on formation from without— formation that comes from immersion in the knowledge, ideas, beliefs, concepts, and visions of society, culture, civilization. There are, one might say, conservative and liberal interpretations of this world view— the conservative putting the emphasis on transmission itself, on telling, and the liberal putting the emphasis more on induction, on initiation by involvement with culture’s established ideas.(Thomas 2013: 25-26).

As both Thomas and Dewey (1938: 17-23) have argued, these distinctions are problematic. A lot of the debate is either really about education being turned, or slipping, into something else, or reflecting a lack of balance between the informal and formal.

In the ‘formal tradition’ problems often occur where people are treated as objects to be worked on or ‘moulded’ rather than as participants and creators i.e. where education slips into ‘schooling’.

In the ‘progressive tradition’ issues frequently arise where the nature of experience is neglected or handled incompetently. Some experiences are damaging and ‘mis-educative’. They can arrest or distort ‘the growth of further experience’ (Dewey 1938: 25). The problem often comes when education drifts or moves into entertainment or containment. Involvement in the immediate activity is the central concern and little attention is given to expanding horizons, nor to reflection, commitment and creating change.

The answer to the question ‘what is education?’ given here can apply to both those ‘informal’ forms that are driven and rooted in conversation – and to more formal approaches involving a curriculum. The choice is not between what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ – but rather what is appropriate for people in this situation or that. There are times to use transmission and direct teaching as methods, and moments for exploration, experience and action. It is all about getting the mix right and framing it within the guiding eidos and disposition of education.

Further reading and references

Recommended introductions.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Collier Books. (Collier edition first published 1963). In this book, Dewey seeks to move beyond dualities such as progressive/traditional – and to outline a philosophy of experience and its relation to education.

Thomas, G. (2013). Education: A very short introduction . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simply the best contemporary introduction to thinking about schooling and education.

Boud, D., Keogh, R. and Walker, D. (eds.) (1985). Reflection. Turning experience into learning . London: Kogan Page.

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1972|1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. First published in French as Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois études d’ethnologie kabyle, (1972).

Brookfield, S. (1984). Adult learners, adult education and the community . Milton Keynes, PA: Open University Press.

Buber, Martin (1947). Between Man and Man. Transl. R. G. Smith. London: Kegan Paul .

Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming Critical. Education, knowledge and action research. Lewes: Falmer.

Dewey, J. (1916), Democracy and Education. An introduction to the philosophy of education (1966 edn.). New York: Free Press.

Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. (Revised edn.), Boston: D. C. Heath.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Collier Books. (Collier edition first published 1963).

Dillon, R. S. (2014). Respect. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). [ http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/respect/ . Retrieved: February 10, 2015].

Ellis, J. W. (1990). Informal education – a Christian perspective.   Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith (eds.)   Using Informal Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Emmott, S. (2013). 10 Billion . London: Penguin. [Kindle edition].

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Freire, P. (1994) Pedagogy of Hope. Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed . With notes by Ana Maria Araujo Freire. Translated by Robert R. Barr. New York: Continuum.

Fromm, E. (1979). To Have or To Be . London: Abacus. (First published 1976).

Fromm, E. (1995). The Art of Loving . London: Thorsons. (First published 1957).

Gallagher, M. W. and Lopez, S. J. (eds.) (2018). The Oxford Handbook of Hope . New York: Oxford University Press.

Gopnik, A. (2016). The Gardener and the Carpenter. What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children . London: Random House.

Groody, D. (2007). Globalization, Spirituality and Justice . New York: Orbis Books.

Grundy, S. (1987). Curriculum. Product or praxis . Lewes: Falmer.

Halpern, D. (2010). The hidden wealth of nations . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Halpin, D. (2003). Hope and Education. The role of the utopian imagination . London: RoutledgeFalmer.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Education as the practice of freedom , London: Routledge.

hooks, b. (2003). Teaching Community. A pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge.

Hodes, A. (1972). Encounter with Martin Buber. London:   Allen Lane/Penguin.

Illeris, K. (2002). The Three Dimensions of Learning. Contemporary learning theory in the tension field between the cognitive, the emotional and the social. Frederiksberg: Roskilde University Press.

Kant, I. (1949). Fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals (trans.  T. K. Abbott). New York: Liberal Arts Press.

Kaylor, C. (2015). Seven Principles of Catholic Social Teaching. CatholicCulture.org. [ http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=7538#PartV . Retrieved March 21, 2015].

Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs. the climate . London: Penguin. [Kindle edition].

Liston, D. P. (1980). Love and despair in teaching. Educational Theory . 50(1): 81-102.

MacQuarrie, J. (1978). Christian Hope . Oxford: Mowbray.

Marx, K. (1977). ‘These on Feurrbach’ in D. McLellan (ed.) Karl Marx. Selected writings . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Moltmann, J. (1967). Theology of hope: On the ground and the implications of a Christian eschatology . New York: Harper & Row. Available on-line: http://www.pubtheo.com/page.asp?PID=1036

Moltmann, J. (1971). Hope and planning . New York: Harper & Row.

Montessori, M. (2000). To educate the human potential . Oxford: Clio Press.

Rawls, J. (1972). A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rorty, R. (1999). Philosophy and Social Hope . London: Penguin.

Sciolli, A. and Biller, H. B. (2009). Hope in the Age of Anxiety. A guide to understanding and strengthening our most important virtue. New York: Oxford University Press.

Seabright, P. (2010). The Company of Strangers. A natural history of economic life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Smith, H. and Smith, M. K. (2008). The Art of Helping Others . Being Around, Being There, Being Wise . London: Jessica Kingsley.

Smith, M. K. (2019). Haltung, pedagogy and informal education, The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education . [ https://infed.org/mobi/haltung-pedagogy-and-informal-education/ . Retrieved: August 28, 2019].

Smith, M. K. (2012, 2021). ‘What is pedagogy?’, The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education . [ https://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/ . Retrieved February 16, 2021)

Thomas, G. (2013). Education: A very short introduction . Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Kindle Edition].

United Nations General Assembly (1948). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights . New York: United Nations. [ http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ . A ccessed March 14, 2015].

Warnock, M. (1986). The Education of the Emotions. In D. Cooper (ed.) Education, values and the mind. Essays for R. S. Peters . London: Routledge and Keegan Paul.

Williams, B. (2002). Truth & truthfulness: An essay in genealogy . Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Acknowledgements : Picture: Dessiner le futur adulte by Alain Bachellier. Sourced from Flickr and reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) licence. http://www.flickr.com/photos/alainbachellier/537180464/

The informal-formal education curriculum diagram is reproduced with permission from Ellis, J. W. (1990). Informal education – a Christian perspective. Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith (eds.) Using Informal Education . Buckingham: Open University Press. You can read the full chapter in the informal education archives: http://infed.org/archives/usinginformaleducation/ellis.htm

The process of education diagram was developed by Mark K Smith and was inspired by Grundy 1987. It can be reproduced without asking for specific permission but should be credited using the information in ‘how to cite this piece’ below.

This piece uses some material from Smith (2019) Haltung, pedagogy and informal education and (2021) What is pedagogy? (see the references above).

How to cite this piece : Smith, M. K. (2015, 2021). What is education? A definition and discussion. The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education . [ https://infed.org/mobi/what-is-education-a-definition-and-discussion/ . Retrieved: insert date ].

© Mark K Smith 2015, 2021

Last Updated on June 18, 2021 by infed.org

• Our Mission

What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

What is educational process?

Educational process is a structured system of organizational and didactic measures aimed at performing requirements of a definite educational level according to the state standards of higher education. Educational process is based on the principles of science, humanism, democracy, lifelong and degree education.

What are the steps in education process?

Process steps

• Provide relevant information.
• Reinforce through exercises.
• Clarify and review material.
• Test to verify learning.

What are the three components of educational process?

The components of the educative process are the learners, teacher and the subject matter. The subject matter is what is to be learned, the way it is to be learned and the setting in which is to be learned.

What is the goal of education process?

THE FOUR PROCESS GOALS WHICH APPLY TO ANY DISCIPLINE ARE–TOOL SKILLS SUCH AS ARITHMETIC AND READING, PROBLEM-SOLVING, THINKING, OR INQUIRY, SELF-INSTRUCTION, AND SELF-EVALUATION USING THE CRITERION OF MASTERY.

What are the 2 types of education?

There are three main types of education, namely, Formal, Informal and Non-formal.

What are the 4 levels of education?

Education in the United States follows a pattern similar to that in many systems. Early childhood education is followed by primary school (called elementary school in the United States), middle school, secondary school (called high school in the United States), and then postsecondary (tertiary) education.

What are the four steps of the learning process?

The Four Phases of Learning

• Preparation: Arousing Interest.
• Presentation: Encountering the New Knowledge or Skills.
• Practice: Integrating the New Knowledge or Skills.
• Performance: Applying the New Knowledge and Skills.

What are the 5 methods of teaching?

These are teacher-centred methods, learner-centred methods, content-focused methods and interactive/participative methods.

• (a) INSTRUCTOR/TEACHER CENTRED METHODS. …
• (b) LEARNER-CENTRED METHODS. …
• (c) CONTENT-FOCUSED METHODS. …
• (d) INTERACTIVE/PARTICIPATIVE METHODS. …
• SPECIFIC TEACHING METHODS. …
• LECTURE METHOD.

What are the 7 steps of the IEP process?

Let’s look at these seven steps in more detail to get a better understanding of what each means and how they form the IEP process.

• Step 1: Pre-Referral. …
• Step 2: Referral. …
• Step 3: Identification. …
• Step 4: Eligibility. …
• Step 5: Development of the IEP. …
• Step 6: Implementation of the IEP. …
• Step 7: Evaluation and Reviews.

What are components of education?

Six basic elements influence the quality of education.

• 1) The teacher and teaching methods.
• 2) Educational content.
• 3) Learning environment.
• 4) School management.
• 5) Preconditions for pupils.
• 6) Funding and organization.

What are the basic elements of learning?

The Three Essential Elements of Learning and Development. In the spirit of Einstein, but with only a fraction of the elegance, I offer the three essential elements of an effective learning system. In its simplest form this system can be expressed with three words: requirements, solutions and impact.

What is good quality of education?

VVOB’s Definition of Quality Education A good quality education is one that provides all learners with capabilities they require to become economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods, contribute to peaceful and democratic societies and enhance individual well-being.

What are the 3 important goals of education?

My goals for education are the following.

• To have the basic skills needed to build upon to accomplish whatever task or job is assigned in the future. …
• To be a critical thinker. …
• To be able to troubleshoot or strategize. …
• To be a moral person. …
• To be a good citizen.

What is a full form of education?

The Full Form of EDUCATION is E Energy D Discipline U Unity C Confidence A Aim T Talent I Interest O Opportunity N Nationality.

What are the characteristics of education?

Characteristics

• Pervasive accessibility. Learning will be always available to everyone at all times, at work, home and everywhere spend time.
• Personalised journeys. Everyone learns differently. …
• Real world relevance. …
• Immersive experience. …
• Augmented teachers. …
• Peer learning.

What type of education is there?

The Ultimate Guide to 13 Different Types of Schools Across America

What is the highest level of education?

A doctorate is the highest level of formal education available. Doctoral programs include coursework, comprehensive exams, research requirements, and a dissertation. Doctoral programs require students to have a master’s degree, although some doctorates incorporate a master’s as part of the curriculum.

What is basic education level?

The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) states that basic education corresponds to the first nine years of formal schooling and is made up of two levels. Level 1 is primary education (usually six years) and Level 2 refers to lower secondary (usually three years; grades 7-9).

What is primary education level?

Primary Education Paaralang Elementarya or elementary education is the first part of the educational system, and it includes the first six years of compulsory education from grade 1 to 6, with an optional 7th grade offered by some schools. Major subjects include maths, science, English, Filipino and social sciences.

What is the best method of teaching?

The 5 Best Teaching Methods I Used This Year

• Student-Centered Discussions. I admit that I do enjoy being the sage on the stage in my classroom, but I realize that this does little to engage my students in deep thinking. …
• Making Connections. …
• Increased Autonomy. …
• Building Relationships. …
• A Focus on Literacy.

What are the modern methods of teaching?

Following are the modern teaching methods:

• Collaborative Learning.
• Spaced Learning.
• Flipped Classroom.
• Self-learning.
• Gamification.
• VAK teaching.
• Crossover Learning.
• Traditional Methods of Teaching that are Still Followed in Most Schools:

What are the 10 methods of teaching?

Here are some of the top ideas for you to use.

• Modeling. After telling students what to do, it’s important to show them exactly how to do it. …
• Addressing Mistakes. …
• Providing Feedback. …
• Cooperative Learning. …
• Experiential Learning. …
• Student-Led Classroom. …
• Class Discussion. …
• Inquiry-Guided Instruction.

What is the most important part of an IEP?

The PLAAFP Section It is sometimes referred to as Present Levels. This may be the most important part of the IEP because it tells you how the school assesses your child’s skills. The PLAAFP will focus on your child’s needs to help direct his learning.

What are the 7 components of an IEP?

Accessible Educational Materials and Technologies in the IEP

• Part 1: Present Levels. …
• Part 2: Annual Goals. …
• Part 3: Measuring and Reporting Progress. …
• Part 4: Special Education. …
• Part 5: Related Services. …
• Part 6: Supplementary Aids and Services. …
• Part 7: Extent of Nonparticipation. …
• Part 8: Accommodations in Assessment.

How do you explain IEP to students?

The IEP is a written document that describes the educational plan for a student with a disability. Among other things, your IEP talks about your disability, what skills you need to learn, what you’ll do in school this year, what services your school will provide, and where your learning will take place.

Graduated from ENSAT (national agronomic school of Toulouse) in plant sciences in 2018, I pursued a CIFRE doctorate under contract with Sun’Agri and INRAE ​​in Avignon between 2019 and 2022. My thesis aimed to study dynamic agrivoltaic systems, in my case in arboriculture. I love to write and share science related Stuff Here on my Website. I am currently continuing at Sun’Agri as an R&D engineer.

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• Understanding Learning Processes

Remember, what your student does is actually more important to their learning than what you, as the teacher, do. Learning activities are what students actually do in your course in order to learn.

How can you construct a learning experience so your students will be able to learn the stated outcomes of your course? You have a vast range of teaching techniques to choose from, ranging from familiar lecture or tutorial through to small group discussions, role plays, group or individual projects, brainstorming, oral presentations, problem solving activities, debates, etc. (see Teaching Contexts )

The types of learning activities you develop for your course should be based on the particular learning outcomes that you would like to achieve. Learning activities need to support students in the achievement of course learning outcomes.

When choosing learning activities it is useful to reflect on the learning process and what we actually do when we learn something. There are several models of learning useful in universities, such as David Kolb's Experiential Learning Model (University of Leicester) and Diana Laurillard's Conversational Model (EduTech Wiki).

One model suggests that in order to learn something you need to do the following:

Source: C. Hughes, S. Toohey and S. Hatherley (1992), "Developing learning-centred trainers and tutors," Studies in Continuing Education 14 (1), 14-27.

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Center for Engaged Learning

Process-driven model of education.

by Ketevan Kupatadze

October 10, 2017

In this blog I will continue reflecting on the various ways in which the student-faculty partnership model could challenge or simply take a different approach towards the established higher education system. Here I focus on Students-as-Partner’s emphasis on the open and unpredictable process of teaching and learning rather than the predetermined teaching and learning goals and outcomes. There seems to exist a slight disconnect between the policies at the institutional as well as supra-institutional levels that aim to assure the quality and standards of education through continuous assessment and the pedagogical philosophy rooted in the principles of partnership between students and educators. Two possible solutions to such disconnect seem to be a) the acceptance of education as at times an unpredictable and changeable process, and b) the development of tools and resources that would help us assess or evaluate the learning that happens through partnership.

In “A Model of Active Student Participation in Curriculum Design: Exploring Desirability and Possibility,” Bovill and Bulley (2011) state that “our systems of quality assurance require courses to be validated and reviewed on the basis of clear intended learning outcomes and assessments” (p. 6). In the same vein, Healey, Flint and Harrington (2014) recognize the important role of the institutions and professional organizations that set the guidelines and standards for educational goals and outcomes. Without a doubt, our focus on teaching and learning goals and outcomes and their assessment has a long-standing tradition and will be incredibly hard and, more importantly, counterproductive to discard. But at the same time, the advocates of student-faculty partnership in teaching and leaning view this practice as a process rather than as a goal and outcomes-driven activity and, as such, one that has the potential to dramatically transform the purpose and structure of higher education that is largely based on delivering results in the form of outcomes through assessment (Healey et al., 2014).  Healey et al. maintain that unlike the current model that is end-oriented, the student-faculty partnership is pedagogy that is “(radically) open to and creating possibilities for discovering and learning something that cannot be known beforehand”(2014, p. 9).

This opinion is also shared by Matthews (2016) who acknowledges that SaP model is inherently process-oriented rather than outcomes-driven (p. 3). She maintains that the language of student engagement has been and remains outcomes focused, while Students as Partners is process and values oriented (p. 3). The question then is: how does one engage in student-faculty partnership, opening up to the possibility of not knowing the end-point of teaching and learning whether in a specific course, set of courses or an entire curriculum and, simultaneously, continue assessing student learning to ensure that the standards set by their institution or professional organization(s) are met?

To answer these questions, several studies have pointed out that we might, and even should, be having a conversation on the ways to incorporate assessment in the student-faculty partnership process (Cook-Sather et al. 2014; Healey et al. 2014;). Healey et al suggest that to address this issue we might “look for opportunities for employing partnership as a way of responding to other influential discourses; use the concept and practice of partnership to meet the requirements” set out by our institutions and/or professional organizations; and “consider how reward and recognition for partnership may be developed” (p. 58). Cook-Sather et al., on their part, suggest that assessment should be also co-envisioned and co-developed by faculty and students as partners, since it is an integral part of teaching and learning process (p. 188). The authors offer various examples: involvement of students in the design of course learning goals and outcomes, such as inviting students to develop course goals either in the beginning or the end of the term; inviting them to reflect on their end of course feedback; involving them in the process itself of developing assignment, course, or curriculum assessment such as end-of-term course evaluation questionnaires and course assessment tools while the course is in progress; offering students an opportunity to reflect on their learning throughout the course; working with students outside the class setting to assess learning across courses, etc.

This conversation about the ways to partner with students on assessment as a valued part of the teaching and learning process is new and ongoing. It is one of the areas that needs most attention as we move towards a more egalitarian educational model in which we – faculty and students – see each other as partners and collaborators. I would be curious to know of different ways one could partner with students to teach, while simultaneously making sure that the educational standards are met through continuous process of assessing instructors’ and students’ teaching and learning goals.

Bibliography

• Bovill, C., and Bulley, C.J. (2011) A model of active student participation in curriculum design: exploring desirability and possibility. In Rust, C. (ed.)  Improving Student Learning (ISL) 18: Global Theories and Local Practices: Institutional, Disciplinary and Cultural Variations.  Series: Improving Student Learning (18). Oxford Brookes University: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development: Oxford, pp. 176-188. ISBN 9781873576809
• Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C., and Felten, P. (2014).  Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: a guide for faculty.  San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass.
• Healey, M., Flint, A., & Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. York: Higher Education Academy. Retrieved from https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/engagement-through-partnership-students-partners-learning-and-teaching-higher-education
• Matthews, K. E. (2016). Students as partners as the future of student engagement. Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, 1 (1) 1-5. Retrieved from https://journals.gre.ac.uk/index.php/raise/article/view/380/338

Ketevan Kupatadze, Senior Lecturer in Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, is the  2017-2019 Center for Engaged Learning Scholar . Dr. Kupatadze’s CEL Scholar project focuses on student-faculty partnerships.

How to cite this post:

Kupatadze, Ketevan. 2017, October 10. Process-Driven Model of Education. [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/process-driven-model-of-education/

• Engaged Learning
• Student-Faculty Partnership
• Ketevan Kupatadze

Define Education as a Process and Product B.Ed Notes

Back to: Educational Studies UGC NET – Unit 1

The process is defined as a set of interrelated or interacting activities which transforms inputs into outputs. These outputs then serve as input for the next stage until a known goal or result is reached. Education itself is a process of transformation; it is an enrichment of the human being with knowledge and skills.

The product can be defined as a result of processes and services. The product achieved by the school is called an “educational product” and consists of key components that contribute decisively to the quality of education provided by the organization. The most important key components are:

Key Components

● The educational product provided by the teachers.

● The educational services comprise the delivery of educational development.

In an education system, every teacher may be seen as a “provider” of an educational product delivered to their pupils, the “consumers”. The most important educational product achieved by the teacher are:

Learned Skills by Teachers

● Knowledge and skills

● Communication skills

● Nonverbal skills

The students considered the consumers receive the educational product directly and immediately while interacting with the teachers. The output result from the educational process of interaction between the school and students is the educational product, which is provided by the school. The educational product provided by the school can be represented by:

● Study program

● Extra-curricular activities

● Training programs

Therefore, education as a process is defined as the learning process or acquisition of skills, knowledge, and values that involve discussions, learning, and training in a disciplinary program. While the outcome of the learning program is known to be the product of education.

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{{item.title}}, my essentials, ask for help, contact edconnect, directory a to z, how to guides, evaluation resource hub, process evaluation.

Process evaluation is concerned with evidence of activity, and the quality of implementation. The questions in a process evaluation focus on how, and how well programs are implemented.

Typical process questions include:

• Are activities being implemented as intended? If not, what has been changed and for what reasons?
• What characteristics of the project or its implementation have enabled or hindered project goals?
• How suitable are materials or activities for the intended participants?
• How efficiently are resources being used? Is there any wastage?
• What can be learnt about how to implement a program like this smoothly in similar schools?

Process evaluation is useful in the early stages of implementation, as well as periodically throughout the life of a program or project.

Process evaluation early in a program can assess initial functions and their appropriateness, investigate how well the program plans and activities are working, and provide early warning for any problems that may occur.

For existing or long-running programs, periodic process evaluation promotes ongoing efficiency and quality improvement.

Process evaluation helps to build an understanding of the mechanisms at play in successful programs so that they can be reused and developed for other contexts.

Process evaluation is also helpful when a program fails to achieve its goals for some or all of the target population. Process evaluation helps reveal whether this was because of a failure of implementation, a design flaw in the program, or because of some external barrier in the operating environment or a combination of these and other factors.

Multiple sources

Process evaluation draws on multiple sources of evidence. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are useful in process evaluation.

• Evidence of activity shows what has taken place. This often comes from administrative records, teaching and learning programs, correspondence and student work.
• Evidence of process quality not only tells us what has taken place but how well it was executed.  Evidence of process quality can come from a number of sources, including participant feedback about their experiences, comparison of observed practice with recommended practice, or something not going as planned.

Follow the link below to read more about the strengths and limitations of different data types.

Keep reading

• Data types - strengths and limitations

Another FAFSA snafu could delay students’ financial aid even longer

Hundreds of thousands of students who applied for federal aid to pay for college now risk potentially open-ended delays as enrollment deadlines loom, thanks to another miscalculation by the Department of Education.

The agency’s Federal Student Aid office, which administers the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), announced Friday that its system didn’t include all data fields to correctly calculate aid based on the assets students reported, requiring their applications to be reprocessed and resent to schools.

It’s the latest snafu in this year’s glitch-ridden FAFSA overhaul , which was supposed to streamline the application process but has snarled it for millions instead.

“At this stage in the game and after so many delays, every error adds up and will be felt acutely by every student who is counting on need-based financial aid to make their postsecondary dreams a reality,” Justin Draeger, the president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement Friday.

The Department of Education, which didn’t disclose how long it would take to reprocess the affected applications, said that the miscalculation has been resolved but that the agency was sending out inaccurate information until as recently as Thursday. It indicated roughly 200,000 applications were affected out of the more than 1.5 million it has already processed — in a year when at least 6 million FAFSAs have been submitted so far.

An agency spokesperson said officials would continue to deliver “large volumes” of student aid information to universities in the days ahead. “We remain focused on helping students and families through this process and supporting colleges produce aid offers as quickly as possible,” the spokesperson said.

In light of the latest snag, authorities have advised schools to use applicants’ Student Aid Index number, which can estimate an applicant’s possible aid amount, to create tentative financial aid packages rather than wait for delayed FAFSA forms to be fully processed.

The system is already months behind schedule as authorities race to clean up technical glitches with the online form, process applications and push financial aid packages out the door. Authorities have said they’re working to fully ramp up their processing volumes to deliver the applicant information to schools. Once this has happened, “We anticipate that it will take about two additional weeks to process all applications that have already been submitted,” officials said on March 12.

This year’s new FAFSA was supposed to be easier than ever. It reduced the number of questions from over 100 to about 20, depending on the applicant. But problems have plagued the site since its launch on Dec. 30, when many applicants reported trying unsuccessfully for hours and even days just to log on and start filling out a form. For those who succeeded in filing applications, an early miscalculation left out inflation adjustments for everyone who had applied.

FAFSAs are usually processed within hours or days, but millions have waited up to several months to learn how much money the federal government is putting toward their education for the upcoming school year. The delays complicate college decisions for families that rely on financial aid to pay for college. While National Decision Day is typically May 1, many universities have pushed their deadlines into June due to the FAFSA holdup.

Tiana Alonzo and her daughter, Scarlette-Belle Martinez, who will be an incoming college freshman this fall, submitted a FAFSA on Jan. 5 and waited months to hear back. Alonzo, a single mother in Murrieta, California, said she couldn’t afford her daughter’s dream school without financial aid. Finally, last weekend, their information was processed.

“The second she saw it, she started crying,” Alonzo said of her daughter. “She was like, ‘I can go to college.’ As a parent, to know that that’s how scared she was, it was breaking my heart.”

But the two are still stuck in limbo. The university Martinez is hoping to attend still hasn’t received her financial aid information from the Department of Education, so it hasn’t been able to send her an official financial aid offer.

Sara Ruberg is an associate producer with NBC News.

Education Policy, Theories, and Trends in the 21st Century pp 41–64 Cite as

The Policy Process: Implementation of Education Policy

• Izhak Berkovich   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5710-3666 10  
• First Online: 26 January 2021

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Part of the book series: Policy Implications of Research in Education ((PIRE,volume 12))

After focusing on the first stages of the policymaking process, in which policymakers define issues and construct educational priorities, this chapter draws attention to later stages of the process, including policy implementation and evaluation (Jann and Wegrich 2007). Research on these topics focuses on the instruments employed by policymakers, and the effects of these instruments on implementation and the evaluation of the results of policy programs. In this chapter, we focus on several issues relating to the implementation of education policy: (a) we discuss the manner in which policymakers choose policy instruments and deploy supervision to make sure that strict implementation of the goals is carried out; (b) we delve into how participants in the implementation of education policy at the bottom of the hierarchy are involved in the development of the applied policy, and how their actions shape the nature of the policy at the institutional and national levels; (c) we discuss the various functions that the evaluation of a policy executes; and (d) we discuss the manner in which systemic changes and reforms in recent decades have amounted to a central strategy in the implementation of education policy.

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Berkovich, I. (2021). The Policy Process: Implementation of Education Policy. In: Education Policy, Theories, and Trends in the 21st Century. Policy Implications of Research in Education, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63103-1_3

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This Wisconsin degree wants students to address early childhood education policy issues

This winter, Rice Lake’s Shasta Westaby received an unexpected email from a familiar name.

State lawmakers were working on a bill relating to child care. Given Westaby has almost 15 years of early childhood education experience and runs a child care out of her home, one lawmaker wanted her opinion. 

Westaby said she was excited to be consulted, explaining that child care providers often feel left out of policy conversations that affect their day-to-day operations.

Westaby is among the first eight graduates of an online master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater focused on preparing students to drive early childhood policy change. Launched in 2022, the Early Childhood Education Policy program saw its first graduates in 2023.

“(The state lawmaker reaching out) is a pretty big step forward, and if I hadn’t done this master’s program I would not have been in a position to give my advice and say, ‘Jump on this one; it’s a good one,'" Westaby said.

Programs like the one Westaby completed are still rare, but UW-Whitewater's new degree coincides with a growing national effort to create a new academic discipline in early childhood education policy.

These programs are gaining steam as lawmakers nationwide grapple with the realities of a struggling child care system, including limited child care options and high care costs while child care workers make meager wages. Wisconsin is no exception: This legislative session saw a number of child care bills put forward, but few made it to the governor’s desk. 

More: Wisconsin's legislative session is wrapping up. What have lawmakers done on child care?

Related: New 4K bill could help child care, but at the expense of schools?

'She's a star'; UW-Whitewater program advances new field

Lucy Heimer, a professor at the university and coordinator of the UW-Whitewater program, said its “broad yet focused” curriculum — covering the history of early childhood education and care, leadership and advocacy, aspects of the legislative process and more  —  is necessary to bolster strong policy arguments that create change.  

“There are very few programs out there that support educators and practitioners in deepening that sense of self as an agent for policy change,” Heimer said. “Those working in the field of early childhood education and care get so siloed and overwhelmed with daily operations that they don’t see themselves as advocates, when, in fact, it is through their narratives or stories that the change happens.” 

Since 2018, the Early Childhood Policy in Institutions of Higher Education initiative has been working to make “early childhood policy” its own academic discipline and has funded several related degree programs and research centers across the U.S.

But the initiative's goal is broader: to see the new discipline crop up in more degree programs and, some day, even a distinct academic journal, said Kathy Thornburg, an ECPIHE principal investigator and professor emerita at the University of Missouri’s College of Education & Human Development.

As part of its goal to spread early childhood policy programs across the U.S., the initiative created a set of free, open-source online curriculum to be incorporated into existing programs or used to create new ones. There's no data to show how widespread the new discipline is nationally.

“We just threw the net out and hoped that many, many people would find the material and see the importance of the field,” Thornburg said.

The program at UW-Whitewater is the best example of the materials working as intended, Thornburg said: Heimer found the curriculum online and adapted it to fit her vision of the master’s program — namely an emphasis on access and equity. While UW-Whitewater has not been funded through the ECPIHE initiative, Heimer said she sees the resources, national connection and dialogue it creates as invaluable.  

“She’s our star,” Thornburg said. “She founded it, developed it, and now she has graduates, and we’re so proud of her.”

Experts around the U.S. are already studying the various issues that intersect with early childhood, Thornburg said, like education, child development, social work and law. The question is how to tie their work together as a package in the interest of ensuring policy makes effective change.

"Policies must be much broader to help support the first years of a child's life, their family, along with the workforce working with those children," Thornburg said.

More: Four things to know about some of the most overlooked educators in Wisconsin: child care workers

Related: GOP bill says employers could be key to helping solve the child care crisis. But is it enough?

What's next for program graduates?

Students in the UW-Whitewater program have a range of ties to early childhood in Wisconsin. Some work for the state Department of Children and Families, and Wisconsin Early Childhood Association. Others, like Westaby, are child care providers. 

In creating a new academic discipline, it’s important to go beyond just tying together different fields, Heimer said. Instead, the people driving policy need to have a good understanding of the different languages, cultures and financial issues that are inseparable from questions about crafting policy that meets people’s needs. 

At the heart of all this policy work needs to be respect and care, both for children and their caregivers, Heimer said. She believes the UW-Whitewater program hits this message home. 

Westaby is now running for a seat on the Rice Lake City Council, a move she feels well equipped for after earning her master’s degree.  She hopes that doing so will not only allow her to influence local policy, but better ensure people like her — with firsthand experience in child care —  have a say in state, and even national, policy discussions.

“If I’m in their world, they can’t ignore me anymore,” Westaby said. “I want to be able to use my knowledge and voice to be an advocate for equitable policies across the board, not just for children and families, but also for those who do this job.” 

Other program graduates are looking to leverage their new degree in other ways. Luis Godinez is an educational assistant for Milwaukee Area Technical College’s early childhood program. 

He plans to continue to advocate for bilingual early education policy, just as he did for a policy project required to complete the UW-Whitewater program. 

“There’s this idea that because we live in the United States, we should only speak English," Godinez said. "Through policy, I want to change that way of thinking.

“To me, bilingual education can only help everybody. Even if you’re not a native speaker of another language, it’s OK to learn another language to expand your way of thinking.” 

Godinez said earning this master’s degree opens doors for advancement within the MATC system; he is now qualified to be an early childhood education instructor. 

Related: Survey points to key concerns for MATC campus in choosing next president

Related: Can apprenticeships be the key to solving child care issues?

This idea of being a “teacher of teachers,” as Westaby put it, is a goal the master’s program can also help her achieve. Inspired by the instructors she had through achieving her various degrees, Westaby said she hopes to pour her experiences into the next generation of early childhood professionals. 

In a way, she has already started teaching other providers. For her project, Westaby created an advocacy toolkit for family child care providers, those who run child care programs out of their homes. 

She has already been asked to present the toolkit at the Wisconsin Family Child Care Association Conference in May. 

“I think, historically, there hasn’t been as much education (on policy) for providers at the family child care level,” she said. “So I really want to take my knowledge and experience to other family child care providers in languages and processes that they can understand.” 

More information on UW-Whitewater’s early childhood policy master’s program can be found at bit.ly/MSEECEPolicy . 

Cleo Krejci covers higher education, vocational training and retraining as a Report For America corps member based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact her at  [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @_CleoKrejci. Support her work with a tax-deductible donation at   bit.ly/RFADonation .

Madison Lammert covers child care and early education across Wisconsin as a Report for America corps member based at The Appleton Post-Crescent. To contact her, email  [email protected]  or call 920-993-7108 .  Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a  tax-deductible gift to Report for America  by visiting  postcrescent.com/RFA

Why a CPS plan to add middle schools could both save and complicate the budget process

Cincinnati Public Schools is pushing ahead with a plan to switch grades 6-8 to middle schools as early as next school year amid budget cuts that will impact transportation and extracurricular options for some students.

The board has chipped away at a multimillion-dollar budget gap since January, and the books need to be balanced by June. After a lengthy budget discussion during Monday's school board meeting − at which the board voted to consolidate yellow bus routes and reduce stipends for athletics, among other cuts − the board passed a resolution directing Superintendent Iranetta Wright's team to begin planning next steps for middle schools.

Now, most of the district's schools house kids in K-12, in K-6 and in 7-12. There are no middle schools in the district. The work will include redrawing enrollment maps so the district has neighborhood schools in the city's west, central and east areas.

Are yellow buses next? Cincinnati school board needs to cut $20 million more

At least one board member questioned the wisdom of dealing with both projects at one time.

"I don't think this is the priority right now when we still have $16 million to close in our budget," board member Ben Lindy said during Monday's meeting . He and Kendra Mapp voted against the resolution . "We're asking the administration to climb Mount Everest and then we're telling them to juggle at the same time."

But Board President Eve Bolton doesn't see it that way. She told The Enquirer that there's been a focus on "closing the budget gap" instead of looking at district finances holistically and planning for the district's future. That future includes a vision to reorganize school systems − creating more options for families − and incorporate middle schools that will serve a traditionally difficult age group: grades 6-8.

It's also likely that the switch to neighborhood schools with middle schools will save the district "a great deal of money" in the long run, Bolton said. Which is why, in a perfect world, those details would have come out long before budget discussions.

Instead, she said, the district continues to consider cuts that don't align with the board's long-term goals.

CPS up to $65 million in budget cuts, still millions to go

For example, options to expand the walking radius for yellow buses and to place students in grades seven and eight on Metro were both shot down by the school board.

Superintendent Wright presented these options to the board several times but backed down on the Metro suggestion earlier this month. That potential change, which would save the district $5.5 million, does not gel with the board's plan for middle schools, she said.

"Then we would move seventh and eighth grade students from yellow buses this year to put on Metro next year with the possibility of putting them back on yellow buses the following year," Wright said during a March school board meeting . "Trying to think it out for a longer period of time ... it just didn't seem prudent."

The school board also shot down Wright's proposal to cut resource coordinator positions in half. These coordinators are the bridge between schools, students and communities and promote partnerships with local organizations to best serve kids.

The superintendent and board have agreed on $65 million worth of cuts so far. Decisions include reducing central office staff, eliminating the Summer Scholars program, cutting full-time substitute teachers in lieu of daily subs and doing away with assigned take-home devices for students in preschool through grade 6. Kids in those grades will still be able to check out tablets or laptops to take home if needed, the superintendent clarified on Monday.

The board also approved a reduction in extracurricular funding. The district said those funds were increased for the 2023-24 school year with COVID-19 relief dollars. But next school year, stipends for coaches and club sponsors will return to what they were pre-pandemic.

There is still at least $15 million left to cut in order to balance the budget, Wright said. Bolton thinks it's much more than that, once the district accounts for other upcoming costs.

In the face of these cuts, Brad Smith, a teacher in the district, spoke at Monday's board meeting about the extra administrative positions Wright created at the start of her tenure. The longer the chain of command to the top, he said, the longer it takes to make key decisions about how to support kids.

"All of this administrative bloat, I would say that this is far from extraordinary district leadership," Smith said. "Instead, what I see is just disruption, delaying and deflecting."

First middle school possible this fall

So, what is the board's vision for middle schools?

An ad hoc committee dedicated to reviewing the district's school boundary lines spent the last 18 months speaking with community members and developing a strategy to best meet the needs of students and families in Cincinnati. The result, board member Kareem Moffett said, is a plan to zero in on neighborhood school systems that include at least four middle schools and upgrade to a more efficient transportation system.

The district spends more than $38 million on transportation each year. A recent breakdown of per school transportation costs show that some schools bus fewer than a dozen kids and still spend an extravagant amount of money on transportation.

Winton Hills Academy, for example, has four students who use yellow bus transportation. The yearly cost for those kids to get to school is $50,000.

"There are schools we cannot afford," Bolton said Monday.

Redrawing school enrollment lines to reflect city-recognized neighborhoods should significantly reduce those costs, Bolton said. And "if the stars align," Moffett said, that process will begin in the fall − including, hopefully, the first year of a CPS middle school.

The goal is to slowly build out middle schools in repurposed buildings by grade bands over three years. The district will decide which buildings to change based on utilization data and student demographics, Moffett said. Communities will continue to have a voice in the process, too, because "those communities know what they need."

Not everyone is for the idea. Educators at district schools with low enrollments, in danger of being repurposed for the middle school project, came to recent school board meetings in tears.

"Understand just what it is that you are dismantling," said Megan Albright, a teacher at Woodford Academy.

Her colleague, Melinda Wallace, teaches music at the school. Making Woodford a middle school wouldn't make sense, physically, she said. The toilets, chairs and other facilities are "built for little humans."

Schools with specialized programs like the School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Walnut Hills High School and Spencer Center for Gifted and Exceptional Students will not be impacted, Moffett said.

It's unclear yet if middle schools will be costly for the district. Bolton doesn't think so, but those details haven't been provided yet.

Moffett thinks the vision is a good one, regardless of potential costs, because it was dreamt up by the community itself.

"We may have to invest to prioritize that plan," Moffett said. "But I don't think it should be thought of as a deficit."

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KEAM 2024 Registration Process Commences at cee.kerala.gov.in; Check Exam Date

Curated By : Sukanya Nandy

Last Updated: March 27, 2024, 13:56 IST

New Delhi, India

According to the official date sheet, the engineering entrance exam will be held from June 1 to 9 (Representative image)

KEAM 2024: Candidates interested and eligible can apply by visiting the official website at cee.kerala.gov.in. The registration process will continue till April 17

Commissioner of Entrance Examinations (CEE) has begun the online registration process for Kerala Engineering, Agriculture, and Medical (KEAM) 2024 entrance exam. Candidates interested and eligible can apply by visiting the official website at cee.kerala.gov.in. The registration process began today, March 27, and will continue till April 17 up to 5 pm.

The KEAM entrance exam is conducted for students seeking admission to Engineering, Architecture, Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani, Agriculture, Forestry, MBBS, BDS, Homoeo, Co-operation & Banking, Climate Change and Environmental Science, Veterinary, Fisheries, B.Tech Biotechnology and Pharmacy courses.

According to the official date sheet, the engineering entrance exam will be held from June 1 to 9. The admit card for the KEAM 2024 exam will be made available on the website from May 20 onwards. The result for the same will be announced on or before June 20, as per the information bulletin.

The exam will be held in two sessions – 1 and 2. The first session will be held from 9 am to noon and the second from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm. Candidates have to carry their admit card, photo ID proof as per the admit Card, and a transparent ballpoint pen to the exam centre.

KEAM 2024: How to Apply

Step 1: Visit the official site of CEE Kerala at cee.kerala.gov.in

Step 2: Click on the KEAM 2024 application portal that is on the homepage.

Step 3: As a new page opens, click on ‘register here’ and fill up the details.

Step 4: Then fill up the application form, upload all the required documents, and pay the online fees.

Step 5: Preview the form and submit it as asked.

Step 6: Keep a copy of the confirmation page for future use.

“No memo will be sent by post from this office on matters with regard to Application, Allotment, and Admission, etc. Defect memo will be issued through the ‘Candidate Portal’, e-mail and SMS only,” reads the official notice. It further added that candidates must submit only one online application for admission to any or all of the courses in KEAM 2024. Those except SC, ST, and OEC categories must upload income certificates while applying online for availing income-based fee concession/scholarship.

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