0.3 Theories/approaches to learning  (Page 8/12)

Instruction - To foster a more whole-brained scholastic experience, teachers should use instruction techniques thatconnect with both sides of the brain. They can increase their classroom's "right-brain" learning activities by incorporating more patterning,metaphors, analogies, role playing, visuals, and movement into their reading, calculation, and analytical activities.

Assessment - For a more accurate whole-brained evaluation of student learning, educators must develop new forms ofassessment that honor right-brained talents and skills.

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Control theory

Definition

This theory of motivation, developed by William Glasser, asserts that behavior is never caused by a response to an outsidestimulus. Instead, the control theory states that behavior is inspired by what a person wants most at any given time: survival, love, power, freedom,or any other basic human need.

Discussion

Responding to complaints that today's students are "unmotivated," Glasser attests that all living creatures "control" theirbehavior to maximize their need satisfaction. According to Glasser, if students are not motivated to do their schoolwork, it's because they viewschoolwork as irrelevant to their basic human needs.

"Boss" teachers use rewards and punishment to coerce students to comply with rules and complete required assignments. Glassercalls this "leaning on your shovel" work. He shows how high percentages of students recognize that the work they do - even when their teachers praisethem - is low-level work.

"Lead" teachers, on the other hand, avoid coercion completely. Instead, they make the intrinsic rewards of doing the workclear to their students, correlating any proposed assignments to the students' basic needs. Plus, they only use grades as temporary indicatorsof what has and hasn't been learned, rather than as a reward. Lead teachers will "fight to protect" highly engaged, deeply motivated students who aredoing quality work from having to fulfill meaningless requirements.

How the Control Theory Impacts Learning

Curriculum - Teachers must negotiate both content and method with students. Students' basic needs literally help shape how and what they are taught.

Instruction - Teachers rely on cooperative, active learning techniques that enhance the power of the learners. Leadteachers make sure that all assignments meet some degree of their students' need satisfaction. This secures student loyalty, which carries the classthrough whatever relatively meaningless tasks might be necessary to satisfy official requirements.

Assessment - Instructors only give "good grades" - those that certify quality work - to satisfy students' need for power.Courses for which a student doesn't earn a "good grade" are not recorded on that student's transcript. Teachers grade students using an absolutestandard, rather than a relative "curve."