Reflection of Chapter 2: Learning Theories

There are always different learning perspectives through the centuries and the perspectives will continue to be in our lives. Also, as the technology develops day by day, teachers develop and use different perspectives. Every teacher has his/her own perspective. In my high school, different teachers used different perspectives. For example, my English teacher had behaviorist perspective because she was giving a reward like a plus or a chocolate when we answered her questions voluntarily and of course correctly. On the other hand, my history teacher mostly gave importance to internal learning. His lectures were both student and teacher centered, so I can say that he was a cognitivist teacher. Cognitivists create a mental model of short-term and long-term memory and students are less dependent on teacher and more dependent on themselves. In contrast to my English and History teacher, my computer teacher was constructivist because he gave importance to experimental learning. Also, he encouraged us to create our own interpretations and he was usually giving us online authentic tasks as homework as he believes learning by doing. For example, he wanted us to explore the usage of excel program and create a table by using this program. I can say that his lessons were very effective because I learn better when I do and experience something on myself. I can give advice to the constructivist teachers to use blogger in terms of helping students to create their own interpretations by blogging or by commenting on their peers’ blogs. Moreover, I can suggest them to use Ted-Ed lessons in terms of effective discovery.