On the second day of my PGCE course I was instructed to write a paragraph on ‘How do children learn?’ to generate my initial response to the term ‘Pedagogy’. I answered;
“Children learn through exciting and motivating teaching, activities and connections. Children are assisted in learning through visual aids, resources and guidance. Children learn through practising.”
This answer is somewhat correct; however, it merely scraps the surface on what is a complex answer in comparison to the studies of Pedagogy from Gotswami. Gotswami (p.25, 2015) agrees that thinking, reasoning and understanding can be extended through imaginative scenario but improves my point by suggesting that the teacher of the class must provide scaffolding to the learning for the task to be beneficial to the children. I used ‘guidance’ loosely in my answer but essentially this can branch off into many subheadings such as;
- Knowledge of the children – creating suitable but challenging activities that includes every child in the classroom;
- Behaviour management – providing a fair and focused environment;
- Purpose – creating objectives for children to coincide with the National Curriculum;
- Assessment – providing formative assessment throughout the activity to motivate and engage children whilst correcting misinterpretation and
- Time and space – Evaluate the time needed for each activity and awareness of space for practicality and safety.
Gotswami concurs with my initial ideology that children learn with ‘practising’ by indicating that they think in the same way adults do but have a lack of experience. However, Gotswami found that children need diverse learning opportunities to develop a self-reflective conception of their work. Skemp put forward two concepts of understanding for Mathematics which can be applied across the spectrum of teaching; Relational Understanding and Instrumental Understanding. In my initial Pedagogy paragraph, I was instigating learning by practising (I soon discovered that this method fell into Skemp’s Instrumental Understanding) I felt was perhaps the best way children learnt was repetition, easy to understand material and success being instantaneous. However, Skemp writes that Relational Understanding has the benefits of;
- It is more adaptable to tasks;
- It is easier to remember;
- Relational knowledge can be effective as a goal itself and
- Relational schemes are organic in quality. (p.9-11, 1995)
A Relational Understanding of education – in Skemp’s circumstance the focus was within Mathematics – is said to have long-term benefits for the learner as it will create a deeper meaning to the learning. For Instrumental Understanding, the learning could be soon forgotten and, although effective for the short-term learner, it may need to be address again in the future.
Eaude (p.62, 2011) had a similar breakdown of how children acquire knowledge as Skemp and addressed it in two methods called Propositional Knowledge, meaning factual information, and Procedural Knowledge, meaning the knowledge of ‘how’ before writing that Experimental and Emotional Knowledge is considered later in the child’s development. Eaude claims that learning in both methods is helpful by addressing a builder as an example, claiming “My builder could not have mixed the concrete properly without propositional knowledge of how much sand, cement and water to use. And it would be little help to know what bricks were best if he did not know how to lay them correctly.” If we called the two methods ‘skills’ and ‘content’, I concur with Eaude in that skills and content must work together mutually to become useful for activities, cultures and structures of intellectual, social and emotional support (p.63, 2011).
Hayes puts forward Bloom’s dated 1976 Taxonomy from which coincides Skemp, Gotswami and Eaude’s classifications of learning and knowledge by indicating that his three domains of learning;
“
- Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)
- Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)
- Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)” (Clark, 2015)
are organised as a series of levels or prerequisites that must be introduced to the learner stage by stage to create a strong foundation of knowledge (p.114, 2011).
I relax on the idea that there is no right or definite way of learning or how to teach as children because we as humans are so varied in ability and intelligence that a teacher must adapt to what they believe is best individually, which I must prepare for myself. To discover the depth of knowledge and to have a clearer understanding of the learning has broadened my own mindset and the start of forming my own teaching.
References:
Clark, D. (2015) Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains [online] Washington, USA.
Available: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html [Accessed 28th October 2016]
Eaude, T. (2011) Thinking Through Pedagogy for Primary and Early Years, Exeter, UK: Learning Matters Ltd.
Hayes, D. (2011) The Guided Reader to Teaching and Learning, Oxon, UK: Routledge.
Gotswami, U. (2015) Children’s cognitive development and learning [online], Cambridge Primary Review Trust.
Available: < http://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/COMPLETE-REPORT-Goswami-Childrens-Cognitive-Development-and-Learning.pdf> [Accessed: 25th October 2016]
Skemp, R (1995) Mathematics in the Primary School, London: Routledge.
Other Reading:
Gotswami, U. (1998) Cognition in Children, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
Gotswami, U. (2009) Cognitive Development: The Learning Brain, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.