What does it mean to know (to you)?
According to Oxford Languages, knowledge is facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education. I think that is a fairly accurate definition. Knowledge is information gained through education and experience. However, simply knowing isn’t enough in my opinion. As learners, we have to construct our own meaning from the information and then turn that knowledge construction into know-how. This leads to meaningful learning where we retain the information and are able to transfer our knowledge to practice or performance.
How do we come to know the world around us (according to you)?
There are those who believe that reason is the most reliable source of knowledge, and those who believe that sense experiences are the most reliable source of knowledge. I agree more with empiricism, the view that our sense experiences are the most reliable source of knowledge. Although we can acquire propositional knowledge (facts, ideas) without actually experiencing it, we can’t begin to develop practical knowledge without experiences. Learning is so much more than just facts. It is the internalizing of ideas and development of understanding that allow us to apply facts, ideas, and information to new situations and experiences. Without know-how, facts are worthless, especially in today’s day and age when Google, Alexa, or Siri can call up specific facts and information on request. To transfer the propositional knowledge into practical knowledge, we must experience the information, practice with it, and understand how it applies to the world around us. Learning is personal, and although, facts remain true regardless of the individual, their importance and relevance vary greatly from person to person.
After doing all this reading and watching of videos, what is knowledge and how do you define it?
Knowledge is information gained through education and experience. Simply knowing facts and information isn’t enough to be considered knowledgeable in my opinion. Knowledge involves knowing, but it also involves application of facts, ideas, and information.
Describe the experiment you would perform to “prove” your theorem.
At this point, I am not sure what I would do to prove my theorem. I believe that many before me have argued the many learning theories available today. I suppose my first step would be to look at the work of those before me and related research. The I would devise a learning situation in which one group was provided provisional knowledge only instruction, one group was provided only practical knowledge instruction, and a third group was given both types of instruction. I would devise a test to assess their knowledge at various levels of Blooms and determine which group performed better at higher-level thinking exercises.
Having defined for yourself what it means to be human, what problems do you detect may arise with your experiment and its outcomes?
One problem I see is that personal relevance always impacts how a person performs on a given task. Personal interest influences our retention of certain information and how we apply that information to practice. Also, there are many factors outside the educational experience that can impact our ability to learn at a given time. Factors such as safety, security, and emotional well-being can easily create roadblocks to learning.
What can we know? How can we know it?
In my opinion, there isn’t really a limit to what we can know. Today we have the ability to access and share information as never before. We are no longer limited to time and space. Instead, we can visit museums and libraries around the world. We can connect with experts and ask questions through social media, email, etc. YouTube provides access to instructional videos where experts and novices alike can share their experiences and answer questions from viewers.
How do people learn? What is your evidence? Is it anecdotal from your experience and others or research-based?
As an educator with over 20 years experience, I have had the opportunity to teach students and adults. Based on my own observations and interactions with learners, I can say that learning is a personalized, social activity. With easier access to information, people are taking learning further and developing solutions to problems that didn’t even when I started teaching. Easier access to information takes away the need for people to store information internally. However, there is a greater need for people to move information into know-how, or practical knowledge. This requires instructional designers to develop learning experiences that allow students to process and practice applying information learned to new situations. While this may not always require learners to be hands-on, it does require learners to be minds-on. Learners must be engaged in the learning, not just listening to lectures or reading text in a book.
With the theoretical frameworks article, were those ideas you were already familiar with? What did you understand? What did you not? Did you look at additional resources to help you better understand the concepts? What was your learning approach?
I have been in education for over 20 years, so I was familiar with all of the learning theories presented in the reading. However, based on how learners access information today, I feel that certain theories presented are more relevant than others, specifically constructivism. After reading the article, I did some research on my own to determine what other learning theories may be more relevant to today’s learners. In doing so, I can across two other learning theories that I would like to learn more about: humanism and connectivism. Humanism is closely related to constructivism and focuses on the idea of self-actualization (“The Five Educational Learning Theories”, 2020). Humanism takes into account the social and emotional needs of students. Connectivism “focuses on the idea that people learn and grow when they form connections” (“The Five Educational Learning Theories”, 2020). As I begin to work on my personal learning theory, I would like to look more closely at constructivism, humanism, and connectivism to see how they might connect to my own ideas surrounding knowledge and learning.
References:
Ertmer, P.A., & Newby, T.J. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4), 50-72.
The five educational learning theories. (2020, May 30). WGU Texas. Retrieved 31 August 2020, from https://www.wgu.edu/blog/five-educational-learning-theories2005.html
