For example, a teacher (model) in a classroom (environment) is trying to teach cursive to her class. All the desks are facing forwards towards the teacher at the front of the room. When trying to teach cursive, the teacher demonstrates how the letters should be drawn, and then draws outlines of letters for the students to trace. The students practice tracing the letters in class and try to imitate (imitator) the teacher's movements. Part of the imitator's job is to keep practicing on their own and retain the information that the teacher has modeled for them.
One question I have about the chapter is what happens if the students cannot retain the information? What if it doesn't matter how many times the teacher models a certain task, and the student cannot retain the information?
According to social cognitive theory, learning is retaining information that has been modeled for the imitator.
Some people carry different beliefs and those different beliefs can affect the way you feel about certain subjects that are being taught. If a child is brought up in a religious home, some aspects of biology might be difficult to grasp. Also, different cultures and individual homes have different opinions of what intelligence is, therefore, affecting the learning of said individuals.
I think the point about retaining information greatly reflects the internal processing theory, in which the goal of the teacher is to help students get the information into their long term memory so that they can learn the information, focusing on how the learning occurs. In the social cognitive theory, learning is done by observing behavior. According to the theory, the model must be relavent in that the imitator wants to learn the behavior, the imitator must retain the behavior, then the imitator must be able to produce the behavior, and with motivation the imitator will reproduce the behavior. Then you know the information is retained. But, social cognitive theory differs from behavior theory in that, behavior change doesn't mean the behavior is learned. The behavior can be learned without a change in behavior, so having a test, quiz, or practices would help for teachers to know that the students learned the modeled behavior.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good question. It can be hard as a teacher to help students who simply can't retain information or chose not to. I don't know if a child would never be able to retain the information. Often times I feel like I never retain certain information even if I study it for hours and have the best model ever. Sometimes the imitator just will never fully understand the information, but I'm not sure if that means that they will never retain the information. Younger students especially get frustrated when they don't understand something and just give up. They may chose to not pay attention and to say that they don't understand the information, even if they do.
ReplyDeleteYou make some very good points here. I'd like to see some discussion of what matters in the imitator or the environment in your example.... You sort of get to self efficacy but don't make it totally clear.
ReplyDeleteI imagine you took notes elsewhere and then copied and pasted into the blog (which caused the font difference). If possible, try to type in the post text rather than copy and pasting. If it disrupts your process, then it's not required, but I think it will help you reflect a bit on the chapter after stepping away from your notes (but it looks good here--you have everything in your own words), but it also allows me to ensure you weren't copy and pasting from ANOTHER source.... I don't think you did that here (I can do searches for those things), but it just raises a flag.