Theories and Models of Learning for Educational Research and Practice. This knowledge base features learning theories that address how people learn. A resource useful for scholars of various fields such as educational psychology, instructional design, and human-computer interaction. Below is the index of learning theories, grouped in somewhat arbitrary categories. Note that this website is an iterative project and these entries are a work in progress; please leave comments with suggestions, corrections, and additional references.

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Paradigms:

    Behaviorism
    Cognitivism
    Constructivism
    Design-Based
    Humanism

Behaviorist Theories:

    Behaviorism Overview
    Classical Conditioning (Pavlov)
    GOMS Model (Card, Moran, and Newell)
    Operant Conditioning (Skinner)
    Social Learning Theory (Bandura)

Cognitivist Theories:

    Cognitivism Overview
    Assimilation Theory (Ausubel)
    Attribution Theory (Weiner)
    Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller)
    Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (Mayer)
    Component Display Theory
    Elaboration Theory (Reigeluth)
    Gestalt Psychology (Tolman)
    Mental Models (Johnson-Laird)
    Schema Theory
    Stage Theory of Cognitive Development (Piaget)

Constructivist, Social, and Situational Theories:

    Constructivism Overview
    Case-Based Learning
    Cognitive Apprenticeship (Collins et al.)
    Communities of Practice (Lave and Wenger)
    Discovery Learning (Bruner)
    Goal Based Scenarios
    Social Development Theory (Vygtosky)
    Problem-Based Learning (PBL)
    Situated Learning (Lave)

Motivational and Humanist Theories:

    Humanism Overview
    ARCS Model of Motivational Design (Keller)
    Experiential Learning (Kolb)
    Facilitative Teaching (Rogers)
    Invitational Learning (Purkey)
    Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow)

Design Theories and Models (Prescriptive):

    Design-Based Research Overview
    ADDIE Model of Instructional Design
    ARCS Model of Motivational Design (Keller)
    Elaboration Theory (Reigeluth)

Descriptive and Meta Theories:

    Activity Theory (Vygotsky, Leont’ev, Luria, Engstrom, etc.)
    Actor-Network Theory (Latour, Callon)
    Distributed Cognition (Hutchins)

Identity Theories:

    Erikson’s Stages of Development (Erikson)
    Identity Status Theory (Marcia)
    Self-Theories: Entity and Incremental Theory (Dweck)

Miscellaneous Learning Theories and Models:

    Affordance Theory (Gibson)
    Multiple Intelligences Theory (Gardner)

Read more at http://www.learning-theories.com

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

eCheating: Students find high-tech ways to deceive teachers.

Everything's going digital these days — including cheating.

As students gain access to sophisticated gadgets both at school and at home, educators are on the lookout for new kinds of cheating. From digitally inserting answers into soft drink labels to texting each other test answers and photos of exams, kids are finding new ways to get ahead when they haven't studied.

YouTube alone has dozens of videos that lay out step-by-step instructions: One three-minute segment shows how to digitally scan the wrapper of a soft drink bottle, then use photo editing software to erase the nutrition information and replace it with test answers or handy formulas. The video has gotten nearly 7 million hits.

    STORY: N.Y. students surrender in exam scandal

"There's an epidemic of cheating," says Robert Bramucci, vice chancellor for technology and learning services at South Orange Community College District in Mission Viejo, Calif. "We're not catching them. We're not even sure it's going on."

Several security-related companies, such as Spycheatstuff.com, will even overnight-mail a kit that turns a cellphone or iPod into a hands-free personal cheating device, featuring tiny wireless earbuds, that allows a test-taker to discreetly "phone a friend" during a test and get answers remotely without putting down the pencil.

One Toronto firm named ExamEar shut down its website after authorities investigated how it was selling $300 Bluetooth devices to desperate exam candidates.

Common Sense Media, a non-profit advocacy group, finds that more than 35% of teens ages 13 to 17 with cellphones have used the devices to cheat. More than half (52%) admit to some form of cheating involving the Internet, and many don't consider it a big deal. For instance, only 41% say storing notes on a cellphone to access during a test is a "serious offense." Nearly one in four (23%) don't think it's cheating at all.

But authorities are increasingly getting tough on cheating. Police in Nassau County, N.Y., on Long Island, this fall arrested 20 teens at five public and private schools in an SAT cheating ring. Five are accused of taking SAT and ACT tests for other students, who paid up to $3,600 for the service, authorities say.

An Orange County, Calif., student pleaded guilty in March to stealing Advanced Placement tests and altering college transcripts. Prosecutors say Omar Shahid Khan, 21, pilfered a teacher's password for the school's grading system by installing spyware on school computers.

In a 2007 case, two students in China used the wireless devices to cheat on an English exam but had to be hospitalized afterward to have the tiny earbuds removed, according to China Daily.

"This is about the pressures that kids are feeling in school," says Jill Madenberg, a Great Neck, N.Y., college consultant. "The pressure to do well, the pressure to get into a good college."

She says cheating like the kind seen in Long Island isn't isolated. "It's literally all over the country — it's an epidemic of sorts."

A former high school guidance counselor, Madenberg says that perhaps the only positive aspect of the Long Island SAT scandal is that it will begin a discussion on the pressures kids feel. "There's no question that people are beginning to look at that," she says.

Digital devices haven't necessarily made cheating happen more often, experts say. They've just make it harder to detect.

"The naïve folk belief is that cheating never used to be a problem," Bramucci says. "It's always been a problem."

Problems like detecting cheating boil down to what Nobel Laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls "cognitive bias." If teachers can't see it happening in front of them, they're unlikely to believe it's happening and so they're less likely to try to prevent it. But Bramucci says educators "are lousy detectors at cheating."

To prove his point, a few years ago he brought in a group of students to take a mock test and instructed them to cheat in a handful of different ways, all under the gaze of South Orange professors, who watched and took notes.

"They didn't even get a third of the ways people were cheating, even when they knew they were cheating and it was happening right before their eyes," Bramucci says.

Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-15/cheating-school-cellphone-electronics/51976698/1

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Summer Schools Help Poorer Students Applications.

University summer schools, designed to encourage applications from poorer youngsters, make a significant impact, suggests research.

Among students who attended summer schools run by the Sutton Trust, 76% gained places at leading universities, according to a report from the education charity.

The figure for students not attending the summer schools was 55%.

Researchers said the findings suggested that "summer schools do work".

Since 1997 the Sutton Trust charity, which works to improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged youngsters, has provided funds for 10,000 bright pupils from poor backgrounds to attend summer schools at leading universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Nottingham.

The idea is to give 17- and 18-year-old pupils, who might later become the first in their families to go on to higher education, a taste of university life.

They attend lectures in their chosen subjects and are mentored by student volunteers.

In order to apply, the pupils must have five top GCSEs and meet a series of measures of an underprivileged educational background, for example attending a poorly performing school.

The summer schools are regularly oversubscribed by a factor of seven to one.

The research, led by Dr Tony Hoare and Rosanna Munn at University of Bristol, attempted to quantify the effectiveness of the scheme.

"I was pleased with the results. The word on the street from the universities was that summer schools worked, but until now the evidence was anecdotal," said Dr Hoare.

The team measured the effectiveness of the scheme, including tracking up to 250,000 students through the Ucas university application system.

The researchers found strong statistical evidence that having attended a summer school was associated with an increased likelihood of applying to at least one of the participating universities and to other leading universities.

"Not only does the summer school experience encourage all attendees to target the more elite universities, but what is particularly encouraging is that they reduce, sometimes to vanishing point, the greater reluctance of the more underprivileged groups to do so," the authors conclude.

This year the Sutton Trust will hold summer schools in 50 subjects at seven universities: Cambridge, St Andrews, Bristol, Nottingham, Durham, University College London and Imperial College London. Oxford now runs its own scheme.

The summer schools are one of a number of outreach initiatives aimed at encouraging young people from poorer backgrounds to apply to university.

The schemes include bursaries and visits, and are funded not only by the educational institutions themselves but by businesses, government and charities.

By Judith Burns

Read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16594864

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Apple Wants to Get Into the Textbook Business.

The invitation is finally out for the latest hotly anticipated Apple announcement in New York City, rumored to be iBooks-related and definitely education-oriented. The event is scheduled for January 19 at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, pretty close to a lot of fancy private schools as well as standard public schools. We're going to go out on a limb and suggest that Apple might just want a slice of the highly lucrative textbook business. Remember: nobody ever knows what Apple's going to do, but the company's been working hard to position itself, especially its beloved iPad, as a pro-education company. Last year, the company partnered with Teach for America in an iPad donation program that helped put thousands of the devices in classrooms around the country. And if you've ever played with that constellation app, you'll know that the interactive experience on the iPad is much, much better than the old ink-and-tree things that probably helped you learn about the world. Not long after the invitation went out, however, an anonymous source for The New York Times's Bits technology blog confirmed,"The event will showcase a new push by Apple into the digital textbook business, but will not feature any new devices."

Read more at http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/01/apple-looks-they-want-get-textbook-business/47275/

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

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Efforts Are Under Way to Tie College to Job Needs.

Assaying the output of higher education in Texas, Michael Bettersworth evoked the image of a crippled Apollo 13 craft hurtling into space, its future uncertain.

“Houston, we have a problem, and it’s not that too few people are going to college,” said Mr. Bettersworth, an associate vice chancellor at the Texas State Technical College System. “It’s that too many people are getting degrees with limited value in the job market.”

Students throughout Texas are amassing college credits without knowing whether they will lead to employment, and many face serious debt when they graduate.

Meanwhile, the state’s population of skilled laborers is aging and approaching retirement, and there is a dearth of recent graduates with two-year vocational degrees who can take on those jobs.

Experts say a retooling is in order if the state hopes to expand its manufacturing industry.

As the economy begins to show signs of life, efforts are under way at two-year colleges across the state to make programs more responsive to the labor market. Some Texas leaders are trying to reverse the trend toward encouraging students to attain the highest degree possible.

“It’s not that we don’t need engineers and Ph.D.’s and research scientists,” said Joe Arnold, a government affairs manager with B.A.S.F., a chemical company. “We do, but that’s not all we need. We need skilled craftsmen. We need operators.”

The Texas State Technical College System was established in 1969 with the mission of supplementing the state’s work force. Recently, the four-campus system joined Credentials That Work, a new project run by the Boston-based nonprofit Jobs for the Future, which uses new technology that scrapes information from online job postings and provides real-time labor market information. The technology also offers information on which skills — in addition to simply which degrees — employers are seeking.

“Schools have to nail it pretty much in terms of producing graduates that respond to the needs of the marketplace,” said John Dorrer, the director of the Credentials That Work program.

However, even when degrees can be tailor-made to fit companies’ needs, students still must be persuaded to pursue them. Mike Reeser, the college system’s chancellor, said there was “a misperception in the country that the worst bachelor’s degree is more valuable than the best associate’s degree.”

Tom Pauken, the chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, said one of his top priorities this year would be countering that notion. “I think we’ve got to revisit this entire issue,” he said. “We’ve gotten completely away from the idea that we’ve got different talents and there are different approaches in terms of education.”

Should Mr. Pauken’s campaign be successful, there will remain the matter of financing. With budgets being slashed at all levels of education, resources are tight, and the more highly specified training is expensive.

“We have to be more efficient, we have to be more effective, and we have to rely on employers for more support,” said Mr. Bettersworth, the associate vice chancellor.

Increasingly, manufacturing companies are taking the initiative by investing in community colleges in order to produce the workers they need.

This year, for example, B.A.S.F. will give Brazosport College in Lake Jackson the final installment of a $1 million grant for the creation of a new facility devoted to the petrochemical, energy and nuclear industries. This academic year was also the first of five years in which the company would provide $50,000 in scholarships.

“Community colleges are workhorses for us,” Mr. Arnold said. “The problem is there aren’t enough people going to them seeking education that will put them to work for us.”

Mr. Arnold is on a Texas Association of Manufacturers committee that is looking into the causes. So far, he said, there certainly seems to be an image issue.

“People know that we need more manufacturing, but they don’t think of those jobs as something they want to send their kids to go do — or to do themselves,” he said.

But Leo Danna, 20, who enrolled at the T.S.T.C. campus in Waco after two years at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, said the switch has worked for him.

“That kind of college wasn’t right for me,” he said. “I couldn’t focus and didn’t understand what I was going to do when I graduated. Here, in the first semester, you’re already talking to companies in your field.”


Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/us/texas-educators-encourage-more-two-year-college-degrees-and-vocational-training.html

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Teacher Quality Matters, But There’s More.

On the first day of each school year, the long-term principal at my kids’ elementary school assembled the school community for what was to us his famous new-shoes speech.  “Think of all the new shoes in this room,” he’d marvel.  Then he’d follow with announcements about what else would be new that year – new teachers, new programs, new floors in the bathrooms.

Those were calmer, nicer times.

These days principals really should include some marveling about how the latest obsession of the education industry will affect the school this year.  Such honesty might feel less welcoming, but it would be a favor to parents.  Education has always done a stunningly bad job of explaining itself to lay people.  And it’s particularly crazy-making to parents not to have hard information about the forces behind education’s latest obsession – school choice, accountability, curriculum alignment, integrated technology, new tests.  What do they mean?  Why that?  Education officials settle on one big idea and seemingly forget all the big ideas that came before.  Not unfairly, teachers call the ideas “fads.”

Currently, America is obsessing and compulsing about teacher quality.

And yes, of course teacher quality matters hugely.  No dispute whatever.

But the thing to remember is that teacher quality is by no means the ONLY thing that matters.  The myopia of these obsessions is what keeps steering us wrong.

Dr. Robert Balfanz, one of my personal heroes, says “Everything that you think matters, matters.  But only a little bit.  You have to do it all, and do it all at once.”

“But only a little bit.”  Radical thinking.

Balfanz is a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, and the Co-Operator of the Baltimore Talent Development High School.  I admire a man with his head in the academic stratosphere and feet planted firmly on the hallway floor of an urban high school.  He knows whereof he speaks.

Remember the “math wars” and the “whole language” fight?  Remember social-and-emotional learning?  Remember how the Gates Foundation invested gajillions to help big schools cut themselves into “smaller learning units?” When these Big Ideas didn’t get quick results, everyone just moved on.  Did they build their next Big Idea on their prior one?  Rarely.  Mostly, they just pulled the plug.

But Balfanz and his colleagues can tell you that working on one or two initiatives piecemeal will not produce a cumulative effect.  Schools need all the good stuff, all the time.

Back in the late 1980′s, the seminal reports “Turning Points” and “Breaking Ranks” pushed educators to go bananas over “personalization,” which is to say, getting to know the kids.  Some schools made real progress, but the anonymity of the student experience remains a major issue.  The drop-out crisis continues nearly unabated.

Read more at http://www.educationnews.com/2011/06/learning-in-pin-drop-silence/

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Teaching Grammar: It's vs Its.

This one is confusing, because generally, in addition to being used in contractions, an apostrophe indicates ownership, as in "Dad's new car." But, "it's" is actually the short version of "it is" or "it has." "Its" with no apostrophe means belonging to it.

It's = it is
Its = belonging to it

It's important to remember to bring your telephone and its extra battery.

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Teaching Grammar: You're vs Your.

The apostrophe means it's a contraction of two words; "you're" is the short version of "you are" (the "a" is dropped), so if your sentence makes sense if you say "you are," then you're good to use you're. "Your" means it belongs to you, it's yours.

You're = if you mean "you are" then use the apostrophe
Your = belonging to you

You're going to love your new job!

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Why We Forget.

Science shows our memory can easily be distorted and erased, but our forgetfulness also helps us survive.

Our memories are wrong at least as often as they are right. At best, they are incomplete, though we might swear other wise. This affects countless aspects of our lives, and in many cases our memories — true or false — affect others’ lives.

Perhaps the most exciting neuroscience discovery of the last several decades is that our brains are not static hunks of tissue but flexible and adaptive organs that change throughout our lives. The term used to describe this new understanding is brain plasticity. The flexibility of your brain is essential to memory and indispensable to learning. Specifically, the “plastic” parts of our brain are synapses — the connection points that allow neurons to transmit signals between each other.

Read more at http://www.salon.com/2011/11/20/why_we_forget/singleton/

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Learning in ‘pin drop silence’.

The environment in an educational institute is a key feature that connects the multitude of activities on a campus and the mental and physical development of the student.

There are three key areas that build the environment for an educational institution: the Mind- the Eye- the Ear. In many respects this link is almost invisible, yet everyone experiences their influence.

Well-kept buildings, clean classrooms and equipped recreational facilities are the physical aspects which catch the eye and build the psychosocial impression. But physical environment like the surroundings, noise, temperature, and lighting as well as physical, biological, or chemical agents, ultimately builds image of the learning environment in the mind.

Read more at http://www.educationnews.com/2011/06/learning-in-pin-drop-silence/

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Growth rate of UK students studying abroad overtakes European neighbours.

The growth rate of UK students applying to study in the EU through the Erasmus programme has overtaken the European average, according to analysis by the British Council.

UK participation rates increased by 8% on the previous year, compared to the European average of 7.4%. Across Europe, more than 213,000 students received Erasmus grants to study or train abroad – a new record.

For many years there was a persistent decline in the number of UK Erasmus students. However this is the fourth successive annual increase in UK participation rates and clearly shows that the downward trend has been reversed. This indicates that UK students are increasingly looking for overseas experience as a means of improving their career prospects.

Read more at http://www.educationnews.com/2011/06/growth-rate-of-uk-students-studying-abroad-overtakes-european-neighbours/

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Deepening Education Ties India and Japan.

As Indian school education gains fans in Japan and the Japanese academia reaches out to Indian varsities, promising tie-ups are on the anvil that will present major opportunities for Indian educationists and students.

Something is slipping in Japan, and it’s ringing alarm bells and causing dismay in the minds of parents of school-going children in the tiny nation, albeit the most advanced in Asia. A few months ago, Japanese academicians were equally appalled to learn that the country had fallen from first place in 2000 to tenth place in as many years, in an international survey of math skills. The performance slide puts Japan behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. In science too, the country is not faring as it well as it used to. Whereas it used to boast the first runners up (second) place, it now stands sixth.

Read more at http://www.educationnews.com/2011/09/deepening-ties-india-japan/

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

National Language Championship for schools.

Vocab Express, the online modern foreign languages (MFL) vocabulary learning application, has announced the launch of a free, week-long national language championship for all secondary schools in theUKandIrelandto take place during spring 2012. Supporting the current debate in education around encouraging and driving language learning, the Vocab Express National Championship is designed to engage and motivate young people in learning another language.

Following the success of the Vocab Express European Day of Languages Championship in autumn 2011, the Vocab Express National Championship will be officially showcased on stand U44 at the world’s largest technology in education event, BETT, in January 2012.

Read more at http://www.education-today.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/3749/National_Language_Championship_for_schools.html

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

Professor refuses to teach if students don't bring snacks.

Students in George Parrott's psychology courses have an unusual requirement: they must bring homemade snacks each week to the laboratory section, and they need to work out a schedule such that groups of students make sure each session is covered, and that snacks aren't repeated from week to week. If there are no snacks, Parrott walks out of his class at California State University at Sacramento, and the students lose that week's instruction.

Parrott has been teaching at the university since 1969. He says he started this requirement a few years after he arrived -- and that most students have appreciated the ideas behind the rule (which he says are more educational than culinary).

Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-11-14/professor-requires-snacks/51198254/1

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com

More foreign students studying in USA.

International students and their dependents contributed more than $20 billion to the U.S. economy last year as record numbers of foreigners enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, reports to be released today show. The numbers of U.S. students earning college credit abroad also is on the rise.

The number of international students at U.S. colleges and universities rose 4.7% to 723,277 during the 2010-11 academic year, says an annual report by the Institute of International Education (IIE), which has tracked data since 1949.

Enrollments of international students have overcome a four-year period of flat or declining growth that began in 2002-03 and reflected concerns about safety and U.S. immigration policies after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-11-13/foreign-students-boost-usa-economy/51188560/1

http://www.languagecorpsasia.com