Redefining Learning in the Classroom

When asked to consider and reflect on learning, I think back to my time in school. From elementary to undergraduate, I consider the approaches that either helped or hindered my learning. School was a difficult time for me. I struggled with personal issues and undiagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, none of this showed up on paper. Let me be clear, I was a bad student. I never studied but somehow managed to get good grades on tests and quizzes. I only ever read book summaries and could still write half-decent reflections. I calculated how many times I could get away with not doing homework before my average fell below a B. I never paid attention in class, and I always started large projects the night before (including this blog post, which was started six hours before it was due.) The most prevalent thing I learned in school was how to get away with not having to learn a thing. 

School was a job, and I did what was needed to get through the work day. This is primarily due to the traditional learning environment called banking education, which is a phenomenon where teachers act as commanding officers, rather than the learner’s equal (Freire, 2009). Learners are stripped of respect and autonomy, and are expected to be obedient soldiers. The classroom did not prepare me for lifelong learning, it prepared me for life as a worker and a cog in the capitalistic machine. Intelligence - the supposed result of learning - is often defined by one’s ability to follow commands. A clear example of this is the use of operant conditioning within the classroom. Students receive positive reinforcement when they are able to regurgitate memorized facts and formulas through good grades and pizza parties (Cherry, 2024). If they do not or cannot exemplify the desired behaviors, they are met with scolding, bad report cards, and write-ups, what behaviorists call positive punishments. This is not learning; this is control.

The truth is, I love learning. I want to spend the rest of my life learning new things about the world and about myself. I believe humans have the potential for growth through learning, and ultimately, we can make society better. But this requires radical change in our current classrooms. I define learning as a change in thinking, deep cognitive understanding, and the ability to engage in critical reflection. My personal learning philosophy for the classroom entails a collage of ideas from Constructivism, Situative Perspective, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I aim to take pieces of each of these concepts to formulate my own personal theory of learning and discuss how it can be applied in classroom settings.

Piaget’s Constructivism centers past experiences and prior knowledge (Cherry, 2023). Imagine the human brain is a fancy Lego set–one of those complicated ones that are almost $1000. The individual Lego pieces are schema. Like constructivists, I believe learners use schema-like building blocks or Lego pieces–to expand upon past experiences (previous builds) and further develop knowledge and understanding (new creations). I notice powerful connections of constructivism’s knowledge building with Ladson-Billings’s (1995) deep consideration of learners’ experiences, background, heritage, and culture. Similarly to constructivist theories, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy builds upon past experiences as it relates to their culture and encourages educators to embrace their students’ differences within the classroom setting. Learning in classrooms is when students experience academic success, maintain cultural competence, and “develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 160). Ladson-Billings (1995) studied teachers across the country and cited examples of how they incorporated learning into the learners’ culture, rather than their culture into learning. One example includes a teacher named Patricia Hilliard and her love of poetry. She encouraged her predominantly African American students to bring in excerpts from their favorite rap music and perform them. Hilliard utilized this culturally-significant art form as a vehicle for learning language arts and literary techniques. In my vision of education, educators create inclusive learning environments where students can engage in content in ways that are true to their identities.

I also draw from the Situative Perspective in my vision for classroom learning. From this perspective, students learn from one another just as much as they learn from their teacher by building the foundation of learning through community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). A way to incorporate this into learning experience design would be to lean heavily on group projects. And, if teachers engage in learning from their students, as opposed to the traditional banking education method (Freire, 2009), the learning has an increased potential to be mutually beneficial for all parties, from the individual students, to groups of students, to the teacher themself. Community-centering learning theories support impactful learning experiences that resonate with students throughout their lifetime.

Through critical consideration and reflection, society must fundamentally change what it means to learn within a classroom environment. Learning experience designers need to implement new strategies that encourage changes in deep cognitive understanding, rather than just obedience. They must inspire students to explore the world around them rather than try to control them through strict and outdated behavioralist theories. Learners must leave the classroom with something more than just memorized facts and formulas; learning experience designers must give them something more meaningful to better the society and help them better themselves by giving them the ability to engage in critical reflection and cognitive understanding of the world around them.

References

Cherry, Kendra. (2023). Jean Piaget Biography (1896-1980). https://www.verywellmind.com/jean-piaget-biography-1896-1980-2795549

Cherry, Kendra. (2024). Operant conditioning in psychology: Why being rewarded or punished affects how you behave. https://www.verywellmind.com/operant-conditioning-a2-2794863

Freire, P. (2009). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 2(2), 163-174. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/266914.

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. (1995). But that's just good teaching! The case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, 159-165. https://www-jstor-org.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/stable/1476635?seq=2

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. https://bibliotecadigital.mineduc.cl/bitstream/handle/20.500.12365/17387/cb419d882cd5bb5286069675b449da38.pdf?sequence=1