Learning Theories

Tag: Featured

  • What is Plagiarism? A Guide

    What is Plagiarism? A Guide

    Plagiarism is a serious problem in education. The good news is that it is easy to detect and avoid. Read our guide to learn more about the issue and our recommended tools for both teachers and students.

    What is Plagiarism?

    It can be defined as the use of other peoples’ ideas, concepts, words without giving them the credit that they deserve, or presenting other peoples’ work as your own; in other words, stealing the work or ideas of others and misleading people into the possible thinking that the thoughts are yours (when they actually come from other people).

    In education and in academic writing, plagiarism happens when a person uses others’ work without giving them a proper citation. This can happen by accident or on purpose.

    Even when plagiarism occurs “by accident,” there can be very serious consequences for students; punishment can occur, including academic probation or even kicking a student out of school.

    How to Avoid Plagiarism?

    The good news is that it’s easy to avoid plagiarism. If you found a paper or reference online and wish to use the idea in your own writing, simply give them credit (proper attribution) using a citation. The most popular citation formats include American Psychological Association (APA), MLA, or Chicago Manual of Style. There are excellent guides on how to correctly cite or reference academic papers, books and websites, including Purdue OWL’s APA Formatting and Style Guide (for APA format) and other excellent APA Citation Guides.

    We recommend carefully keeping track of all useful materials using bibliographic software, such as Mendeley, Papers, EndNote or other tools. This way, it is easy to search and find the papers that you would like to reference and generate citations for them.

    How Educators Detect Plagiarism

    Teachers can detect plagiarism easily, both by reading student writing and comparing it to your other work or by using online tools. Automated plagiarism or similarity checkers such as TurnItIn can calculate how similar a student’s paper is to another paper; educators frequently use these tools to quickly detect if a student is cheating or not.

    What to Avoid

    There are several paid services that offer students completed essays for assignments. NEVER use these. We strongly feel these businesses are a terrible idea that can put your own academic standing at risk. In order to be able to generate papers so quickly, it is almost certain that these services rely heavily on plagiarism. Don’t do it! Teachers can easily tell when work is not your own. It is better to practice your own research and writing skills and find your own voice. You will be proud of the finished product — and your writing will improve over time.

  • Icebreakers for the School Year

    Icebreakers for the School Year

    As an educator, sometimes you need a good icebreaker for the beginning of the semester to help improve classroom dynamics. We wanted to share our recommendations! Our favorite resource comes from our good friends over at Icebreakers.Ws. They’ve collected over one hundred of the best icebreakers and team building activities (wow!). The best part is that the guide is totally free and don’t require any expensive materials or technology. They are perfect for your next event, whether to improve chemistry or to spark better discussion. They also have a new collection of Zoom and online icebreakers for remote learning as well.

    Featured activities that your group can try include a twist on the classic Two Truths and a Lie Game involving a dream wish or hope for the semester, and also games involving sharing unique experiences or diverse perspectives, like Candy Introductions and Four Corners.

    Activities are organized by event purpose (classroom, sharing, action-oriented, teambuilding) and by group size (small, medium, large, and extra large) size. Step by step instructions are provided along with a list of required materials.  These are usually ordinary items that you already have around the house or office, such as paper and notecards or other common goods.

    Click here to check out their 100+ featured icebreakers.

  • Dunning-Krueger Effect

    Dunning-Krueger Effect

    The Dunning-Krueger Effect is a cognitive bias that provides people with limited competence the illusion that they are better than they actually are; in other words, people naturally overestimate their own lack of ability (one is blind to their own foolishness) in “Mount Stupid.”

    Originators: Social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger (1999)

    Summary:

    A quote often attributed to Aristotle is that “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.” Social psychologists Dunning and Kruger identified in a 1999 study entitled “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” this phenomenon of “illusory superiority.”  In four experiments, the researchers found that those who performed worst on tests were overconfident — they actually believed they had done well.  For instance, in a humor-oriented test, 65 participants were asked to rate how funny different jokes were.  They were extremely poor at being able to determine what other people would find humorous – and yet they described themselves as being excellent judges of humor.

    This effect, unfortunately, can have major implications on human decision-making and actions.

    References

    Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(6), 1121.

     

  • Confirmation Bias (Wason)

    Confirmation Bias (Wason)

    Summary: Confirmation bias is a cognitive error that people make when they are only willing to accept new information when it confirms what they already believe (i.e., aligns with their existing beliefs and values). People who fall into the trap of confirmation bias tend to purposefully seek out evidence that supports already solidified beliefs and purposefully reject any evidence that goes against those beliefs.  In this way, existing opinions are reinforced as any contradictory information is disregarded.  This phenomenon is generally unconscious, as people may not realize that this tendency is occurring.

    Originator: Peter Wason (1924-2003)

    Keywords: inductive reasoning, confirmatory bias, myside bias, verification bias, interpretation, primacy effect, belief persistency, Pollyanna principle

    Confirmation bias was first described in the 1960s, when several studies completed by the psychologist Peter Wason showed that people tend to seek out confirming evidence alone when drawing conclusions about simple tasks.[i]

    In one of Wason’s first studies, subjects were told by the experimenter that they would be given “three numbers which confirm to a simple rule that I have in mind.” The subjects were asked to come up with an initial hypothesis of what they thought the rule was. They were then invited to write down sets of numbers that they believed conformed to the rule. The experimenter would then tell them if the numbers conformed to the rule or not, and the subjects could note the outcome. The subjects were allowed to repeat this procedure until they believed they had figured out the rule.

    Wason was surprised that more than half of his subjects were unable to figure out the simple rule using this method. He believed these people failed because they only tested examples of the numbers that conformed to their original hypothesis. Additionally, they were unwilling to test examples that went against their original hypothesis. Wason coined the term “confirmation bias” and continued to study this cognitive error throughout his career.

    Further Research

    Research on confirmation bias has continued over the decades, showing a number of interesting results that are detailed as follows.[ii]

    • In general, when developing opinions on a topic, people primarily look for positive cases and resist negative cases.
    • When people make a hypothesis about something, they typically need less evidence for the hypothesis to accept it than evidence against the hypothesis to reject it.
    • People tend to see what they are looking for, even if it’s not there. When people look through data they often find evidence to support their beliefs in ways that are not consistent with actual patterns in the evidence.
    • To confirm their beliefs, people often look at data that is correlated and perceive a higher correlation than is actually present.
    • People have a tendency to believe things that are desirable. This is known as the Pollyanna principle.
    • The more strongly people hold to a belief and the more overconfident they are in that belief, the more likely they are to fall into confirmation bias.
    • People tend to hold on to first impressions, even if future information refutes the original evidence.

    Relevant Issues

    Confirmation bias is an important issue to understand because of how much it plays into relevant social issues. Confirmation bias impacts peoples’ views on social issues such as race, capital punishment, politics, religion, women’s rights, climate change, vaccinations, and more. The impact of confirmation bias is extensive, leading to many problems and misplaced ideas. Because of this, understanding the concepts behind confirmation bias is crucial for people of all ages and in all walks of life.

    This bias is evident in political debates and as people research and discuss controversial topics.  It can help explain why people tend to become polarized or entrenched in their original points of view — for example, when the same content or evidence is presented to two different people with opposing viewpoints.

    References 

    [i] Wason, P. C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 129-140.

    [ii] Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175-220.

  • Situated Learning Theory (Lave)

    Situated Learning Theory (Lave)

    Summary: Situated Learning Theory posits that learning is unintentional and situated within authentic activity, context and culture.

    Originator: Jean Lave[1]

    Key Terms: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP), Cognitive Apprenticeship

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  • Social Learning Theory (Bandura)

    Social Learning Theory (Bandura)

    Social Learning Theory, theorized by Albert Bandura, posits that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling. The theory has often been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.

    Contents

    Contributors
    Key Concepts
    Resources and References

    Contributors

    • Albert Bandura (1925 – Present)

    Key Concepts

    People learn through observing others’ behavior, attitudes, and outcomes of those behaviors[1]. “Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.” (Bandura). Social learning theory explains human behavior in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioral, and environmental influences.

    Necessary conditions for effective modeling

    Attention — various factors increase or decrease the amount of attention paid. Includes distinctiveness, affective valence, prevalence, complexity, functional value. One’s characteristics (e.g. sensory capacities, arousal level, perceptual set, past reinforcement) affect attention.

    Retention — remembering what you paid attention to. Includes symbolic coding, mental images, cognitive organization, symbolic rehearsal, motor rehearsal

    Reproduction — reproducing the image. Including physical capabilities, and self-observation of reproduction.

    Motivation — having a good reason to imitate. Includes motives such as past (i.e. traditional behaviorism), promised (imagined incentives) and vicarious (seeing and recalling the reinforced model)

    Reciprocal Determinism

    Bandura believed in “reciprocal determinism”, that is, the world and a person’s behavior cause each other, while behaviorism essentially states that one’s environment causes one’s behavior[2], Bandura, who was studying adolescent aggression, found this too simplistic, and so in addition he suggested that behavior causes environment as well[3]. Later, Bandura soon considered personality as an interaction between three components: the environment, behavior, and one’s psychological processes (one’s ability to entertain images in minds and language).

    Social learning theory has sometimes been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation. The theory is related to Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory and Lave’s Situated Learning, which also emphasize the importance of social learning.

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  • Stereotype Threat (Steele, Aronson)

    Summary: Stereotype threat is a phenomenon that occurs when people are at risk for living up to a negative stereotype about their group. For example, a woman may fail to reach her career goal of being a scientist because of how she changes her behavior in response to perceptions about her own gender.

    Originators: Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson

    Keywords: stereotypes, vulnerability, self-defeating behavior, performance, gender, race, intelligence

    Stereotype threat is a term that was created by social scientists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson. They completed an important early study in 1995 which defined stereotype threat as “being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group.”[i]

    In this study, Steele and Aronson observed the performance of Black and White students on academic tests. Steele and Aronson created the study in response to a negative stereotype about Black students which pervades culture – Black students are portrayed as less intelligent and less competent than White students. Because of this stereotype, Steele and Aronson wondered if Black students would “protectively dis-identify with achievement in school and related intellectual domains.” This desire to disengage from intellectual pursuits could possible lead Black students to live up to their negative stereotype.

    The results of the study confirmed the researcher’s suspicion. When test instructors emphasized the role of race before the test, researchers found that Black students performed worse than White students. When instructors did not emphasize race, Black and White students performed equally well.

    In essence, stereotype threat occurs when people fear that they will live up to a negative stereotype about their group. In response to their fear, they participate in disengaging and self-defeating behaviors that ironically cause them to live up to the feared stereotype.

    Stereotype Threat Impacts Peoples’ Behavior

    Stereotype threat has been shown to impact peoples’ behavior in the following ways.[ii]

    • Reduced effort – People who fear they might live up to a stereotype sometimes reduce their effort so they can have an excuse if they fall into that stereotype. For example, people may not prepare for a test so they have an excuse when they do poorly.
    • Disengaging – People who are stereotypically not good at something (such as woman in mathematics) will often disengage from that field or area.
    • Changing aspirations and career goals – Some people go as far as to change their life aspirations and career goals in response to stereotype threat.


    How to Reduce Stereotype Threat

    Stereotype threat has been studied extensively, with a heavy emphasis on how to reduce this phenomenon in various populations. Research shows that the following strategies can be effective. Many of these are practical strategies that can be carried out in classrooms and other settings.

    • Providing role models. People who observe role models from their group engaging in certain fields and activities are more likely to think they can do the same thing. One study showed that woman who read about other woman who had succeeded in fields of architecture, law, medicine, and intervention performed better on a mathematics test than those who didn’t.[iii]
    • Encouraging self-affirmation – One study showed that having African students engage in a self-affirming journal exercise before the start of a semester closed the racial achievement gap by 40%.[iv]
    • Emphasizing motivation and effort – African American students who were taught that intelligence is “a malleable rather than fixed capacity” that can be increased through motivation and effort received better grades than those who were not taught this.[v]

    Although stereotype threat is a significant concern for many vulnerable groups of people, research consistently shows that the effects of stereotype threat can be reduced through following strategies such as these.[v]

    Over three hundred studies have investigated stereotype threat in a wide variety of areas.[vi]

    References

    [i] Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797-811.

    [ii] Stroessner, S. & Good, C. (n.d.) Stereotype threat: An overview. Retrieved from http://diversity.arizona.edu/sites/diversity/files/stereotype_threat_overview.pdf

    [iii] McIntyre, R. B., Paulson, R., & Lord, C. (2003). Alleviating women’s mathematics stereotype threat through salience of group achievements. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 83-90.

    [iv] Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N. & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the racial achievement gap: A social-psychological intervention. Science, 313, 1307-1310.

    [v] Aronson, J., Fried, C. B., & Good, C. (2002). Reducing the Effects of Stereotype Threat on African American College Students by Shaping Theories of Intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 113-125.

    [vi] Stroessner, Steve; Good, Catherine. “Stereotype Threat: An Overview”. diversity.arizona.edu. Reducing Stereotype Threat.org. Retrieved 6 March 2011.

  • Positive Psychology / PERMA Theory (Seligman)

    Positive Psychology / PERMA Theory (Seligman)

    Summary: Positive psychology is the study of happiness, flourishing, and what makes life worth living.  Seligman points to five factors as leading to well-being  — positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, and accomplishment.

    Originators and key contributors:

    • Martin Seligman (1942-the present), American psychologist, founder of positive psychology
    • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934-the present), Hungarian-American psychologist, co-founder of positive psychology, researched the concept of “Flow”
    • Christopher Peterson (1950- 2012), American psychologist, The “VIA” and other topics in positive psychology

    Keywords: flow, character strengths, well-being, happiness, positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, and accomplishment

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  • 21st Century Skills (P21 and others)

    21st Century Skills (P21 and others)

    Summary: Skills necessary for students to master in order for them to experience school and life success in an increasingly digital and connected age; includes digital literacy, traditional literacy, content knowledge, media literacy, and learning/innovation skills.

    Originators & Proponents: Groups – United States Department of Education, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, MacArthur Foundation; Individuals – Henry Jenkins[1], Mimi Ito, John Seely Brown

    Keywords: collaboration, digital literacy, innovation, technology, work-life skills, readiness, interdisciplinary learning, problem-solving, ICT (information and communication technologies)

    21st Century Skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills and other groups and individuals)

    The 21st Century Skills initiative is an education standards and reform movement, located primarily in the United States, that is focused on improving what US public school students must learn in school so that they are better prepared to succeed in their school and career lives. The term “21st century skills” includes the following skill sets:

    • Life/career skills: adaptability & flexibility, initiative & self-direction, leadership & responsibility, productivity & accountability, social & cross-cultural skills
    • Core subjects: English/language arts, mathematics, arts, science, history, geography and others
    • 21st century themes: civic literacy, environmental literacy, financial  literacy (including economic, business, and entrepreneurial skills), global awareness, health literacy
    • Information/media/technology skills: media literacy, information literacy
    • Learning/innovation skills: creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, problem solving

    Students are expected to master these skills and understand these themes while learning core subject content in meaningful, interdisciplinary way. Teachers, administrators, schools, and districts are expected to use these guidelines, known as the P21 Framework, as a foundation for developing curriculum, assessments, and standards that they deem appropriate for their students.

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  • Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom)

    Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom)

    Bloom’s Taxonomy is a model that is a hierarchy — a way to classify thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity.

    Contents

    Contributors
    Key Concepts
    Resources and References

    Contributors

    • Benjamin S. Bloom (1913-1999)

    Key Concepts

    Bloom’s model consists of six levels, with the three lower levels (knowledge, comprehension, and application) being more basic than the higher levels (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation)[1]. Some think of the levels as a stairway, in which learners are encouraged to achieve a higher level of thinking. If a student has mastered a higher level, then he or she is considered to have mastered the levels below.

    Bloom’s model has been updated to account for 21st century needs[2]. The old model and new model are depicted below.

    Old Model

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    New Model

    null

    Additional Resources and References

    References

    1. Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals.
    2. Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., & Bloom, B. S. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. Allyn & Bacon.