Lesson Plans and Philosophy of Learning

A quick entry on lesson plans. I have never written a lesson plan before this semester. I have had the good fortune to write three and two are "high stakes" lesson plans. The internet was a great resource, but with so much information and my inexperience in what lesson plans are, I "started from scratch to write them. I probably will be glad I did, but it is very slow going. I constantly revise and change the activities, which means I am basically completely rewriting the lesson plans. The amount of time I spent on the plans is already significant, and deadlines are looming.

The amazing or fun part of the lesson plan is that I keep finding very cool internet resources, and ways to foster the "teachable moments." Each time I find a cool resource, I want to include it in a lesson plan and try it out on a class. Not teaching and having such a tight focus on these two main lesson plans limits my exploration and creativity.

Oh well, I will have to be sure I make and keep a list of all the web links and resources I am currently working with and later on I can review them later.

Lastly, philosophy of learning is very much pragmatic, in what I have read of Dewey. Experience and continuity as well as the Aesthetic or the living creature engaging art. I hope to finish reading Art as Experience and begin on some feminist philosophy and process theology as they engage Dewey’s educational philosophy. Not enough time…..

The last few units concerned learning theory and computers in education. Behaviorist, Cognitivist, Constructivist, Social Constructivist were studied. I return to my earlier thoughts on teaching and learning, computers and meaning. Once you introduce meaning, then you start mixing in various philosophies and things get very complicated fast. I will start by trying to make sense or provide meaning to the two extreme models: behaviorists and on the other end Social Constructivists.
I do believe that learning occurs as described by behaviorists. It is just that if one stops there in teaching, the greater challenge of synthesis is left unfinished. The student can and will integrate the schema into a larger schemata. It seems the danger is that individuals could become dogmatic or ascribe too much meaning to their synthesis. A person learns to do a task well without reflecting on the larger context, then it follows that the person has the answer and others are misguided.

Of course the social constructivist could also be so focused on meaning and context, that a practical answer, though not complete and thoroughly vetted, gets lost in the complexity and cultural biases. Inefficiency and inaction seem to be the extreme application of Social Constructivism. It also does not address the what of teaching.

The real challenge with teaching philosophy is that it is not just a learning model. It is a learning model that includes what is taught. A capitalist and a Marxist have very different views of what is important for our youth to be taught. As does Plato and Aristotle, Galileo, Sarte, Voltare, or more contemporaty feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft or Karen Lehrman, epiricist John Stuart Mill, Mead progressivism and Dewey pragmatism or Peirce's “Kantianism”, they all have a different opinion of what truth consists of and how to engage truth. I keep coming back to Plato’s definition of truth as shadows upon the cave wall. Truth is unknowable in it’s fullness.

Yet, I also come back to Dewey’s aesthetic and experience. He seems to echo my original engagement of meaning. Specifically Dewey, in Art as Experience, gives voice to my concern for the connection between meaning and learning and clarifies this for me here and now. He seems to argue that it goes back to a live creature in a certain place that connects to the aesthetic. Learning meaning and connecting to the learning experience or event, requires joy or thrill and context.

Anyway, back to the course and it’s premise of learning theory and computers. Where is it cool and fun and where is it a waste of time? Well it will have to wait until the next paper or blog as I am out of time.