Paul Cobb's blog

I guess with my definition of learning I always just assumed motivation. That is really dumb when you are working with Jr. High students. Sometimes I think motivation dies in the teenage brain.So motivation has to be a part of learning but I guess the trick is to find out how to motivate students.

I think that if you are going to try to motivate students and facilitate their learning then you have to know who your students are and what they are into. This goes back to what I talked about in my Meaningful Learning Blog. With the Teenage Mind being motivationaly dead (or just plain brain dead) you have to know what can spark that motivation back to life. And that is only going to be the things they are already interested in.

Keeping to my original belief that learning is understanding our self and the world around us, Piagets theory just helps me to understand how I do that. It is kind of interesting, I do not remember a whole lot from my childhood but I can remember instances when I must have hit the new levels. I remember a time when I realized that I was not the only person in the world and that other people could think and feel just like me. My mind was blown. I have always been a thinker. (I won't say just what I think about).

    If learning is understanding yourself and the world around you like I have been saying for the past few weeks then understanding schemas is integral to understanding how we learn. I remember first learning about schemas. I was a senior in high school in a psychology class. It was like a light bulb turned on. With my learning disabilities I always had trouble with memorization and studying for tests. Once I understood schemas I was able to turn around how I went about learning. I consciously tried to find schemas to attach new learning to. Of course this was my last term in high school. Fortunately, I graduated (barely) and used my new found super power in college.

I think that my definition of learning is the same. Learning is about understanding ourselves and the world around us. What I have found to be interesting is that we don't have an instinctual, built in system of how to learn. Yes, we have some basic instincts to keep us alive but we need someone to teach us how to walk, how to talk, what to eat, essentially everything we need to survive.