20 January; What is Learning? and Motivation 1  We kicked off this week with the "What is Learned?" exercise. The annotated results are here as an acrobat file.

(Incidentally, the rationale of the exercise, which uses concrete instances to get an underlying themes, is described at http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/exercises_definitions.htm )

The major themes which came up concerned

• the relationship between what is "hard-wired" into us genetically and what we learn. As we saw, it is not a simple either/or; our inheritance may equip us or pre-dispose us to something but it is our environment and experience which determined the form it will take. So we are equipped to learn a language from soon after birth, but which language is an environmental matter. The  most accessible and fascinating discussion of this is to be found in Ridley M (2003) Nature via Nurture; genes, experience and what makes us human London; Fourth Estate. (The fact that he was Chairman of Northern Rock when it collapsed is neither here nor there!)
  
  
• the other major theme was that not all change is learning; take the example of language acquisition above. The baby has to grow a bit before she acquires the motor control of voice to babble and then speak, and the integration of brain function to master language. You can't learn what are you are not yet ready for. That does not concern us a great deal on a PCE course, but it's very important for teachers of children. The great figure in exploring the developmental changes in understanding and learning capacity throughout childhood was Jean Piaget. See also this page for the bit of Piaget of most relevance to us.
  

Note that we did not actually essay a definition of learning. ("Essay"--is that right? Yes it is. Check it out.) As ever it is more important to engage with the ideas than simply to accept someone else's definition, although in a few days I hope to post a pod-cast to carry this a bit further forward than we had time for in class. Watch this space.

After the break we constituted the Reading Groups, which had a brief skirmish with the reading on motivation.

Motivation

• The basic page is http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/motivation.htm (which includes dear old Maslow, whom we did not mention!) with links to other pages on the topic, including http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/motivanx.htm which we will pick up on, next week.
  
• A couple of the studies which explore the limitations of extrinsic motivation on children's learning are abstracted here. 
• I haven't found any relevant materials on the impact of the Educational Maintenance Allowance so far, but anything turns up I'll pass it on.
• Learned helplessness is discussed briefly at http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/learned_helplessness.htm with some further links.
  
• The starting point for Charter Schools in the USA is http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/index.htm.
  
  
• As a member of the group pointed out, there is a vast array of theories about motivation, and we are not going to attempt to cover them, but one which is directly relevant is Herzberg's Motivational Hygiene theory; see http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/motivation.htm#Motivational%20Hygiene
• In particular we discussed pay as a hygiene factor, with particular reference to bankers' bonuses.
• We did touch implicitly on Maslow when a member identified that the physical comfort of the classroom was an important hygiene factor.
• Task for next week; Give some thought to what are the major motivators and hygiene factors in your own classes, and how you might---
  

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