A simple guide to learning

As a preservice teacher, I spend much of my time worrying about my teaching capabilities. In order to never let my future students down, I am constantly studying various teaching strategies and learning about the different ways students learn. I can prepare lesson after lesson and as many activities that I am able to create, but how can I ensure that these are effective strategies? How can I make sure I am reaching all of my students?

I’m sure there are many teachers and parents out there that wish there were a teaching and parenting manual. Wouldn’t life be that much easier if every child came with instructions? Well, unfortunately students don’t, so teachers and parents are left with their own devices. One such device that I recently come across in a reading for one of my graduate classes is the article Toward an educationally relevant theory of literacy learning: Twenty years of inquiry by Brian Cambourne.

In the article, Cambourne uses twenty years of teaching and researching experience to formulate a productive way to teach children to read. While his “educationally relevant theory of literacy” is most interesting, I found his research on the conditions of learning to be most relevant.  While he uses the conditions of learning to model learning as it applies to literacy, the conditions can be applied to learning almost anything.

As I read each of Cambourne’s descriptions of the different conditions of learning, a light bulb went off in my head. While the conditions of learning are not quite an instruction manual, they are in fact a great starting point and an excellent tool in designing future lesson plans. The gist of the conditions of learning are as followed:

·      Immersion- students must be immersed in what they are learning

·      Demonstration- students must observe what they have to learn

·      Engagement- students must be engaged in what they are learning through immersion, demonstration, and the role of the teacher

·      Expectations- students must know what is expected of them to learn i.e. be able to read or do division

·      Responsibility- it is the responsibility of the student to know how to use what they learned

·      Approximation- students need the opportunity to try to emulate what is being demonstrated

·      Employment- students need the opportunity to practice what they are learning

·      Response- students need feedback in how they are developing

While many may say “duh! This is so simple,” sometimes the best teaching strategies are the simple ones. I find that teachers and parents will go to extremes and do all that they can if it means they are helping their students and children. Yes, sometimes these complex strategies and theories work in the end, but that is not always the case. Maybe, we teachers and parents need to try a simple plan for a change.