How Does Learning Occur Rewards, Incidental Learning, Meaningful Learning, and the Role of Emotions - Term Paper Example

? How Does Learning Occur? Rewards, Incidental Learning, Meaningful Learning, and the Role of Emotions How learning occurs remains one of the fundamental questions in education research and science. Depending on the answer, instructional designers and education professionals craft their learning strategies for children and adult learners. The goal of this paper is to review and suggest how learning occurs, through the concepts of reward, praise, incidental learning, meaningful learning criteria and emotions affect learning. The paper is designed to create a comprehensive and multifaceted picture of the learning processes and their implications for children. Keywords: learning, reward, praise, intelligence, emotion, meaningful learning, affect, memory. How Does Learning Occur? Rewards, Incidental Learning, Meaningful Learning, and the Role of Emotions Students and scholars in the field of education have numerous questions concerning the essence of learning, its process, effects and implications for children and adult learners. Much has been written and said about the ways in which learning occurs; yet, learning still lacks a single, uniform definition and conceptualization in science. Consequentially, the multitude of instructional and learning strategies continuously increases. On the one hand, “learning is a conceptual and linguistic construction that is widely used in many societies and cultures, but with very different meanings, which are fiercely contested and partly contradictory” (Hodkinson & Macleod, 2010, p.174). On the other hand, learning encompasses a multitude of concepts, contexts, aspects, factors, and events that are heavily influenced by learners’ personality, cultural and ethnic backgrounds and require that education professionals adjust their strategies to meet the unique needs of infant and adult learners. More often than not, future educators ask questions concerning the process of learning, the role and place of rewards, the nature and criteria of meaningful learning, as well as the role of emotions in successful learning. All these questions are answered in this paper. Learning and Rewards: Is Praising Students Worth the Learning Outcome? One of the foundational questions of learning is how to reward students and whether at all it is worth praising and rewarding students for their achievements. Another question is how learning occurs and how rewards relate to the process of learning. Here, the words of Paul Chance, a famous writer and professional psychologist, reflect the true essence of rewards in the context of learning: according to Chance (1992), teaching without extrinsic rewards is the same as asking students to write having their eyes closed. Extrinsic rewards can be extremely motivating, although their use in education is not without controversy. It would be fair to say that rewards should be balanced against the goal of learning and expected outcomes. In other words, rewards benefit learning only when they are used reasonably and economically. Hundreds of studies have demonstrated that the use of rewards has the potential to enhance the quality of all learning processes in the classroom (Chance, 1992). This is particularly the case of extrinsic rewards that come from an external source, for example, grades assigned by the teacher (Chance, 1992). In this sense, learning is a simple sequence of reinforcement and action: the teacher reinforces and redirects learning by telling the student whether or not he (she) has been correct, good, excellent or right (Chance, 1992). At times, even a smile is enough to show that the student is moving in the desired direction and has all chances to meet the predetermined learning outcomes. Yet, the debate over the usefulness and validity of extrinsic rewards continues to persist. Alfred Kohn is, probably, the most famous promoter of no-rewards education among children and adults. Kohn (1992) relies on the premise that rewards cannot reinforce lasting changes in human behaviors and cannot motivate individuals to learn continuously during their lives. In other words, extrinsic rewards do not alter the cognitive and emotional commitments underlying learning (Kohn, 1994). Consequentially, individuals stop learning effectively when extrinsic rewards are no longer provided. There is some share of truth in both assumptions. Both Kohn (1992; 1994) and Chance (1992) are correct but what should educators do to enhance the quality of learning? How does learning occur and what place do rewards take in learning? The answer is very simple: in all spheres of life, be it learning or profession, individuals naturally need positive reinforcement. The main reason why reinforcement can drive learning is because individuals need to know when, whether and how they achieve the desired learning outcome. Otherwise, children simply will not know when and why they are doing correctly (Marlowe & Canestrari, 2006). Another question is how to use rewards appropriately. Students need strong stimuli to move towards the predetermined learning goal even when the pre-existing rewards are no longer provided. They need intrinsic motivation to learn. Certainly, educators could use punishment as a reasonable alternative to excessive rewards, but the fear of punishment can never motivate students to learn for their own sake. Learning occurs when students know that (a) rewards are provided, and (b) these rewards meet their needs. Educators should use the weakest type of reward possible, and rewards should not serve the main type of incentive in the classroom setting (Chance, 1992). Praise could become a perfect alternative to material rewards, for example, candies or stars. Simultaneously, praising students every time students do something right is not correct. Once students have learned the alphabet, there is no need to praise children every time they have written all letters correctly (Chance, 1992). Students should learn that the value of learning can be outside of the teacher’s realm and come from other sources: for example, the feeling of self-satisfaction and pride for being able to cope with the classroom tasks can become a perfect element of rewarding students in the classroom. Finally, effective learning occurs when the learning goal is within the scope of students’ capabilities: students must know that they can achieve the predetermined objective (Chance, 1992). Learning is impossible without rewards, but extrinsic rewards must be reduced to a minimum. The knowledge of rewards and wise rewarding in the classroom is one of the most challenging elements of professional development among future educators. Incidental Learning: How Children Learn Children have an amazing ability to rapidly acquire new skills and practice them. Children possess a unique capacity to acquire and use new words, even when they have poor knowledge of how these words are related to the referent (Storkel, 2001). Children use this capacity in all fields of their daily activity, including games and education. Certainly, not everything in children’s lives is learned through direct training: children’s behavior repertoire changes, depending on what they learn from the environment where they tend to socialize, including parent behaviors, peer reactions, television and computer games, etc. The fact that, suddenly, children who have been playing with sticks and a tennis ball drop their sticks and pretend to fight, means that children have a tendency to learn from the numerous social cues they encounter in their lives and that they have a capacity to imitate these cues and use them for their own benefit. For example, by dropping sticks and pretending to fight, children seek to make their lives funnier and brighter. By watching how children change their behaviors, depending on the social knowledge and stimuli they encounter in the process of socialization and maturation, it is easy to see that informal/ incidental learning is not uncommon among children. Incidental learning can be a by-product of planned training and reaffirms the significance of the subconscious schemas in the process of learning (Seel, 2011). Consequentially, one of the main questions is how to use this incidental learning capacity to achieve the desired learning goals and how to utilize the subconscious learning potential to the fullest. Basically, teachers must adopt a holistic view on learning and consider all possible social cues that may initiate incidental learning in children. This refers to teacher behaviors and their effects on children. Simultaneously, given that the research of incident learning is still in its infancy, it is virtually impossible to predict what types of information can and should be learned incidentally (Seel, 2011). The current state of research concerning the factors mediating and encouraging incidental learning is very scarce (Seel, 2011). Nevertheless, teachers and instructional designers must remember that learning, especially planned learning, is not limited to the tasks and knowledge delivered in the classroom. Children, like sponges, absorb new knowledge and stimuli from the environment in which they develop. It would be correct to assume that learning is an activity that encompasses both conscious and unconscious processes; by limited philosophy of learning, namely, a planned delivery of knowledge in the classroom, educators risk reducing the meaning of learning to nothing but an artifact of passive laboratory transfer of knowledge from teachers to the young learners. Meaningful Learning: What Does It Mean? Learning encompasses numerous factors, processes, aspects and elements, but one of the key questions asked by future educators is how to recognize that learning has taken place and how to ensure that meaningful learning has occurred. The significance of this question should not be disregarded, since memorizing concepts and their applications cannot suffice to produce meaningful learning. Rather, educators expect that students will understand the new material and use it in a variety of real-world situations, for their own and others’ benefit. This, in turn, raises the question of the relationship between memory and learning and the criteria of meaningful learning in the classroom. To begin with, meaningful learning occurs when “the learner chooses conscientiously to integrate new knowledge to knowledge that the learner already possesses” (Novak, 2000, p.549). In this sense, meaningful learning is usually opposed to the so-called ‘rote’ learning which presupposes memorizing the main concepts and constructs and integrating them arbitrarily into students’ cognitive schema (Novak, 2000). Rote learning occurs when a student can easily memorize the target material but cannot apply it in practice, whereas meaningful learning implies that students can memorize and reconstruct the knowledge obtained from external sources and successfully use it to solve real-world problems (Mayer, 2002). Therefore, meaningful learning is that which occurs when students construct knowledge and use this knowledge and their cognitive processes to improve their problem solving capacity (Mayer, 2002). Undoubtedly, memory and learning are directly related, and that students use memory to remember new material does not necessarily means that such learning is not meaningful. More important is what students do after they remember the material and how to ensure that meaningful learning has taken place. Remembering is the first and one of the most important stages of meaningful learning. Remembering is essentially about retrieving knowledge from students’ long-term memory and using this knowledge to solve problems. Learning and memory are directly related, and remembering is the foundational ingredient of the learning process (Mayer, 2002). Without remembering, individuals can never solve complex tasks. However, for meaningful learning to take place, remembering should not be an end but only the means to achieve the desired goal. Remembering will facilitate further analysis of real-world situations, through recognizing and recalling (Mayer, 2002). Recognizing will help students to locate the long-term knowledge that related to the situation, whereas recalling will make it possible to retrieve the information needed to solve the task (Mayer, 2002). In meaningful learning, remembering is just the beginning of the learning process, which also encompasses understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating (Mayer, 2002). The goal of instruction is to ensure that students do not simply memorize but understand the new material and can use it to construct new knowledge. In meaningful learning, the goal of instruction is to promote the transfer of knowledge through understanding and creation (Mayer, 2002). To understand is the same as to be able to build connections between the new and older knowledge: understanding encompasses the processes of interpreting, classifying and exemplifying, summarizing and comparing, as well as inferring and explaining (Mayer, 2002). Then follows the process of applying new knowledge and understanding how to solve multiple problems of different nature and analyzing the material obtained in the classroom (Mayer, 2002). In other words, meaningful learning enables students to restructure new knowledge in ways that let them determine the most significant pieces and use them in practice. Finally, meaningful learning proceeds to evaluation and creation: the former entails making judgments based on a set of explicit criteria, whereas the latter implies putting the initially separated elements of knowledge to create a coherent and, more importantly, functional whole (Mayer, 2002). What makes information meaningful for kids? Apparently, learning is meaningful when the knowledge children learn in the classroom is directly related to their real-world conditions of life, their experiences and concerns. Simultaneously, how to measure the progress of learning and how to guarantee that meaningful learning has taken place depends on the context, in which learning occurs. The main measure of successful learning is students’ ability to produce a new product, based on the knowledge they have learned in the classroom. For example, students in the American History classroom can be asked to develop a primary document related to the course of the Civil War, based on what they learned from their textbooks and the teacher. Students in social sciences can be asked to produce more than one solution to a social problem, based on the knowledge and meanings they remember from the course (Mayer, 2002). Eventually, students should be able to relate the new concepts to their experiences, problems, and associations, so that they can easily recall the material when they need to proceed with learning. Learning and Emotions: A Neglected Link What is the best way for teachers to connect to their students emotionally? What does that mean to have learning delivered in an emotionally appropriate way? These are just some of the questions that stir the hearts and minds of professional educators. It is noteworthy, that childhood is claimed to be one of the crucial periods in the development of personality, and emotions exemplify one of the most important aspects of successful learning early in life (Graziano et al., 2007). Unfortunately, the role of emotions in learning remains largely undervalued and unexamined, although both teachers and students experience a wide range of emotions in their daily interactions with one another (Ingleton, 1999). The main reason is that, despite the growing recognition of the role of emotions in learning, the latter is still understood as an information-based process of instruction that takes place in classroom settings and, consequentially, has little to do with emotions (Roberts, 1991). Previous studies in the field of learning were devoted to the main factors of students’ retention of information, including class size, communication and knowledge transfer methods, parental support and others (Roberts, 1991). Little attention was paid to the affective elements of learning, although emotional intelligence and emotional regulation constitute an essential driver of students’ moral development and maturation. In order to shape unique emotional connections with students, educators must recognize that emotions exemplify a crucial component of the learning process and be able to monitor changes in students’ emotions as the progress towards the desired learning goal. In other words, educators must develop the degree of emotional intelligence that enables them to make judgments regarding their own and others’ emotions and use this knowledge to predict changes in others’ behaviors and feelings (Salovey, Brackett & Mayer, 2004). The development of positive relations between a child and a teacher requires that both exhibit social skills and competence and can inhibit negative behaviors (Graziano et al., 2007). Surely, learning can take place without these behaviors, but will such learning be meaningful? Previous experiences suggest that the presence of a close emotional connection among students and teachers predicts long-term learning successes among students. Put simply, students who manage to develop effective affective connections with their teachers also develop special attitudes to the subject and knowledge learned in the classroom. Eventually, learning should be considered as meaningful when it encompasses both cognitive and emotional aspects of knowledge acquisition, leading students to create new products and solve new problems, based on the knowledge they learn in the classroom. Conclusion Learning must be meaningful, enabling students to evaluate and create new products, taking into account the subconscious cues for incidental learning, building on the emotional ties among teachers and students, and rewarding students for their efforts. Learning and memory are inseparable: meaningful learning starts with remembering and leads students through understanding and analysis, toward evaluating and creating new meanings. In meaningful learning, a multitude of social cues are taken into account, to guide and monitor students’ incidental learning. Meaningful learning presupposes the development of close emotional ties between a student and a teacher – ties that involve the use of emotion regulation and emotional intelligence and allow using the knowledge of emotions to predict each others’ behaviors. Eventually, learning occurs with the help of reinforcement provided through intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, which confirm that the process of learning has occurred and the desired goals have been achieved. References Chance, P. (1992). The rewards of learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 74(3), 200-207. Graziano, P.A., Reavis, R.D., Keane, S.P. & Calkins, S.D. (2007). The role of emotion regulation and children’s early academic success. 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