Learning Theories

In this course EDUC 8101: How Adults Learn: Theory and Research my colleague's constructive challenging with the discussion board did not affect my estimation of the theory to which I was assigned because they gave knowledge, direction, and new ways of looking at old problems. In addition, I learned aplenty about scholarship through reading their research as well as playing devil's advocate.

In fact, theories assigned to other colleagues were well defended because resources in our course allowed each learner to be equipped when defending our theories and this initially force us to interact and exchange ideas and extract the best ideas possible and maybe utilized them in our classrooms. When there is at least two or more learners then there is a highway of directions to travel to obtain new ways of looking at old problems because the sharing of information. I think we realize as adult learners that this course it is not about using every theory we study but to understand how to research and what is a theory.

I learned about two theories that I was not assigned and they were the following: transformative and reflective theories. I found that transformative theories are concerned with three important concepts: experience, critical reflection, and development. Consequently, to obtain adult development an individual must learn and live these concepts.

The reflective theory, I learned has an intuitive side whereas the learner have the opportunity to articulate what one has learned. At this point, a person who practice reflective learning must have structure as well as take on the responsibility for he/she learning.

The similiarities I discovered among the three theories were their emotional, physical, and mental capacities must have a contextual base for orientation reaction to the old or new stimuli of each learner. On the other hand, the differences are in experiential learning the adult learner learns faster because life experiences. In contrast, to children learners the reflective learning is more favorable of children because of favorable neurobiology or recall of memory.

I gain a treasure of insights about adult learning through engaging with my colleagues in scholarly and constructive critique around examinations of transformative, experiential, and reflective learning theories because they shown me that anyone can learn and there are so many educational theories it is a matter of doing the research to match learning styles in ones classroom to be effective with each student. In addition, there was some life and death situations that was a hugh challenge with enhancing growth while engaging with my colleagues and it made me realize that learning is a long life process from birth to death. Sometimes learning is difficult because the educator may not utilize the teaching strategy that best match your learning style.