Learning Theories

What is learning?

• A lifelong activity.
• Can be intentionally or accidentally.
• A complex affair which involves a persisting change in human performance or performance potential.

What is learning theory?

• A set of laws or principles about learning.

As we know, many learning theories exist about how students learn. It is important to study the various learning theories so that the teachers can make deliberate arrangement events to facilitate a learner's acquisition of some goals. Furthermore, it can help the new teachers to define which educational practices are the best and suitable to help their students.

For this course, we are specifically look at two major learning theories that are behaviorism and cognitivism.

Behaviorism

• Sees learning as a product
• Prediction and control of behaviour
• Change in learner's behaviour

Cognitivism

• Place importance on meaningful learning
• Look into how learners construct meaning of the knowledge learnt or how learning takes place
• What happens in the mind
• Begins with what learners know

What is SCIENCE?

We learn science but do we really know what is science?

So, what is science?

This is a simple and direct question. However, it is not easy to provide an exact answer to this question. Everyone will define science differently as the way they choose to look it is differ from each other.

There are lots points of view about 'what is science?'. For me, simply put, science is a way of dealing with the world around us. It is a way of looking at the world, understanding the world and then coming up with explanations for why things are as they are. Science is not just a mountain of facts ;)

Science also can be summarize as ASK. It deals with knowledges, skills and attitudes. These three things are interconnected.

About the course

4th January 2011

Hi everyone =)

Today is the first class of this course. My friends and I meet with our lecturer, Prof. Madya Dr. Rohaida. She is a nice person and has many experiences in teaching this course. For today, Dr. Rohaida explains about the course and also the continuous assessments.

This course covers the concepts related to the approaches and methods of teaching secondary school science. It will expose students to the theories related to science learning in secondary school, the various approaches and methods of teaching science and how to develop effective teaching and assessing students understanding. Besides that, it is also gives students the opportunity to develop an understanding and practical in the context of appropriate science teaching in secondary schools.

Dr. Rohaida divides us in groups for the assignments and class presentations. Mirwan, Fathiah, Ben Ming and I are in one group doing assignments based on Form 2 science syllabus. During this semester, we have 4 assignments to be complete..

Hi everyone :)

This blog is created especially for 'Method of Teaching Science' course. Through this blog, I will write my reflection on what I have learned in this course.

Anyway, there's not much to say, so

hey EVERYONE, have fun reading ;)