To
a psychological learning can be defined as something which produces a
change of behavior usually having survival value to the organism
resulting from the child’s experiences.
HOW THEORIES OF LEARNING HELPS US IN OUR SCIENCE TEACHING.
Teachers need to understand class room practice that
facilitate processes leading to effective learning of science.
Therefore theories about how students learning have implication in
terms of the way in which a teacher develops his curriculum, selects
his materials and choose his instructional techniques, in other words
the theories of learning will help the teacher to decide.
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What is teach
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When to teach it and
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How to teach it.
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Gagne – learning Hierarchies
Gagne’s theory of learning assumes that any
piece of knowledge can be acquired by students who possess certain
pre- requisite pieces of knowledge which have their own pre-
requisites in turn. According to this theory prior knowledge
determines what further knowledge will take place.
The desired knowledge is dependent on an understanding of A and B
which in turns is built on lower level concept.
APPLICATION
TO SCIENCE.
Gagne’s theory implies that materials meant for learning
should be sequentially structured by the teacher. He sees meaningful
learning achieved through movement from a simple to a complex tax
that is, the meaningfulness of instructional materials can be
achieved through the movement from concrete materials to abstract
materials.
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J.S Brunner Learning by Discovery Cognitive framework.
Jerome Brunner is the father of learning by discovery. His theory
centers around learning through discovery activities performed by the
pupils Brunner strongly knowledge by himself through the use of
materials and the learner is mental processes such as observing,
measuring, classifying etc. Brunner’s man emphasis is on the
production and the manipulation of learning materials.
Application in science teaching
Teachers must expose the pupils to problems that create
contradictions in their prior knowledge so that through discovery,
they would be re-organize their knowledge to arrive at an agreeable
one.
The science curriculum should include discovery activities which will
challenge the pupil learner to observe, measuring, infer, classify,
hypothesis.
