For my blog post this week, I decided to utilize the prompt on how a high school teacher with a lesson on climate change could vary their class based on different learning designs.
The behaviourism framework tends to elicit cues in the environment that motivate students to change their behaviour over time (Ertmer & Newby 2018). Therefore, this teacher would design the lesson to promote environmentally-friendly behaviour change amongst students. For example, this teacher may implement a reward system in class that would allow students to obtain a bonus point for every 10 pieces of garbage they collect on the field during lunch hour. An additional step this teacher could take includes introducing a compost and recycling station within the classroom and watching to ensure students are disposing things in the correct locations. It would be important for the teacher to correct students who do not use the system correctly as feedback is a critical part of the behaviourist learning design (Ertmer & Newby 2018). Ideally, over time these students would form strong habits of picking up litter and correctly composting and recycling (Ertmer & Newby 2018).
On the other hand, a teacher using the cognitivist framework would have a focus on increasing student knowledge and encouraging critical thinking (Ertmer & Newby 2018). This teacher may start by building a presentation that contains basic facts about the realities of climate change and what contributes to worsening or bettering it. Then the teacher could give the students some time to write down something they feel is important for others in their age group to do to help combat climate change. This may be effective as it encourages mental processing in the students and allows the students to exercise and expand upon the knowledge they have obtained in class (Ertmer & Newby 2018).
Finally, a teacher using a constructivist learning strategy would acknowledge that the students lived experiences, along with the knowledge they have, will impact their understanding of climate change (Ertmer & Newby 2018). This teacher might start a lesson by giving students a chance to brainstorm and write on the board what they already know about climate change. This teacher also might assign the students a project such as choosing one thing they could change or implement in their individual lives to help reduce climate change. This would allow students to engage in activities that are meaningful to them as people, and promote further learning from their own experience with their project (Ertmer & Newby 2018).
References
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. (2018). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective. Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: Historical Roots and Current Trends. https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/behaviorism_cognitivism_constructivism
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