Personal+Learning+Theory

=Personal Learning Theory =

When I think about how I learn, I think back to childhood and think of my life as a timeline of learning. I think of events, environments, teachers, and other influential people in my life. As someone who considers myself a “life-long learner,” it is interesting to think about my life as a learning timeline and to go back and answer questions about how I learn, why I know what I know now, and why I've retained certain information and some things are long forgotten.

When I think about learning as a child, I immediately think of Bloom's Taxonomy and Piaget's stages of development. I don't have long-term memories of my early childhood, but can picture experiences I had in my pre-school years from speaking with my parents, looking at pictures, or even feel a twinge of a memory when I revisit a site that had a particular importance during that time in my life. I know learning was taking place at an early age, and I think of examples of learning the stove was hot, how to get attention from others, and so on. Most of the learning taking place at that age was on the Knowledge stage of Bloom's Taxonomy. I was soaking in knowledge from authority figures and learning from social experiences with other children and adults in my network. I modeled what I observed. I was taking in so much new information, but wasn't really processing why it was important at the time. I think of childhood as fitting in with the behaviorist perspective, with shaping my interaction with the world through observable behavioral changes.

In grade school, I started to move up to higher functioning levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and started attaching meaning to experiences by relating them to my previous knowledge, my own ideas, and thinking about how the knowledge would benefit me. This is more in line with Constructivist theory. I remember the best teachers being animated in the classroom and challenging me to arrive at conclusions on my own, rather than relying on rote memorization and lecturing all the time. If school was fun and meaningful in my own mind, it was memorable and learning was most likely to take place. I was shy as a child, and had some problems in school. I had difficulty retaining what I read, but had an above average vocabulary (which I didn't use much through speech, but I loved to write). I had problems paying attention unless the teacher was animated and able to grab my attention. My parents and teachers didn't think I was living up to my full potential, but would always comment that my brain was going a mile-a-minute. I was always observing and “taking it all in” but had trouble regurgitating the knowledge I had gained on traditional tests.

This trouble with school subsided in high school and undergraduate school a bit, as I developed new skills to cope with my reading problems, I became more verbal, and started to attach meaning to learning that took place both inside and outside of the classroom. In undergraduate and graduate school, I realized I retained knowledge best when I created something to demonstrate the concepts I was learning and to analyze the concepts and how they fit into my own knowledge base. This is the highest level of functioning on Bloom's Taxonomy and Piaget's formal operational stage.

In conclusion, I believe all learning theories make good points as to how we learn and retain information, but I ascribe most to constructivist theory. Learning is most likely to take place, become meaningful, and be retained long-term when we are able to attach meaning to concepts and demonstrate that knowledge through creating something meaningful to ourselves.