Different teaching styles bring different learning experiences. There are three different teaching styles: behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism. As a student, I have met many teachers that each of them has different teaching method. In this blog, I will share my learning experiences with different learning theories.
Behaviorism
Chinese education is representative of behavioristic teaching style. In China, parents and teachers like to emphasize on the reinforcement. Giving a reward or punishment is the most common strategy that they will apply for the learning the outcome. Once I did a bad job on the math assignment, the instructor assigned more extra works to me to do more practice. These extra assignments which only for me could be seen as a punishment. However, at the end of that term, I made a brilliant progress because of those extra assignments. Undoubtedly, a verbal praise followed by the huge progress, in which could be seen as a reward.
Cognitivism
Comparing to behaviorism, cognitivism is more focus on the mental processing. Studying under western education curriculum, the learning experiences could be considered as cognitivism. When I faced with academic challenge or difficulty, the instructors focus on how am I thinking and processing information rather than assign more works to me. This is completely distinct from the behavioristic teaching style. Once I got some problems on the assignment, my instructor did not directly tell me how to solve it, but guided me to think in another way and let me figure it out by myself. Similar to Cc’s experience, both of our instructors emphasize more on thinking and processing information by ourselves.
Constructivism
Constructivism shares same idea as cognitivism. Both of these two are focus on mental processing and more commonly appear in Canada than in China. Beyond cognitivism, constructivism encourage learners apply their own understanding to the real life and experience. As a psychology student, many of my instructors like us to apply the knowledge we have learned to our real life. Last term I had a psychology class which the professor prefer to allow us analyze some of our experiences with our understanding of the knowledge. Rather than simply explain the theories, the professor let us apply what we have learned to our own experiences. With this learning experience, I had a better understanding on those psychological theories. Among all the three teaching styles, I would say that constructivism is better for me.
