Prompts:
- Share a story about how you overcame a learning challenge. Why was it a challenge? What strategies did you use? Use the language you learned in this unit.
- How would the learning be designed differently by a behaviorist, a cognitivist, and a constructivist? Scenario: A high school social study teacher is planning a class on climate change.
Public speaking was one of my biggest problems in high school. I would struggle asking questions, participating in class or having to present in front of the class, I was extremely anxious and my mind would go blank. Everyone else was able to confidently do it but I couldn’t even fathom being up there. I begged my teachers to present just in front of them because of my struggle with speaking. Throughout the years I have developed and learned ways that helped solve my public speaking. Approaches such as the behaviourist, cognitivism, and constructivist all have a unique way of teaching and looking at my challenges we can take a look at which ones would be more beneficial to use.
How public speaking could be taught with different methods
Behaviourist Approach: This approach would involve practicing repetitive drills, taking time to memorize speeches and repeating them daily. Having clear instructions, drills and feedback, with it being beneficial to use a reward system. Although helpful this approach would help with habit forming and skill development but wouldn’t help with problem solving or critical thinking.
Cognitivist Approach: This approach would help organize thoughts and how to structure one’s speech, including learning by using memory aids or cognitive strategies for outlining key points to help recall it when public speaking. This is beneficial for gaining a deep understanding and developing independent skills but can also be too much information at once.
Constructivist Approach: This approach would involve more hands-on and real-life situations, it explores collaboration and problem-based learning and includes group discussions, role-playing and debates that not only help with public speaking but also encourages critical thinking and real world problem solving. This seems to be the most effective approach in this situation but also has problems such as being time-consuming and struggling without clear guidance.
How I Overcame My Challenge
Relating to each of these approaches I pulled some examples of a combination of all approaches:
Behaviourism: I would continually practice my speeches with my close friends and receive feedback for mine, and provide feedback to them allowing me to learn from repetition.
Cognitivism: Creating flashcards with main points highlighted to help with memory retrieval and structuring my information using chunking. This helped me organize my ideas and be able to recall the sections efficiently.
Constructivism: Becoming more comfortable in a speaking role outside of my school life was extremely beneficial. When putting myself in a real-life situation such as my job working in a restaurant it helped me become comfortable talking to groups of people and helped greatly with my problem-solving skills .
Pushing past my fear of public speaking wasn’t easy or quick it took time to become fully comfortable doing so but by applying different learning approaches and strategies I gradually overcome these challenges and continue to use these strategies in my everyday life!
