In today’s world, how students learn is just as important as what they learn. To we, learning is to get and get a lot of data and contents of reality aspects; but in her book Qué y cómo aprender, Rosa María Torres says that learning is constituted by a group of representative process of the external world of the objective reality, based on the information the our senses throw out the perception, so for this reason, our mind, or cerebrum, keeps data and then, he use it to build conclusions and have it in our memories.
The actual students learn by different ways related to social, cultural, economics and politics needs. Students are taught the basic skills in all the fundamental learning areas. They are also taught to be active seekers of information and constructors of knowledge. This is accomplished through teaching methods that emphasize the following strategies.
· Engaged Learning: Students are engaged in active learning when they read, write, listen, speak and view in a variety of settings to gather information and develop concepts important to everyday life. These concepts, together with basic facts, form the foundation for all learning.
· Problem Solving: Problem solving is fundamental to all curriculum areas. Students construct knowledge of the world as they recognize problems, formulate solutions and arrive at conclusions.
· Communication: Communication is central to learning to express ideas and understand the ideas of others. Clear communication also involves use of standard grammar, spelling, punctuation and capitalization.
· Collaboration: Collaboration is an important process in a democratic society. Learning is often a social process that requires students to value and work with others.
· Seeking Connections - Knowledge does not exist in isolation. Students learn that the content areas are connected. Such learning is essential to forming a comprehensive understanding of the world in which we live.
· Technology: Technology allows students to reach beyond the walls of the classroom to obtain information on a wide variety of topics. Technology permits students to be active researchers and communicators in the quest for knowledge.
A huge part of the students make the things like their teacher say, they do not experiment and are creative people, because they do not want to make an effort during making a homework, have a lack of interest in everything they do, because they do not engaged the previous knowledge with the new and how to use it in the future.
Talking about “creativity”, why do students are not creative people? They are not creative persons not because they do not want (in some cases), is because in the school, the teacher, sometimes destroy the way the students form to make some objects that, maybe, cold be creative (Rosa María Torres, 1998).
Teens learn in different ways, no one has a better learning style than anyone else. Some students are “listening learners”, other are “seeing learners” and other ones are “touch/experience learners”; others, like Howard Gardner, in his Multiply Intelligence Theory, say that there are seven Intelligences (special, linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and “existential”). In “listening learners”, as it name says, the students learn by listen the classes; they only need to hear to the teacher what he/she is saying, like lectures, discussions, etc. The students that learn by seeing their teacher just see the board, a PowerPoint presentation, or something written to learn. “touching/experience learners” have a more develop their cerebrum; they combine two actions to learn. According to the Multiply Intelligence Theory, the people learn in different ways, the multiply intelligences, help to the people to learn successfully and make it easier. Other students can learn by asking, because they solve their questions and many others by reading.
But, to make the student study, he/she has to make a process to learn. Saint Onge, in his book “Yo explico, pero ellos… ¿aprenden?” says that the learning process is how the students learn; but he mentions that “to learn is to go to an objective” (to understand the sense of the homework and to control their own way to learn), “to learn is to get new knowledge in their old knowledge” (to understand the information), “to learn is to organize the own knowledge” (the students can organize the knowledge), “to learn is to develop strategies” (to know cognitive strategies and how and when use them), “to learn is to go by stages” (activation of the thought, manipulation of the information and the synchronization of the knowledge).
There are many models about how the student can learn. Astolfi, talks about three huge methods. One of them is the “transmission”. Based on Claude Shannon and Roman Jakobson, says that the learning is rustic, just communication, decoder/encoder. The students’ attitude is passive; their goal is to put attention to the class. Other one is the behaviorism, from Thorndike, Watson y Skinner, or “conditioning” for Astolfi. Its central idea is conceder the mental structures like a “black box” which we do not have access; other way to define is when the teacher says what the student have to do and how. The constructivism, now used, sees the errors like part of the learning, the student learn by errors and themselves correct them. The teacher gives the tools to the student in order to build their knowledge. Other author, Cassany, says that the best way to teach to our students is by the stimulus-response. We have to stimulate to our students to get involved to the class, this methods goes by the same way as the constructivism. We have to contextualize and make a communicative class, to work in groups and just guide them.
There are many others models to learn, but, in my opinion, I think that the abovementioned matter are the principals.
But the students really study the whole time, or just when they have an exam? Some students neither study for an exam nor for themselves. Buy, why is this? Sometimes the students do not want to study because their exams is constituted by choosing, they never can develop their critical thinking, the exams are just made for short answers, exactly answers, and they do not make to the student a critical person. The exams just mark the memorization and the intellectualism, instead of the creativity of their structural thinking. To this, Sternberg calls the “exams tyranny”.
Now days we hear about “learning to learn” but, what is this? Is a basic competence defined as the capacity to continue and to persist in the knowledge, to organized the own knowledge. In other words, the students are compromised to build their own knowledge by their own learning and experiences, is to develop cognitive and emotional aspects (UNESCO, 1996).
References
1. Astolfi, Jean-Piere, 2000. Tres modelos de enseñanza. Aprender en la escuela. Page 131-139.
2. Cassany, Daniel, 1998. Las habilidades lingüísticas. Introducción. Enseñar lengua. Page 83-99.
8. Onge, Saint. Sexto postulado ¿Tienen los alumnos verdadera necesidad de los profesores? Yo explico pero ellos… ¿aprenden? Page 85-96
9. Sternberg, Robert, 1997. ¿Qué es la creatividad y quien la necesita? La creatividad en una cultura conformista. Page 27-56.
10. Torres, Rosa María, 1998. Las competencias cognitivas básicas. Qué y cómo aprender. Page 71-81.
11. Torres, Rosa María, 1998. ¿Qué es aprender? Qué y cómo aprender. Page 180-181.
12. UNESCO, 1998. Los cuatro pilares de la educación. Capitulo 4. Page 1-5.
