EDCI 5065 Week 5

Today's class has helped further my understanding of the learning theories and how they impact my beliefs on teaching. I have realized how the T2P statements are different pieces that form together my beliefs about  education and how we learn. Fleshing out some of the different T2P statements that I have formed over the past couple of weeks have helped me understand what I value most about education. I can see that there are two prevalent ideas that arise from my T2P statements: interaction and student-centered classroom. These two ideas are fundamentally connected but interaction focuses on the student element in teaching and learning whereas student-centered classroom focuses on the teacher's involvement in this process. Both these elements are necessary in my opinion for having a successful learning environment in the foreign language classroom.


I also have appreciated the time set aside within the past two weeks to practice expanding upon the T2P statements. As a result of this, I can already see my final paper forming right in front of me. It is exciting to see my T2P statements expanded with not only theoretical support, but my own beliefs about teaching. These T2P statements have helped me focus on what I believe my role is as an educator and I am looking forward to see how the pieces of my beliefs come together in my final paper.


The letter assignment that we completed for today was also extremely helpful. In my undergrad, I completed an undergraduate thesis about the differences between second language learning and foreign language learning. As a result of this study, I discovered motivation was an extremely prevalent factor in learning for both groups of students. While reading the case study about Ronnie, it reminded me of the study I conducted. This assignment reminded me again the importance of motivation in learning as well as the value of intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation.


As long as I am able to find videos to support my statements, these are my tentative T2P statements (without theoretical/moral support yet):


If students can learn to appreciate and utilize other people's differences as a resource then successful learning can occur because students will strengthen their own learning and understanding of a topic through the experiences of their classmates. Vygotsky suggests that learning primarily develops through social interaction. Student's social environments help shape the framework on which concepts are built. Through the help and guidance of more knowledgeable others, students will be able to reach toward their next level of proximal development. I believe that it is important for social interaction to occur in the classroom, particularly in the World Language classroom as a huge part of the World Language curriculum is learning about culture and acceptance. Student's prior experiences concerning other cultures can help other students better understand culture and acceptance through discussion and social interaction.


If students are active in a student-centeed classroom then students will become more engaged and interested in their work because they are taking their work into their own hands acting as autonomous learners, which leads to self-determination. Through a student-centered classroom, students have control in the content that is being presented. As a result, students feel they have a responsibility for this content, which leads the students to become intrinsically motivated toward the topic and perhaps may lead them to feel this way about learning in general. The idea of a student-centered classroom can be tied to Jean Lave's theories of learning. Lave believes that learning is social and comes largely from our experiences of participating in daily life. This is facilitated through communities of practice, which are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor i.e. Vicki Davis' classroom. I believe that when students feel they have control over their learning, and this can be accomplished through student-centered learning, students will begin to feel self-determined toward their learning.