TAL Questions: vi-17 1.1 I think that humans learn for a reward.

I believe that what the reward is varies between people and circumstances, but the reason we learn is because we know that it will benefit us in some way. Children may learn to get a gold star or a piece of candy or to make their parents proud. However the older humans get the more intrinsic the reward may become. They may learn because they want to have a job that gives them meaning in life. They may want to feel that they can accomplish the goals theyve set for themselves. Knowledge gives us a certain kind of power that I believe people thirst for and no matter how old we get, we never quite gives us enough to leave us satisfied. 1.2 When it comes to adult learning I really feel like it has a lot to do with a need to know basis. Adults dont want to waste their precious time learning something that they dont need to know but if its something thats of benefit to them theyre more likely to put more effort into learning. Also I feel like adults have a lot more pride than kids do so it really takes a lot for them to admit that they dont know how to do something and to ask for your help to master that skill. But even though youre helping them, they dont want to be talked down to, they still want to be respected and be in control of what theyre learning. But they are so elated when they master a certain skill and feel so good about themselves. Thats the fun part of teaching adults is that if they lower themselves to learn something new, they must really need/ want to know how to do it and when they finally master it and become self-sufficient again it means so much more to them than to children who dont fully understand what they were missing out on when they didnt understand that certain concept. 1.3 This is a holistic learning model because it represents how adult learners think and feel about things and what motivates them to learn. Its a great representation of how and why adults approach the learning experience. 1.4 Knowing more about how adults learn would help me be able to more easily approach the adult education process. It would let me know how to motivate them and how to introduce new concepts and how to relate to these adult students. It would make life so much easier as an adult educator to know how adults learn stuff. 2.1 A theory is something that you assume to be true that summarizes facts and information on a certain topic. And you use these theories in a practice. Thats how you apply the theory to the way you teach and approach learning. 2.2 Practitioners should definitely care about theories because they can show them what they are doing wrong of what they can improve to be better educators or educational institutions. Without listening and learning from new theories they wouldnt be up to date on how and why people think and learn the way they do. 2.3 The concept of education focuses mostly on the educator and learning focuses more on the learner. 2.4 Learning involves change. It is concerned with the acquisition of habits, knowledge, and attitudes. It enables the individual to make both personal and social adjustments. Since the concept of change is inherent in the concept of learning, any change in behavior implies that learning is taking place or has

taken place. Learning that occurs during the process of change can be referred to as the learning process. (Crow and Crow, 1963, p.1) (page 11-12) I really liked that it brought up that it isnt just your knowledge that increases, but it can affect your habits and behaviors and attitudes towards the world. And that can impact your society around you and cause a difference in the world. 3.1 I think there are so many learning theories because people are unique and learn different and no one person learns the same way. Similarly no one person approaches adult education the same way and every educator does things differently. Between these 2 differentiations its no wonder people have so many different theories about adult education. 3.2 Thinking of parts is similar to thinking of a machine and that its made up of lots of little parts that work together to make up the whole system of development. Thinking of development as a whole is similar to thinking of it as an organism that is a singular unit although its made up of different parts, this diversity makes it unified. These 2 approaches to developmental concepts impact how you approach adult education in that if you think of the different parts as separate units to try to focus on each one separately or to take it all as one and not think of things one at a time. 3.3 Some of the important things learned by elemental models are the low of readiness, the low of exercise, the law of effect (laws that governed the learning of animals and humans). Also theres the classical conditioning where an unconditional and a conditional stimuli are used to train an animal or human to do something. These stimuli use physical stimuli and kinesthetic stimuli as the integrators of learning. Guthrie added the principle of cue and response and Hull came up with the systematic behavior theory that used positive and negative reinforcements to get desired results. 3.4 Dewey came up with the theory of functionalism which focuses on the functionalist is tolerant but critical, prefers continuities over discontinuities or typologies, is an experimentalist, and is biased toward associationism and environmentalism. They also think that stimuli in organisms should be looked at as a whole and not separated parts and should look at it according to 4 laws: the law of proximity, the law of similarity and familiarity, the law of closure, the law of continuation. Lewin thinks that learning happens in 2 types of changes in forces: the change in the structure of the cognitive field itself, or change in the internal needs of motivation of the individual.