Week 3: Plannnig and Psychologising Curriculum (Learning Theories)

Different lesson plans require the application of different learning theories. And in most cases, a single lesson plan will probably have to follow more than one learning theory, since what can be taught in one lesson is usually more than a single skill. The principle to follow, therefore, is which learning theory can best serve the purpose of different parts of the lesson plan.
For instance, when teaching a chinese lesson (like a particular text from the textbook), behaviourism will first have to be applied when teaching the new words. This is because the students are not at all familiar with the new words, and they have to be "spoon-fed" with the meaning, pronounciation, and the way the chinese character is written. From the teacher's demonstration of which stroke of the chinese character comes first, the student will be able to know how the word should be written, without which the student is rendered helpless. Then the student can be tasked to practise how the character is written. By doing so, the student will be able to, through "drill and practise", remember how to write the character correctly.
Thus, by following the behaviourist learning theory, the stimulus here is the teacher writing the character on the board, following the correct order of the strokes. The student responds by practising it himself, and the teacher further reinforces by going through the word with the student again. This is quite the traditional classroom scenario, and the students learn by "conditioning". Behaviourism usually forms the basis for higher learning: in this case, chinese character is the basic knowledge needed in order to form words and sentences.
The teacher can also follow the cognitivist learning theory in the same class by teaching the student the patterns the strokes of a chinese character follow (like the order is always from left to right, top to bottom, the dot usually coming last, and the like). The teacher can also point out certain "expert" ways of remembering the order of strokes, causing the student to learn how to apply them to future situations.