Alea’s ePortfolio

In this week’s articles, we learned about three particular educational approaches: Behaviourism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism. I will briefly explain my understanding of these topics and use direct quotes from each article to explain further what each approach means.    What is behaviourism?  “At the heart of behaviourism is the idea that certain behavioural responses become associated in a mechanistic and invariant way with specific stimuli. Thus a certain stimulus will evoke a particular response.” (Skinner, Pg.1) In relation to education, behaviorism…

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In this week’s readings, we examined how the curriculum is developed and implemented in many different school systems. Levin provides many knowledgeable and insightful perspectives on how the curriculum continues to change based on who is in power (government) at the time. Each person has their own perspective and belief on how the curriculum should look and what is most essential to teach. Levin explains this feeling as “an important element of the politics around education is that everyone has…

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All teachers have a somewhat common idea of what it means to be a “good student.” These ideologies come from the common notion the education system portrays to teachers. In Kumashiro’s article “Against Common Sense,” a quote talks about the pressure the school system puts on teachers to produce these “good students.” The passage states “Many more students like M would enter my classrooms, students who were unable or unwilling to be the kind of student that schools and society…

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After reading the article, “The Problem with Common Sense,” we follow the experiences of a teacher who was offered a job with the American Peace Corporation to be a teacher in Nepal. The common theme in this article is why common sense is an issue, especially concerning education and curriculum. After reading this article, we gain knowledge of common sense in our curriculum and what other countries’ common sense looks like elsewhere. Kumashiro defines common sense as a set of…

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