lifeandlearning

The words learning theory or theories are often bandied about when talking about learning and how people learn. But what are learning theories anyway? Learning theories are theoretical frameworks that outline and explain how people learn. In layman terms, it means there are a number of theories that tell us how people learn and these theories often have different ways of viewing how people learn. There have been times when one theory was considered to be more applicable than others or was more widely accepted to be true than others. It might also be the case with some learning theories that they may not be held in as high an esteem as they were earlier. Whatever may be the case, I think it is useful to know about these learning theories and the idea they represent, in order to form a more refined idea about how people learn. Now there are a lot of learning theories out there so I will talk about the most popular ones as well as the ones that might be known to have ...

Pedagogy In my last post, I talked about what motivates someone to learn something. After writing that post I started thinking about the various things that I have learned and why I have learned them. For some reason, my thoughts always wandered towards the formal education that I have undergone.  There were some instances where I was motivated to learn more or find out more about a given topic based on how it was presented to me by the people teaching that topic. This thought, in turn, got me thinking about pedagogy. So what is pedagogy? The word pedagogy comes from the Greek language. In ancient Greece, families often had attendants who would accompany the children of the family to their place of formal learning. These attendants were called  pedagogues and overtime they were tasked with not only escorting the children of the family to their formal learning places but also teach them about rules of behaviour, social interactions and life in general. Nowadays p...

I have often wondered what motivates a person to learn something and what triggers that motivation. On one hand, there are the external motivators like career, professional development, job requirements etc. On the other hand, you have internal or intrinsic motivators like curiosity, desire to improve yourself, proving something etc. This is all very academic and can probably be found in a number of psychology textbooks. But what I would like to find out is what are those motivators that create a burning desire in a person to learn something. Are they internal or external, are some motivators greater than others, are situation and timing important aspects to consider? To be clear, I am not talking about flashes of inspiration that most people have from time to time that although pique our interest but ultimately peter out before any real learning happens. I am talking about something that drives us day in and out, gives us a sense of purpose and makes us charge at our learning goal ...