In the reading this week I learned about the five outcomes of observational learning in teaching. This includes how students use their observations of others to make decisions of what they are going to do or how they are going to act, based on what they have seen around them, in combination with their own experiences. It is also mentioned that teachers don’t want to assign their students assignments that are too difficult or that may lead to frustration, based on the research that says students are most motivated and have the most academic success from activities that are challenging but not overwhelming. Although this research does make sense and I was not aware of it before, I sort of disagree with the idea of never overwhelming students in grade school, as being able to deal with overwhelming or stressful events is a great life skill. The third thing that I learned from this reading is that there is not one best approach or theory to learning. All of the theories that have been talked about will work in combination to provide a good learning experience.
The first connection I had with this chapter was with Albert Bandura, as we are currently talking about him and learning about him in another class I am taking. Another connection I had to this chapter was actually on the very first page when the question was asked of what we could do as teachers to help students develop organizational skills. I remember when I was in elementary school, our teachers typically had us colour coordinate all of our classes, and this is still a skill that I use to this day.
One question that I have after reading this chapter is how can we as teachers notice when our students are either comfortable with an assignment, being challenged, or when they are overwhelmed?
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A good final question here, which connects to a place where you challenged the idea of not frustrating students with content beyond their capacity. While challenge is an area we want students entering, the space where learning happens, too much challenge equals frustration which both brain research and this theory would suggest would lead to shut down and non-learning. This is why in curriculum planning we must constantly pre-assess or do assessment for learning so we know what each child knows about a concept we are going to teach. This as you point to in your question is one of the most difficult and challenging but critical parts of classroom instruction. Great to see you thinking about this.
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