Key Principles That Underlie Effective Learning

Pedagogy is the art or science of the teaching profession. It is also the principles, practice and work of a teacher. Pedagogy is a process of organising the environment, knowledge, information, activities and people (Guerriero, 2012). Donovan and Bransford (2005) presents key principles that underlie effective learning. These key principles of how people learn are drawn from the best evidence based research; engaging prior understandings, connecting knowledge to a conceptual frameworks and the importance of self - monitoring and developing a metacognitive thinking processes. Donovan and Bransford (2005) believe these principles are foundational and vital for teachers to understand in order to teach effectively. In this essay I will further

This means learners take the initiative and responsibility for their own learning. I believe running something like math workshop supports the third principle of Donovan and Bransford, because instead of giving them step by step instructions, they are given a checklist of things to do. Setting up maths as a set of workshops give the children a sense of ownership and they became self-monitoring of their learning. The workshop checklist (appendix 3) was their way of tracking their work for the week. They had to ensure that they were to get everything ticked off by the end of the week. Every week my students had problem solving in math (on of the checklist requirements) I am sure to include this aspect somewhere in their learning for the week so that they are constantly experiencing how to synthesize, how to use strategies and prior knowledge, and practice persistence. On Fridays while I was working with small groups checking off their work I then give my students time to collaborate with their table mates strategies they used to solve the problem. With my students having the opportunity to explain their thinking not only with me, but with their fellow classmates, that allowed them to become more comfortable with sharing their thinking and really evaluating how and what they did. This exercise as a whole allows my students to practice self- monitoring in a way that can be used in their everyday lives. This is where students are able to apply their learning from principles one and two and really dig deep into their learning (Ahoke, 2012). Metacognition is important to take into consideration when teaching because in order for students to learn, they have to be willing to take pride in their education. Every Friday I would call upon each workshop group to mark required work for the week. This is when we reflected - How did I go? Am I confident? Am I ready to move on? I would note this down on my monitoring tracking sheet