In order to ensure that my teaching is informed by the developmental learning theory I would ask myself how each topic is represented. By doing this I would ask myself what the most concrete form of information would be and if I can accurately use this. I would also ask myself how I can move into more abstract ideas to challenge my students. I may ask my students open ended questions that don't rely on one straight forward answer. This may allow for the class to move up and down the spectrum of concrete to abstract. I may use abstract ideas to see how much of a grasp my students have on the information I am giving them or if they are simply trying to rearticulate the information in a way that would earn my praise or a good grade. I would need to ask my ask myself if I am teaching students to label their ideas or truly learn what I am teaching.
In order to ensure that my teaching is informed by the social learning theory I would ask myself how I can encourage each student to act as the knowledgeable peer in their own way or subject. I would want to find a way that no student or group of students is singled out as being like a teacher or needing help. Instead I would want to find strengths in my students that allow my for classroom building and a better understanding of the knowledge to be grasped. I would also need to ask myself what some examples of language would be that the students may use or recognize involving each topic. Using familiar language will be a key way to making new information not seem so foreign and keeping their attention or away from frustration. To be informed by the social learning theory I would need to consider how the students will be able to interact with me as the teacher and with each other. I would also consider questions or activities in which I can find common experiences among my class. Finding these common experiences will be one way that I can try to understand my students zone of proximal development. Lastly, I would need to ask myself what my students background for a specific topic is and how that will affect their understanding of it now and I will need to share it.
In order to ensure that my teaching is informed by the constructivist learning theory I would need to ask myself how much and what background knowledge or experience my students have in each specific topic. Based on this information I will need to ask myself whether or not the information that I am giving them will be able to neatly fit into their schema or I will have to find a way to restructure their understanding. I need to ask myself how my students will be able to connect the new information to any background or older knowledge they may have in this topic. I would ask myself how this topic relates to their lives in order to make it more real to them and easier to build into their schema. Lastly, I would ask myself how and if I need to make my students self aware of the knowledge or maybe misconceptions that they have about the topic. Allowing my students to think about what they already know will help them to add and build upon that.
When teaching is informed by the learning theories, there may not be a clear set of steps to take yet each aspect of teaching will have a meaningful purposeful behind it.
Erin, from reading your blog post, I really feel like you have grasped the concepts of DTL, SLT, and CLT and could not agree with you more on your points. One of the biggest patterns I noticed in your post was the idea of awareness; a teacher must be constantly aware of a child's ZPD as well as what a student's strengths and weaknesses are. Teachers have to consciously make strides to interact with their students and understand them, I feel like lots of educators assume that that process will just happen organically (or magically or something) and it won't. I also think that the Developmental learning theory somewhat unconsciously involves the Constructivist learning theory in the sense that if a person has a schema for something already, the DLT would allow the instructor to start with less concrete examples of a topic. However, if no schemas are present, an educator would have to create an experience, create a schema, by using the most concrete version of a topic.
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