LearningNetwork

=My Personal Learning Network and Concept Map=



When I think about my own learning, I think about significant experiences more than a timeline. Though I started learning as anyone does in infancy, responding to stimuli in the environment (behaviorist), and then progressed through traditional schooling, my most significant learning is tied to meaningful experiences. One idea that really struck me about the cognitivist theories is a statement from Ausubel’s Learning Theory article (1998) that “meaningful learning is anchored; rote learning is not.” The knowledge I carry with me as an adult is knowledge gained through meaningful experiences and gleaned from environments that were valuable and important to me. Thus when I reflect on my past, though all my learning is “there,” it is like looking at the surface of water – my most significant memories and learning rise to the top; those less significant and less meaningful sink below. My learning is not a 2-D timeline; it is a 3-D object.

When I think of myself as a learner, I am very intrinsically motivated. Sometimes out of sheer terror of failure and sometimes out of a desire to seek out new knowledge, I am a person driven mostly by my own desire to succeed. That is why I think I am able to handle learning in the online environment. As a kid, I remember my parents telling me that I was my own harshest critic (and still am). I can’t really blame anyone for it – my parents expected us to do well in school, but I can’t really say that they forced this thinking on me. The humanist theory resonated with me when I considered these ideas. Before I can even consider my learning network, I perceive my experiences through certain intrinsic “lenses” – responsibilities, motivations, needs, desires, self-image, and prior learning. I represent this lens between my learning network and me as a rose-colored triangle (I’d like to say my perceptions are rose-colored, but acknowledge that isn’t always so).

When I think about my learning network, I group my learning into four main “areas” of a greater whole (the big green circle of my concept map). These areas of my learning network are my background, my personal learning, my career, and my continuing education. Each of these areas is surrounded by environmental influences and experiences (represented by ovals). With the exception of my background, which I consider a “fixed” entity and my personal learning (a cognitive area that takes shape from those the most significant experiences of my past), my career and continuing education areas on my map took shape when I read Lave and Wenger’s ideas about characteristics of communities of practice. I share a “domain” with other people defined by a similar interest in something, our group makes a “community” in which we engage in conversations and activities to help each other learn and function, and we are all involved in a similar “practice.” I like what Wenger said: “Communities develop around things that matter to people.” In my USC program and my teaching career, I am very much a social cognitive and constructivist learner: I observe others and learn from my observations, and I part of a “social context that gives meaning to what [I] do.” When I learn new things, I try to apply it to these learning communities that are meaningful areas of my life. How will this learning affect the domains that I value? It is only areas that I have a hard time valuing that I crave the lock-step approach of behaviorism (learning how to cook a Thanksgiving meal).

As I reflect on myself as an adult learner, I see such value in experience. I look at my most intelligent students and wonder how much more developed they will be when they reach their full “self-actualization” stage of adulthood (a stage I think is ultimately accessible after having lived through a number of experiences). I am a much better learner now because I am able to construct knowledge in the light of experience and interaction. For example, I was a decent English student in high school. As an English teacher, I have learned so much simply through eleven years of observations of what makes good writing and bad writing. I am able to add over a decade of significant observations to my initial talent as an English student. That, I think, only comes with having lived through the interactions of becoming and being a teacher.