TYPES OF LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND CONCEPTS
People use different kind of learning to understand concepts. For example, people use discovering learning, inquiry learning and analogue learning. Discovery learning involves the discovery of new concepts. For example, students might want to discover how cells function. In this case, students ask questions and develop experiments to learn more. Also, the students collect data and interpret it using various techniques. After collecting the data, the students communicate the results to their friends and other people who are interested. Apart from discovery learning, students use inquiry learning to learn. Inquiry learning is different from discovery learning. This is because the teacher is involved in the learning process. Teachers play an important role in inquiry learning. This is because they help students explain the scientific concepts. Most of the students are not able to explain the scientific concepts when using inquiry learning. For instance, the students cannot explain blood circulation. In this case, teachers are supposed to equip the learners with adequate knowledge so as to be able to understand the concept. Also, the teachers help students explain the concepts.
Many teachers are not able to help the learners differentiate the scientific concepts. The teachers use an analogy to help students differentiate scientific concepts. Analogies and models are important inquiry tools. This is because the tools use different situations evidenced on our daily lives to explain complex concepts. Analogue models are models that are used to explain objects that cannot be observed and processes. For example, the analogue models can be used to explain the structure of a DNA. The event is referred to as an analogue while the scientific idea being explained is known as a target. There are different types of analogues. That is ‘shared attributes’ and ‘unshared attributes’. Analogues that are effective have shared attributes. Analogies can be grouped into different categories. That is ‘simple analogy’ and ‘enriched analogy’. Another category is ‘extended analogies’ (Keith, Stiglet &Richland, 2004).
Apart from being used to solve scientific problems, analogies are used to teach mathematics. Most teachers use analogies to teach mathematics. In addition, students use analogies to learn and explain mathematic concepts. Analogical reasoning consists of various steps that can be used to process original information and produce the capacity to learn and transmit knowledge acquired to targets that are not familiar. The same concept has been used to learn mathematics. Analogical reasoning is used in learning abstract concepts in mathematics and solving problems. Mathematics has a formal structure and this makes it easy to use analogical learning to learn mathematical concepts. Mathematics has an abstract structure and the relationships are the same. The analogical learning has been used to help students learn mathematical concepts. Students might not be able to show the similarity between ‘additional of numbers’ and ‘addition of variables’ as they seem different. However, the students might be able to see the similarity between the addition of numbers and variables after getting help from the teacher. The information gathered from the ‘addition of numbers’ in the class can be used to add variables.
The analogical learning has helped me understand different concepts in mathematics. For example, they have helped me understand the addition of variables. Moreover, the knowledge acquired in one chapter was used to understand other chapters. This is because the chapters had a similar structure. In this case, analog allows one to indetify the source and the target. The source is always known, but the target is not known. The information gotten from the source is used in understanding the target through mapping. Mapping in analog learning refers to the process of aligning inferences between the source and the target. It also refers to the process of getting inferences from the source and using them in the target object. Most students learning mathematics have used the mapping process. The students have used mapping to understand different concepts. The students have to use prior experiences in the class to comprehend new concepts. The teacher helps the students understand the concept from the source by providing explanations and then allowing students to use what they have learned to solve different problems(Keith, Stiglet &Richland, 2004).
I used analogy learning in solving mathematical problems. The teacher had given various problems and then provided solutions to them. For instance, the teacher asked the students to find the square root of five squared and provided the answer as five. After that the teacher asked the students to determine the squared root of seven squared. So, the students had to use the knowledge gathered from the previous example to solve the problem. Solving the problem could have been difficulty if the teacher had not provided the necessary help. This is because the learners could not have any experience to solve the problems. In conclusion, analog leaning has played an important role in understanding mathematics, though there is no adequate information about it. Teachers and students have relied on the method to solve mathematics problems for many years (Keith, Stiglet &Richland, 2004).
Reference
Keith,H.J.,Stiglet,J.W.,&Richland,L.E.(2004).Analogy use in eight grade mathematics classroom. Cognition and instruction, vol 22, issue no 1, p37-60
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