NEWER LEARNING THEORIES BENEFIT STUDENTS AND TEACHER
I have been excited at reviewing a novel theory (at least novel when I last examined} it. It was a nice holiday season with friends and family. Got to eat a lot, rest more tha I like to and at least pretend that I had no work coming up. Organizing my files, I came upon this list of learning theories that I had taught. One got my attention, "Information Processing".  Brought to mind those wild days when the government sent us to free schooling, those who were in science and math and related areas. I was a grade 5 and 6 teacher and wanted to go into counseling, or educational psychology. The Russians had just launched the Isputnik space sattelite nd it had Congress very worried during these cold war years. We had to take a hefty amount of learning theories-we were being trained to be elmentary school counselors.  Yet that wasn't as overwhelming as it seems. This was in 1966 and 1967 and there wereonly a  few theories. Now when I recently taught it, there seemed to be a learning theory for every bone in the body. The comparison was very interesting.  We had staunch advocates of cleint centered counseling and development, many liked his client centered approach and tried to mimick it. (I was loussy at it but I tried.). I was interested because he was from my home town and birthplace, Madison, Wisconsin. Later  he advocated group counseling which was a large part of our training.

Freud and his boys were still around, though not taken serioiusly. One of his early sidekicks, Adler, did show up in our  training since a local (Chicago, Illinois) follower came who built his  own unquie approach. He greatly contrasted with Rogers;client centered approach with the acual asking of questions and supplying of answers. He placed credibility on the birth order of children noting that he coul;d make judgements about their character by their  birth order. He came to  Champaign, Illinois   University of Illinois several times a year and gave quite a show.

Then there was a younger faculty member who advocated a very different theory which was taking quite a storm all over. It  emhasized that behavior needed to be seen to be considered and counted. Change came with reinforcing behaviors. We had experiemtns where we had to reinforce behaviors of children with cereal. At the end of the year, we got  very sick of cereal. It did teach us how to observe behaviors, however, and showed how we could change simple behaviors. I remember a reading approach where students in elementary school remembered words by prronouncing words A ZILLION TIMES.

Other theories came later such as Maslow and stage theory as I taught education classes.However, the most impressive theory I recently met was Information Processing with a few additiions. It uses a computer analogy for learning which has a big appeal for today's students and instructors.  (more coming)


New and exciting learning theories have