The Psychology of Learning Screen
The Psychology of Learning Screen
The lower level
- Separates changes that learning can produce from those it cannot.
- Learning can build health habits, but cannot increase a learner’s height.
The higher level
- Separates feasible goals from those that are unrealistic or impossible at an age.
- Major personality change is possible in early childhood, but profound personality change is unattainable in a sixteen-year-old.
Philosophy screens objectives for what is worth pursuing. But an objective can be worthy and still impossible. The second screen, the psychology of learning, filters objectives for what learning can actually achieve. It works at two levels, a lower one and a higher one.
The lower level: what learning can and cannot do
At its lower level, the psychology of learning enables a developer to distinguish the changes in learners that can be expected to result from learning from those that cannot, or do not.
Two examples make the line clear. A learning process may help learners develop health habits and health knowledge, but it cannot increase their height. Height is not something learning changes; setting it as an educational objective would be pointless. Likewise, learning may enable learners to channel their physical reactions in socially desirable ways, but it is not possible to inhibit a personal reaction completely. Learning can shape and redirect, but it cannot erase.
The lower level, then, keeps objectives honest about the kind of thing learning is. An objective that asks learning to do what learning cannot do is not worth keeping, no matter how desirable it sounds.
Separates changes learning can produce from those it cannot
Learning can build health habits but cannot increase height; it can redirect physical reactions but cannot fully inhibit them. The screen drops objectives that ask learning to do what it cannot.
The higher level: what is realistic at an age
At its higher level, the psychology of learning helps a developer distinguish goals that are feasible and realistic from those that are likely to take much more time, or are simply impossible to attain, at the age level being considered.
Again, examples make it concrete. A great deal of personality change in children is possible through educational experience during the preschool and primary years; the young child is still forming, and learning can shape that formation considerably. But an objective aiming at profound personality change is unattainable in a sixteen-year-old, whose personality is far more settled. The same objective can be realistic at one age and impossible at another.
This higher level protects a curriculum from setting goals that no amount of good teaching could reach at the chosen age. It does not say a goal is unworthy; it says the timing is wrong.
Separates feasible goals from those unrealistic at a given age
Major personality change is possible in early childhood but largely unattainable in a sixteen-year-old. The same objective can be realistic at one age and impossible at another.
It filters out objectives that learning cannot achieve or cannot achieve yet
Like the philosophy screen, it does not generate objectives; it removes them. It keeps the list to changes learning can actually produce at the age of the learners.
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