Student Model Of Learning

Understanding how students learn is an important task educators must comprehend and be aware of. Once an educator has identified and recognized a student’s ability to learn, they are more likely to use the resources at their disposal to increase a student’s awareness of a subject and enhance student achievement.

As educators, it is our responsibility to recognize and be aware of student learning. This can be accomplished through multiple strategies and methods being implemented. But, the implementation of those methods and strategies will only work once a student model of learning has been identified. This initial step takes into consideration the various learning styles and intelligences used by students to learn new material.

One of the most easily recognized models is Thinking, Recognizing, and Doing. This model identifies the initial step to student learning as the Thinking step. If a student does not first think about the material presented to them they will never learn it. Many teachers never comprehended what actually takes place during the thinking process, but always desire to get their students to think. It is imperative to understand that thinking is not enough, but work must be relevant to students.

Once a student is thinking about the subject matter, the next step in the process is Recognition. The use of recognition can be carried out in a number of different ways, such as; Looking for inaccuracies, finding a pattern, combining two or more concepts or ideas that share similarities. These are some examples just to name a few. Through Recognition a student is stimulating their thinking to a point where understanding can take place. This concept is often referred to as Retrieval when discussing the Cognitive System.

The third aspect of this model is Doing. By Doing a student is asked to perform or demonstrate their understanding and recognition. Doing could be a simple task such a labeling, or be a more complex task such as creating a graphic organizer or diagram. By Doing a student would demonstrate whether or not the learning process was a success. Development is facilitated by experience and procedural practice, and Doing allows this to occur.

This learning model is beneficial because it considers and honors student diversity through the use of the various forms of doing that can be implemented. The tasks that students are required to perform in the doing phase of learning can easily adapt to meet the needs of the multiple intelligence theories of learning.

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