Reflecting on the purpose of theory

Learning theories should offer some insight into learning.
For those new to teaching the plethora of view points is somewhat confusing and can get in the way rather than assist understanding.
When I taught science I saw that my task was to uncover meaning that enabled students to build there own understanding.
How to do this with learning theories?
For those I work with I see my task is to provide a practical framework that enables them to create coherent engaging lessons for their students in a wide range of practical areas

abiding interest in learning about life

southcoast reflection

When I was a teenager  one of the first books I purchased were called the chemistry of life,  I just looked it up and there are revised editions still available, and Steven Rose the writer has written much else.
I still remember the area in the bookshop in Princes St Dunedin.  So why the interest?  Chosen because it explored areas not yet being taught in school.
Steven Rose mentions in the preface to the 1999 edition that he is not sure what in this book inspired people.
I think that it was a simple overview made it accessible, and as a teenager studying chemistry it built on what I already knew.  Why wouldn't people be interested in how the chemistry of life works?  The ultimate secret much unraveled in the intervening years but not yet fully understood.

Understanding the brain’s mechanisms and dynamics has proved biology’s most intractable – and fascinating - problem over the three centuries since the birth of modern science. 

Prospects and Perils of the New Brain Sciences: a twenty year timescale*in 2009 by Steven Rose

 So the morning discovery is to find an author who interested me in the late 1960's is still interested in the field and still interests me...
My battered copy is dusty in the bookcase, but says with me

literally in the littoral zone

Beautiful Good Friday day and chance to walk the southcoast, at low tide in the calm.  Still struggling with phone camera at times so today tried a few new things.  in the end the classic shot of course.
Different kinds of learning, but will try to capture panorama soon!

Learning is a living thing

Not a new thought at all but return to it today having explored some thoughts of others.
Found a paper by William E Doll Jr,  Complexity and the Culture of Curriculum  in the online journal complicity
Have thought for some time that complexity thinking would assist in making sense of learning but have struggled to find the direct links .  In this paper Doll looks at the work of Stuart Kauffman who was looking that led to self organisation in living systems

I interpret the single connection in terms of direct instruction from teacher to student as producing ‘mindlessly dull behavior’.38 From toomuch richness in curriculum, a chaotic frame emerges. What one needs, from Kauffman’s point of view and mine, are networks (or curricular structures) that ‘achieve both stability and flexibility' a brief quote from pg 24

Once one moves from data collection to relationships, onealso moves from isolated facts (with all their ‘inertness’) to interconnected or webbed patterns (with their ongoing ‘aliveness’) from page 25

So let this all reverberate for a bit but love the finding and refinding of resonating ideas  

 

searching about

By chance found someone working on a model or theory which assists understanding of why people get involved Affective Context Theory The name is a bit Theoretical but the ideas resonate