I have just been reading about the theory of situated cognition, which can also be described as social, active or contextual learning or Constructivism. It means to that in order to learn, one needs to learn in the real world.

An example of learning words was given. A 17-year-old has a vocabulary of 80,000 words that he/she has learned outside the classroom, at a rate of 5,000 words a year over 16 years. Yet, typical classroom vocabulary teaches about 100-200 words a year. Since they are not taught in context, these classroom words are often not learned well.

Do any of you know much about this theory? I am very interested to learn more about it because it seems very appropriate for how students best learn the science of nursing.

It seems to me to be a new term for what all trainers have known for years. Learning is always best done in context, which is why lectures tend to be a poor way of getting knowledge across (and an even worse way of teaching skills).

Certainly lists of vocabulary words are about the worst way of learning the meanings of new words.

I have no idea what is really the best way of learning -- of learning languages, say, for the average learner. But I feel that immersion is best. I learnt what Biblical Hebrew I know by being dropped in the deep end: here are real texts, here are the vocabulary and grammatical explanations.

The average chunk of text contains commonly-used words and common grammatical constructions. What very often happens is that the commonest bits of grammar are irregular, difficult: if you were teaching them by the book you'd start with nice simple regular verbs and only move on to the exceptions later. But real text doesn't work like that. In the real language all the worst irregularities crowd up at you; but so they do to the native speaker as well. The sooner you recognize that all these irregularities appear all the time and learn them by sight (even if they don't make any sense), the easier it is to pick up a random text in the language and understand most of it. My learning of Hebrew that way was, I think, worth as much as all my other language classes put together. Instead of Janet-and-John exercises, I saw how the language actually behaved.

Came across this today. As an ESOL teacher who is also currently doing a Cert Ed course and having his head filled with "educational theory" I find it rather appeals to my sense of humour.

What I find most appalling about that article is that it is from my town. Ugh.

You did notice that it was from The Onion, didn't you?

Undated but I assume it was published on April 1st.

In case anyone doesn't know the Onion is a satirical publication that presents its articles in a straightforward looking manner that has quite often fooled other internet sites and newspapers into believing they are genuine. There have been several occasions when their spoofs have been repeated verbatim in "real" publications with no sign that the editors have got the joke.

Oh, yes, Shu and I love the Onion, too, Bob. It is absolutely hilarious, and I just loved that article, Bob. It reminds me of this poem that I have posted here before:

"A Grouchy Good Night to the Academic Year", by Ted Pauker

(This is only part of the poem)

But our new Education Department
Confuses confusion again.
'Those teach who can't do' runs the dictum,
But for some even that's out of reach:
They can't even teach - so they've picked 'em
To teach other people to teach.
Then alas for the next generation,
For the pots fairly crackle with thorn,
Where psychology meets education
A terrible bullshit is born.

I have no idea what is really the best way of learning -- of learning languages, say, for the average learner. But I feel that immersion is best.

I absolutely agree with that, aput. I remember when my 8th grade daughter spent a month in France learning French, after awhile she began to dream in French. That must be some indication that students are learning a language.

I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't realize about The Onion for a while - lol! You totally got me on the joke at first.