Learning Theories

This week I was reading about different learning theories. It was really interesting to see how people believe in different ways when we talk about learning and education. Some approaches were more meaningful to me than others and I was really surprised by the amount of knowledge I gained after reading all the journal articles and chapters in the book. I had to write a short paper about learning theories and I decided to write about discovery learning. The reason I chose this topis is because I strongly believe in constructivism. I think it is a great way to learn and a great way to teach our students. I do not have too much experience teaching, so I can see it more from prospective of a student. I have to say that I learned much more by exploring problems on my own than by drilling. In my country, the Czech Republic, teachers mostly use drill for practice and students do not have the opportunity to solve problems by themselves. They study for an exam by remembering the facts, but right after the exam, everything is forgotten. That was exactly my case when I studied for the final exam when finishing the high school. I think it is too bad that students do not have the opportunity to gain knowledge by experience. It would bring them much more than just simple drill practice. I hope that the next generation of teachers will bring some changes to the Czech educational system. I would like to research if they even teach learning theories to the future educators over there. It would be really interesting to compare the teaching practice in the Czech Republic and in the United States.