Learning and Pedagogy Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Both statements are true: in the learning context children's homes, communities, languages and cultures are valuable resources to be used in school, and teaching should be oriented towards the construction of knowledge by learners, as in the National Curriculum Framework. The answer is both the statements are true, option C.

Answer: B

The advantages of learning resources are that they make maximum use of the senses, are based on the maxims of teaching and meet individual differences. Encouraging rote learning is not an advantage, but a drawback to be avoided. The answer is option B.

Learning resources such as charts, models and audio-visual aids are meant to replace rote learning with understanding, so rote learning is the point they are against.

Answer: B

The usual order of the steps of a lesson plan is introduction (preparation), presentation, association (comparison), generalisation, application, recapitulation and home assignment, the Herbartian steps as extended. Option B is that order. The other options place association before presentation or recapitulation before introduction. The answer is option B.

Answer: D

Preparing and motivating children for the lesson by linking it with their previous knowledge and arousing their curiosity is the introduction of the lesson plan. Presentation is the main teaching, association compares facts and evaluation checks learning. The answer is introduction, option D.

Answer: D

The key is 'Cognitive, affective, psychomotor'. These are the three domains of learning set out in Bloom's taxonomy: the cognitive domain (knowledge and thinking), the affective domain (attitudes and feelings) and the psychomotor domain (physical skills). Teaching and learning develop all three. Emotion, attitude and aptitude are single items and not the named domains. Benjamin Bloom's 1956 taxonomy sets out three domains: the cognitive (knowing and thinking), the affective (feelings and attitudes) and the psychomotor (physical skills). Emotion, attitude and aptitude are not whole domains, so the three together form the answer.

Answer: B

Learning is changing one's behaviour through experience and training. The usual definition in educational psychology is a relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from experience or practice. Repeating something many times is a means, not the meaning, improving innate behaviours refers to instincts, and copying is only one way of learning. Educationists define learning as a change in behaviour that comes from experience or practice, and not from maturation or fatigue. The other options describe only one method such as repetition or imitation, or the improvement of instincts, which is not learning in the full sense.

Answer: C

Socrates vehemently supported the question and answer method, called the Socratic method. He taught by asking a series of questions that led the student to find the answer for himself. The lecture, comparison and explanation methods are not the method that bears his name. In the dialogues of Plato, Socrates keeps asking questions to bring the other person to see a contradiction in his belief, and this method of elenchus is the origin of the question and answer method in teaching. The lecture method is one-way talk by the teacher, and comparison and explanation methods are different.

Answer: C

Teaching is an art and a science. It is an art because the teacher needs skill, creativity and judgement in presenting ideas and responding to learners. It is a science because it rests on principles from psychology and research on how people learn, and on methods that can be tested and improved.

Performing art covers only the presentation side, and basic art is not a recognised description of teaching. Fashion refers to changing styles and has no bearing on a teacher's work. Only the combined description of art and science covers both sides, and it matches the key.

Answer: D

Society is not counted as a variable of teaching in the usual teacher-education account. Teaching is treated as an interaction among three variables: the teacher, the student (learner) and the content, which is the syllabus or curriculum being taught.

The syllabus, the student and the teacher are therefore all variables of teaching, so each is wrong for a NOT question. Society is the wider setting in which education takes place and shapes its aims, but it is not one of the three working variables, which is why it is the answer.

Answer: C

Connectionism is related to Thorndike. His theory held that learning forms connections between stimuli and responses by trial and error.

Classical conditioning is Pavlov's, not Skinner's, operant conditioning is Skinner's, not Pavlov's, and field theory is Lewin's, not Watson's.

Thorndike's connectionism, also called trial and error learning, is built on the law of effect. The law says that responses followed by satisfaction are strengthened.