Richard S. Croft
Associate Professor
Computer Science & Multimedia Studies
Eastern Oregon University
La Grande, OR
Current Classes
About Dr. Croft
Short Biography
Web Development Philosophy
Learning and Teaching
My current beliefs about learning and teaching are fairly straightforward. I believe that humans come into the world with an innate need to find out about their surrounding environment. The progress of human evolution mandated this trait, and it accounts for the ability of humans to adapt to the variety of environments they occupy. Unfortunately, it is possible to "teach" people that they can't learn or that subject material is too difficult. It is also easy to remove subject from context to the extent that it ceases to have any attraction for the learner. It seems that learned helplessness and inability to relate to the genuine worth of subject material may contribute to the tendency of many students to rely on extrinsic motivation and focus on grades rather than making the connections necessary to successfully use the material.
The ideal in teaching then is to find the contexts in which subject material has meaning for the learner and to provide problem spaces which the learner can explore to construct a viable understanding of the content. The discovery process must be guided, with the degree of guidance governed by the specific subject matter characteristics and learner traits. Failure to properly guide may result in the learner "constructing" faulty conceptualizations of the material, or failing to explore the content in appropriate detail. The types of problem spaces would of course vary depending on whether the content were history, physical science, mathematics, etc., while allowing the connections with other subject materials to remain apparent.