The Learning Cycle Theory

The Learning Cycle was originated by Robert Karplus in the Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS) This approach has a widespread applicability and has been used as an instructional process in mathematics, language arts, and social studies texts as well as science. The Learning Cycle includes three stages: exploration, invention, and discovery.

In the exploration stage, the students explore materials or ideas. This exploration presents conditions that will encourage students to use accurate concepts or misconceptions they have previously conceptualized. As students explore they connect their past understanding to their current explorations. Piaget called this assimilation. As the student interprets the present event with their current understanding they may experience a discrepancy between their past experiences and the information they are currently exploring. Piaget called this disequilibration. This state of confusion, disequilibration, motivates the student to manipulate the materials and/or ideas to create a new schema, accommodation, for understanding and returning the student to a state of equilibration. What the student learns, or the concept conceptualized by the student, may be classified in a number of ways: as generative knowledge (subject matter knowledge), process knowledge, an attitude about the subject; the person them self; another person; society; or a culture, a concept related to the perspective of the subject, or any combination of these.

In the invention stage, the teacher begins by inviting the student to share data they have collected. As students share their exploration experiences, they communicate their personal interpretations of their exploration. This communication can be presented in a variety of ways (oral, written in words or visual representation, acted out, sung, or any combination) for each concept. The use of the term, invention stage, is another way of stating that the students are inventing a concept and through the sharing of their collective explorations they will refine their understandings by trying to connect their experiences and understandings with other persons’ experiences and understandings. The teacher asks probing questions to facilitate this exchange of information and introduces vocabulary as necessary.

Students are encouraged by the teacher to organize the data and to invent methods for expressing concluding statements or a visualization. The author defines visualizations as a picture, diagram chart, or graph that enables the learner to explain their interpretation of their exploration. The process of communicating the student’s cognitive ideas are crucial at this particular stage. The student must be able to recognize an interpretation for the data examined, to organize a logical presentation of evidence that lends itself to be understood by others, and to communicate in both a positive social and affective setting information about a particular area and the processes in creating that information.

In the discovery stage, the teacher and / or students implement an activity to extend or apply the concept. The student begins to put the idea that has been invented to use. The student may do this by extending the understanding of the concept by exploring its limits or joining it with other related concepts to make a more complex concept (generalization). The discovery phase is the last phase of the Learning Cycle; however, it is also the first phase of the Learning Cycle. It is in this phase that the next exploration phase is initiated and many times will be recognized as exploration.

Using the Learning Cycle as an instructional process requires the educator to be cognizant of the interplay between the instructional process, a learning theory, and the students’ conceptualization of concepts.

Assessment

The author asserts that the assessment process used in the Learning Cycle is an on-going process used by the teacher and student to check what students know and how well they know it. The initial check of what students know (diagnosis) and how well they know it is done during the exploration. It is at this time that the teacher and students may want to adjust the exploration task for the entire class or for individual students depending on the information from the teacher’s probing. They should be alert to assess concepts and not isolated pieces of information that alone do not suggest understanding of relationships of facts and/or concepts. Assessment continues during the exploration and invention with assessment at the conclusion of invention for generalization. While the format of all assessment is to ask questions or pose problems to challenge the students’ observations and reasoning, the questions or problems poised at the end of the invention allow students to extend or generalize with the newly conceptualized concept. This gives students an opportunity to use the concept in new ways to solve a problem or answer a question and the teacher the opportunity to see how well the students can generalize the concept. This assessment is different than a discovery activity in that the questions or problems are short in duration and the quality of the answers is based on the use of the concept invented in a logical way more than the answer’s accuracy. However, this assessment may many times lead into or be used to create the discovery activity.

Assessment includes information from these quick check assessments during invention as well as other information created by the students throughout their experiences and the more traditional kinds of tests given to students periodically. While the intent of this section is not to present information on general kinds of assessment some thoughts on assessment related to the learning cycle follow:

(1) Assessment information can be collected from student created records of events, procedures, or random thoughts. It is imperative that the classroom teacher examine these records on a regular basis. Young children can draw their observations. As they learn to write, they can label and then write the descriptions of what they have done. As their ability to read and write matures, they can be given written questions to focus their attention on information they will need to know. These written questions would be used to assess student’s understanding of the concepts.

(2) Information can be collected on what students know about how and what to record from their observations. This can be inferred from products of their work or recorded on video tape as students work to solve problems.

(3) Information can be collected on how students use concepts recently learned to solve problems they have not experienced. Teachers must develop appropriate tasks where students can learn and apply processes in a systematic manner in their everyday activities. As students work on these everyday tasks information on how they solve problems can be collected to assess student growth.

(4) Information can be collected from more than cognitive knowledge level questions. (e.g., How many centimeters in a meter? More appropriate questions would be similar to the following. (a) You measured the room with your feet. The class agreed on a standard straw as a unit of measurement. Why did you choose to use feet? (b) Would green bean seeds be a good choice for a standard unit? Why? or Why not?)

(5) Information collected should be comprehensive. Information can include a variety of categories (knowledge, process, affective, perspective, personal, and social).

(6) Information collected can be longitudinal to have a reference for student progress, both individual and group.

(7) Information collected can be related to criteria and norm references.

The Model

The Theory

If the learner is going to construct scientifically accurate concepts, they must be involved in an exploration of information that will support the concept. This is achieved in the exploration stage. The Learning Cycle is an instructional process that facilitates learning by providing opportunities to the student to explore by beginning with their personal ideas rather than someone else’s idea that they may not be ready to accept. The teacher helps organize experiences that will encourage students to push their personal ideas to discover their limitations. As they do so they will discover the quality of their ideas. Sometimes making minor adjustments and other times discarding their ideas and replacing them with better.

For teachers to create this kind of learning experience it is important for them to understand the concepts students are to learn, the information required to conceptualize the concepts, and activities that can be explored that make this information available for students understanding. For teachers to provide students with meaningful experiences they must have a certain amount of information available to them. This information and its organization will be referred to as an organizational framework. Outstanding teachers have an organizational framework in mind if not on paper. To help teacher-educators plan and facilitate learning the author has created an organizational framework. This framework has as its major areas: Concepts for students to conceptualize, supporting information for the concepts, possible student misconceptions, assessment, activities, materials, and procedures. A description of each area of the framework, a framework outline, and a completed framework, or lesson plan, follows.

Concepts. The major ideas to be conceptualized by the students over a period of time. The teacher must (1) know what concepts that are developmentally appropriate for students to learn, and (2) formulate a concise statement for each concept explored. The teacher should remember that concepts are the ideas about a particular phenomenon students construct from a learning experience. A concept, then, is what the students will have in their heads when they walk out of the classroom.

Concepts can be classified in a number of areas. These areas are identified in national and state standards through the learned societies and need to be selected by communities as part of the school curriculum. Some possible categories are included for a frame of reference. The reader is encouraged to explore different classification systems to meet their students’ needs.

Possible Concept Categories:

Generative Knowledge. The concepts that are information created in the topic area that include the areas subject knowledge.

Process. The knowledge needed to collect data, organize data, and create information in a topic area.

Dispositions. The attitudes people have who desire to use the topic area for a particular purpose.

Perspective. The understanding of how a topic area developed and how it has been, is, or could be used by society.

Personal. The understanding of ones abilities for self-improvement.

Social. The understanding of how to interact with people for the good of the person and group.

Supporting Information. The concepts or facts needed to invent or conceptualize a concept.

Misconceptions. Ideas that people have that don’t coincide accurately with the intended concept. Students’ developmental abilities should be taken into account when determining accuracy.

Activity. What the students will do to move toward the development of the concept. Activities should provide students experiences where the supporting information is available so students may conceptualize the concept during their exploration.

Assessment. What probing questions or problems can be asked or given to assess the students progress toward conceptualization and generalization of the concept.

Materials. The supplies needed to do the activities.

Discovery. When students gain additional information or knowledge about a concept, apply the concept, or use it in a different situation. The discovery activity many times is the beginning of another exploration and invention activity.

Learning Cycle Framework

IV. Sample Lesson

A narrative of a sample lesson on electricity and a planning framework follows. The lesson is an introductory electricity lesson for upper elementary students.

Exploration. The teacher may choose two paths for exploration. One closed and another open. In the first, the teacher has selected a concept and task with the intention that students will conceptualize the concept by doing the task and discussing the results. In the second, the teacher asks the students what they are interested in learning. The teacher and students plan their learning based on their needs or desires. The teacher works with the students posing questions or helps the students pose questions. Next, they plan a task to explore. Imagine a classroom where the teacher/students have decided to investigate electricity. The teacher explains to the students that one way to begin to learn about a topic is to take the smallest unit or system of the topic and learn as much about that system as possible. The teacher and students decide that the smallest system for electricity would be one light bulb, one battery, and one wire. The teacher provides each student with the one light bulb, one wire, and one battery and challenges them to find-out as much as they can about the system.

Students begin to collect data and make observations such as: the battery has a top and a bottom, the top has a bump and the bottom has an indent, the wire has a plastic coating, it has a metal inside (copper wire), the bulb has threads on the side, a bump (terminal) on the bottom, a glass top, filament inside, etc. They also learn operational information. If a wire is run from the bottom of a battery to a light bulb, it will not light. The same is true if a wire is run from the top of the battery to the bulb. The bulb will light if the bottom touches the top of the battery and a wire runs from the side of the bulb to the bottom of the battery. As students explore, they can be encouraged to draw pictures that show the bulb lit; as well as, pictures that show the bulb not lit. After students light the bulb, they are challenged to light the bulb with the same objects in different ways. If students are unable to light the bulb and appear to be frustrated, the teacher can have them explain the strategies they have tried. At this point, teacher assistance is critical; helping the student to direct attention to a different strategy sustains student interest to continue exploration. After a reasonable amount of time: when student interest is decreasing students have collect two or three ways to light the bulb, or have collected all four ways to light the bulb it is time to move to the next step.

Invention. Invention is initiated with a discussion of the data collected from the exploration. Students share information to gain a deeper understanding of the bulb, wire, and battery system. This allows them to assimilate and accommodate information from their exploration and communicate what they understand. This is facilitated with drawings, diagrams, oral communications, and any other communication aid. Invention focuses students on ways to understand as they discuss, write, organize, classify, consolidate, analyze, verify, and communicate their understanding of the concept and related information in meaningful ways. It also allows the teacher to assess the level of students’ understanding of what has occurred. This discussion allows the students’ to conceptualize the concept of a closed circuit, compare it to each others, and through minimal teacher intervention examine the reasoning behind their concept of a closed circuit and how the scientific process is used to increase their understanding of not only this simple circuit but how they might generalize what they learned about this circuit to more complicated circuits.

Even if students have conceptualized a scientifically acceptable concept of a closed circuit during the exploration stage, the invention stage is still necessary to complete their learning experience. The invention stage allows students to operationalize a procedure for lighting the bulb and communicating it in a scientific manner appropriate to the students’ developmental level and predict how it might be applied in other situations all of which makes the learning experience more meaningful. A finished communication for middle schools students might be similar to the following statements. To have a transfer of energy with a battery, wire, and flashlight bulb there must be a continuous path (a closed circuit) with the following parts of the objects in the path: 1) top of the battery; 2) bottom of the battery; 3) threaded side of the bulb; and 4) bottom of the bulb such that the electricity can flow through each object. A diagram of four possible, different models of this system could be drawn with all four places marked in color and the path of electricity traced. Further, students would use this model to predict how other circuits may or may not be closed.

Discovery. The lesson might very well end here, but the cycle should continue with the discovery of how the concept can be used. This could be done through any number of activities pre-selected by the teacher, or selected from ideas the students generate during the invention stage, or at the beginning of the discovery stage. The main consideration is students discover a use for their new concept of a closed circuit and extensions of it.

Some sample activities: Use the closed circuit to create a circuit tester and use it to test objects by putting them into the circuit and recording if the circuit is "open" or "closed" for each object. The students would use the concept of a closed circuit not only when they make the circuit tester but each time they test each object. The teacher can observe students during the activity and use it as assessment. As the students use the concept of closed circuit to classify objects, they are discovering the utility and power of the concept and collecting data to conceptualize new concepts, conductor and non-conductor. Therefore, this activity is discovery for how to apply the concept and is the beginning of a new Learning Cycle exploration and invention for the concepts of conductor and non-conductor. The activity could also be used as a discovery for the application of the concept of a model by having students create a model to explain the difference between a conductor and non-conductor.

Another activity would have students explore by giving them an additional bulb, or battery. Have the students draw ten different circuits, predict if each would be opened or closed, theorize why, experiment for each, and record all results. This gives students opportunities to generalize the concept of a closed circuit to more complex circuits and leads to other possible inventions: parallel or series circuits for sources, receivers, or in combination.

Both examples show a usefulness for expanding the concept of a closed circuit and begin another cycle with an exploration stage. Students’ progress through these cycles is similar to the construction of knowledge according to Piaget’s learning theory and a progression of increasing knowledge through scientific investigation.

During the exploration phase, the teacher is continually assessing to see what the students know and how well they know it. Based on this information the teacher must decide if the students are able to proceed without becoming frustrated or bored. If the teacher determines this is not possible, then the teacher must intervene. During the invention phase, all of the activity is centered around assessment of what students know and how well they know it. This begins by sharing the students’ data. The data can be discussed and evaluated according to how it was collected, how it was organized, the reasoning used to gain meaning, and how all of this is communicated orally, visually, and written. During this discussion the teacher gains valuable information of what students know and how well they know it. Based on this information the teacher must decide what to say or what NOT to say to facilitate student learning. As the students use the learning cycle, the teacher will discover not only what students know and how well they know it but how students in general understand concepts, articulate concepts, and generalize concepts to refine them or create new ones. Therefore, assessment information is authentic and performance based.

Summary and Conclusion

The learning cycle is a process for teachers to organize and analyze learning experiences. While teachers may use the learning cycle in an inquiry or discovery type lesson outstanding teachers teach students how to engage in learning experiences on their own. To achieve this goal concepts must be conceptualized in a variety of categories: subject areas, processes, disposition toward subject areas, perspective of subject areas, personal power to enable learning, and social power to cooperate with others. A student that is lacking in any category will not have received the best possible education. A teacher’s responsibility is to help students achieve in all areas and the learning cycle can be a tool to help teachers do this.

Outline for Learning Cycle Lesson Plan Development

1. Select the concepts students are to learn and write concise statements for them. Remember: Concepts are the ideas about a particular phenomenon students abstract from a learning experience. It is what the students will have in their head when they walk out of the classroom.

2. Choose the activities students will use to collect supporting information for the concept invention.

3. Select concepts from other areas which can be integrated; process skills, dispositions, perspectives, personal, and social to be integrated.

4. Prepare instructions to give to students for collecting the supporting information for all concepts that students will be conceptualizing for possibly the first time. If written instructions are to be provided to students, write them. If oral instructions are to be used, make an outline of the procedure you will follow.

5. Be certain the instructions direct students only in the collection of the supporting information and do not tell them or hint what the concept is during these instructions.

6. Prepare teacher guidelines for use during the conceptual invention phase. Consider these four factors for invention:

The findings of the exploration need to be reviewed and summarized

All findings used must come from the students’

The concept must be stated by the students several times

The concept should be apparent in a varietyways

The concept should be generalized in a variety of ways

7. Select the activities to use during the discovery, application, expansion-of-the-concept phase. Be sure these activities use the concept and its language freely.

8. Decide on what kinds of assessment data should be collected.

All students should keep some kind of records and teachers should assess these records.

Students should record their observations. Young children can draw their observations and as they learn to write they can label and write descriptions. See activity section. As their ability to read and write matures they can be given written questions to focus their attention on information they will need to know, related to the concept, written questions to assess their understanding of the concept, and written questions to apply or expand the concept.

Assessment questions. Students should be tested as they were taught. They should not be given only cognitive knowledge level questions. How many centimeters in a meter? Questions such as 1) You measured the room with your feet. The class agreed on a standard straw unit. Why? 2) Why wouldn’t green bean seeds be a good choice for a standard unit?

 

Robert Sweetland's Notes ©