36 Principles of Learning
(from James Paul Gee, What Language and Literacy Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy)
(found online at
http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/jamespaulgee2 - )
1) Active, Critical Learning Principle -
All
aspects of the the learning environment (including ways in which the semiotic
domain is designed and presented) are set up to encourage active and critical,
not passive, learning.
2) Design Principle -
Learning about and coming to
appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience.
3) Semiotic Principle -
Learning about and coming
to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images,
words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system is core to the
learning experience.
4) Semiotic Domains Principle -
Learning
involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able to
participate, at some level, in the affinity group or groups connected to them.
5) Meta-level thinking about Semiotic Domain Principle -
Learning
involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic
domain being learned to other semiotic domains.
6) "Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle -
Learners
can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered.
7) Committed Learning Principle
- Learners
participate in an extended engagement (lots of effort and practice) as an
extension of their real-world identities in relation to a virtual identity to
which they feel some commitment and a virtual world that they find compelling.
8) Identity Principle
- Learning involves taking
on and playing with identities in such a a way that the learner has real
choices (in developing the virtual identity) and ample opportunity to meditate
on the relationship between new identities and old ones. There is a tripartite
play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple
real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity.
9) Self-Knowledge Principle
- The
virtual world is constructed in such a way that learners learn not only about
the domain but also about themselves and their current and potential capacities.
10) Amplification of Input Principle
- For a
little input, learners get a lot of output.
11) Achievement Principle -
For learners of all levels
of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning, customized to each
learner's level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling the learner's
ongoing achievements.
12) Practice Principle -
Learners get lots and lots
of practice in a context where the practice is not boring (i.e. in a virtual
world that is compelling to learners on their own terms and where the learners
experience ongoing success). They spend lots of time on task.
13. Ongoing Learning Principle
- The
distinction between the learner and the master is vague, since learners, thanks
to the operation of the "regime of competency" principle listed next,
must, at higher and higher levels, undo their routinized mastery to adapt to
new or changed conditions. There are cycles of new learning, automatization,
undoing automatization, and new re-organized automatization.
14) "Regime of Competence" Principle
- The
learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge of, his
or her resources, so that at those points things are felt as challenging but
not "Undoable."
15) Probing Principle -
Learning is a cycle of
probing the world (doing something); reflecting in and on this action and, on
this basis, forming a hypothesis; reprobing the world to test this hypothesis;
and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis.
16) Multiple Routes Principle
- There
are multiple ways to make progress or move ahead. This allows learners to make
choices, rely on their own strengths and styles of learning and problem-solving,
while also exploring alternative styles.
17) Situated Meaning Principle
- The
meanings of signs (words, actions, objects, artifacts, symbols, texts, etc.)
are situated in embodied experience. Meanings are not general or
decontextualized. Whatever generality meanings come to have is discovered
bottom up cia embodied experience.
18) Text Principle
- Texts are not understood purely
verbally (i.e. only in terms of the definitions of the words in the text and
their text-internal relationships to each other) but are understood in terms of
embodied experience. Learners move back and forth between texts and embodied
experiences. More purely verbal understanding (reading texts apart from
embodied action) comes only when learners have enough embodied experience in
the domain and ample experiences with similar texts.
19) Intertextual Principle
- The learner understands
texts as a family ("genre") of related texts and understands any one
text in relation to others in the family, but only after having achieved
embodied understandings of some texts. Understanding a group of texts as a
family ("genre") of texts is a large part of what helps the learner
to make sense of texts.
20) Multimodal Principle -
Meaning and knowledge are
built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions,
abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words.
21) "Material Intelligence" Principle -
Thinking,
problem-solving, and knowledge are "stored" in material objects and
the environment. This frees learners to engage their minds with other things
while combining the results of their own thinking with the knowledge stored in
material objects and the environment to achieve yet more powerful effects.
22) Intuitive Knowledge Principle
- Intuitive
or tacit knowledge built up in repeated practice and experience, often in
association with an affinity group, counts a good deal and is honored. Not just
verbal and conscious knowledge is rewarded.
23) Subset Principle
- Learning even at its start
takes place in a (simplified) subset of the real domain.
24) Incremental Principle -
Learning situations are
ordered in the early stages so that earlier cases lead to generalizations that
are fruitful for later cases. When learners face more complex cases later, the
learning space (the number and type of guess the learner can make) is
constrained by the sorts of fruitful patterns or generalizations the learned
has founded earlier.
25) Concentrated Sample Principle -
The
learner sees, especially early on, many more instances of the fundamental signs
and actions than should be the case in a less controlled sample. fundamental
signs and actions are concentrated in the early stages so that learners get to
practice them often and learn them well.
26) Bottom-up Basic Skills Principle
- Basic
skills are not learned in isolation or out of context; rather, what counts as a
basic skill is discovered bottom up by engaging in more and more of the
game/domain or games/domains like it. Basic skills are genre elements of a
given type of game/domain.
27) Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time
Principle -
The learner is given explicit information both on-demand and
just-in-time, when the learner needs it or just at the point where the
information can best be understood and used in practice.
28) Discovery Principle -
Overt telling is kept to a
well-thought-out minimum, allowing ample opportunities for the learner to
experiment and make discoveries.
29) Transfer Principle -
Learners are given ample
opportunity to practice, and support for, transferring what they have learned
earlier to later problems, including problems that require adapting and
transforming that earlier learning.
30) Cultural Models about the World Principle
- Learning
is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and
reflectively about some of their cultural models regarding the world, without
denigration of their identities, abilities or social affiliations, and
juxtapose them to new models that may conflict with or otherwise relate to them
in various ways.
31) Cultural Models about Learning Principle -
Learning
is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and
reflectively about their cultural models about learning and themselves as
learners, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social
affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models of learning and themselves as
learners.
32) Cultural Models about Semiotic Domains Principle -
about
their cultural models about a particular semiotic domain they are learning,
without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and
juxtapose them to new models about this domain.
33) Distributed Principle
- Meaning/knowledge is
distributed across the learner, objects, tools, symbols, technologies, and the
environment.
34) Dispersed Principle
- Meaning/knowledge is
dispersed in the sense that the learner shares it with others outside the
domain/game, some of whom the learner may rarely or never see face-to-face.
35) Affinity Group Principle -
Learners
constitute an "affinity group," that is, a group that is bonded
primarily through shared en devours, goals, and practices and not shared race,
gender, nation, ethnicity, or culture.
36)
Insider Principle
- The learner is an "insider,"
"teacher," and "producer" (not just a consumer) able to customize
the learning experience and the domain/game from the beginning and throughout
the experience.
