My walks in the forest are......

..to use lin’s analogy that is.... full of personal 'tree labelling sessions' - so...if you want, read on and follow me labelling today's tree from the forest of contextual studies.......
today’s lecture was good in the sense that it was back to the familiar ‘powerpoint-discuss-analyse’ format that I am comfortable with...I feel at ease with being pointed in a direction....even if I veer off the path on the way (which I inevitably do!) –
so.....my take on today was that I can't see how learning theory can be categorised as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – it’s just not that black and white! So I question if...”Revolutionary Theorists” who clearly influence (and have influenced) contemporary idealism are merely fashionable thinkers of their time - presenting their theories in the right circumstances, eg: in the right place at the right time, with the right influential back-up to promote their voice as the voice to adopt. Piaget – highly influential and inspirational...taught to death in childcare classes everywhere, yet, we know - areas of his influential work has been challenged and found to be inaccurate – .....Also....I am thinking that if context is so very important when considering any learning theory (which I think it is) then as childhood students/lecturers/workers - it is essential to question theories rather than embracing them at face value..... In a recent essay I quoted Bruner as saying that learning theories are never “right or wrong” and analysis as such must be taken in milieu of “the nature of the task to be learned, the type of learning to be accomplished and the characteristics learners bring to the situation” and for me, this sums up nicely where I'm coming from and actually what was discussed in class today...... it’s just not appropriate to channel one theory as being the 'right theory', when the objective approach used to test the hypothesis was not taken from a ‘fair sample’ – this idea kept coming up today in the context of the developing world – how would Piaget’s experiments work in a developing country?
Now being a bit of a major ‘tree labeller’ I can relate to the desire to categorise and put the way in which children learn into neat little developmental patterns......it makes every thing clear and easy to understand and we can, in a professional sense, tick our boxes and move on to the next child.....(mmm check out the National curriculum link here!) conversely, life/people/cultures etc don’t always fit these patterns - not in every case, because of any serious developmental flaw – but because of issues and impacts that aren’t being included in the evaluation because the ‘scientific approach’ measuring the ‘norms’ didn’t include these variations at the onset!
Don’t get me wrong – I’m an avid reader and all the learning theories really fascinate and I am sure within each of them are highly valid points that are spot on.....but the ‘thinker’ in me is now exploring under the surface of these theoretical guru’s – and on the look out for learning theory that is errrrm – lets say ..... more 21st century....
any thoughts on this welcome....