Growing up you are always learning. Whether it was sports, school, hobbies or just general day to day life, I was always being exposed to behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism.

A lot of my early life revolved around sports. I was constantly at practice and games trying to learn how to be a better player. During this time coaches mostly used behaviorism to improve our skills. This involved a lot of repetition of the same drills and running the same plays. All the repetition definitely developed good habits and reinforced the correct decisions that should be made in game situations. However, when you think of the best players in any sport they don’t always stick to the normal routines, they are creative and do things others wouldn’t ever think of trying.

In school teachers implemented cognitive learning by having each learning topic in class built on a previously learned foundation. This allowed me to use the previous knowledge and learning strategies that I had gained to help make sense of the new topics and process new information efficiently. For me cognitive learning was always an effective strategy but lacked the freedom I desired when learning. Classes always felt too focused and discouraged me from being creative or doing something outside the box.

When I wasn’t in school or playing sports I was having fun with my hobbies. This could be anything from skiing, climbing, playing video games with friends or etc.. But this is where I felt that I learned best, just learning as I go with no need for instruction because I’m genuinely interested in learning about the things I’m doing.

Constructivism is the best and most important strategy I still implement into my life today. Even when it comes to school, which obviously needs to be very focused and can’t always use constructivism, I try to just focus on what I find interesting in my classes at the time and learn about those however I feel is right.