This Chapter develops a bibliographic analysis that associates teaching methodologies with cognitive skills to create a structural map of teaching activities that guide the learning process in classroom, basing on student characteristics. Specifically in higher education, the academic formation within the major universities in the entire world goes through a particular problem: lack of effectiveness in the teaching-learning process. This Chapter starts from the premise that the learning management should be used as a strategy for planning the teaching-learning process. A specific theoretically grounded analysis is used to understood a series of learning activities appropriate to cognitive skills, so authors propose a functionalist model of teaching and learning that seeks greater usefulness in the transfer of knowledge in classroom. Thus, the Chapter covers issues such as: experiential learning for teaching questions, Kolb's theory of experiential learning, teaching-learning process, and applications of learning management.
TopIntroduction
Problems on learning processes in the main universities have been always in focus due the relevance of the higher education, and also, due the primary goal of academy: knowledge production with scientific bases (Branch, Hayes, Hørsted, & Nygaard, 2017). In this sense, the role of the educator is to be a guide of the teaching-learning process, being characterized as a motivator agent within educational environment (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008; Kolb & Kolb, 2005).
This relationship between professor (or educator) and student proposes that each of these are an important factor on development of learning (Bidabadi, Isfahani, Rouhollahi, & Khalili, 2016), in which the professor is the “subject of creation, coordination, and proposition of studies, questions and discussions” (Luckesi et al., 2010, p. 43), and also the motivator of students to achieve a higher performance (Cox, Zhang, Johnson, & Bender, 2007; Davis & Oliveira, 2010; Nogueira, Costa, Takamatsu, & Reis, 2013).
Moreover, for Kolb and Kolb (2009), the student is the actor responsible for the learning itself. The student is the one who exercises his knowledge and can develop their potential that come from individual efforts of assimilation and questioning and thus can create critical reflections, characterizing as a “psychological process in constriction” (Davis & Oliveira, 2010, p. 107). Thus, for the student to learn, depends of cognitive, affective and motivational aspects, that propels him to the information narrowing, adding up to environmental factors, and then, having the production of knowledge (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008; Kolb & Kolb, 2005, 2009).
It is understood that the professor is only a stimulator to the learning process, in which the goal is to facilitate the transmission of information, practices and skills, impelling the students to be more motivated to learn (Gage, Simonsen & Briere, 2012; MacFarlane, 2013; Valente, Cornachione Jr., Abib, Pereira, & Amaral, 2008).
Harb et al. (1995) propose that the learning process – specifically the learning styles approach – should be used as a strategy for planning the teaching-learning process in classroom. This perspective, according to Kolb, Boyatzis & Mainemelis (2001) and Leng and Tin (2002), includes practices that the students can use to learn more effectively if the method is compatible with their learning styles, i.e., their cognitive skills.
Accordingly, based on the theoretical propositions raised here in the field of educational psychology and experiential learning, this Chapter aims to develop a bibliographic analysis that associate teaching methodologies with cognitive skills, to create a structural map of teaching activities that guide the learning process in classroom, basing on student characteristics.
The Chapter was undertaken as a bibliographic research, within a literature specific and a documental approach, which, according to Gil (2012, p. 50), has the main advantage “allow the researcher to cover a wide range of phenomena far broader than one which he could search directly”. In addition, the deepening in a particular thematic, as well as the hypotheses delineation and the discovery of new research problems is guided by a series of reflective activities on data available in the literature (Blumberg, Cooper & Schindler, 2011; Bryman & Bell, 2007), as conducted and presented here. Thus, the Chapter covers issues such as: (i) experiential learning for teaching questions, (ii) Kolb’s theory of experiential learning, (iii) teaching-learning process, (iv) applications of learning management.