From Exercises to Activities: Educational Developments

Abstract

Learning activities are extra studies about teaching topics to enhance learningprocess. They have been represented as exercise, homework, activity, performancetask, workplace, Project through years. Their applications change based oneducation approaches. Behaviorist approach focus on exercises. The aim ofexercises is to provide enhancement of study topics. Exercise were supported to thestudents to reinforce study topics and the students were expected to do themregularly in the past. Recently, activities have been focused on by giving by thisapplication. The aims of activity are to provide effective and willingly studentlearning. In education process, students can develop language, conscious and socialskills by making various activities cooperatively. Applied activities are mainteaching tools of constructivist approach with the aim of providing student learningeffectively, easily and permanently and motivation. While exercises aim to changebehaviors, activities face to conscious and develop skills such as language,conscious, social and physical. Activities help students learn knowledge actively andconstruct them in their minds. Moreover, they direct the students to examine theknowledge, find the meanings of events and phenomena, organize and constructtheir own thoughts; that is, learning by trying and inventing. Briefly, learning byactivities is learning by doing and inventing. Based on this view, various activitieshave been supported to the students in lesson books by twelve years and they havebeen applied in teaching. It was observed that the activities in lesson books were notat the expected level and quality at the end of the study. It was determined that whilesome activities were prepared based on the view of exercises or used instead ofthem, some of them had the properties of the activities completely.

Özet

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