The Miracle Worker: Learning Journal #1

This movie is a representation of the efforts to teach a deaf-blind mute girl to communicate. The fact that she was able to utter (babble) wa-wa to refer to water, kept her parents hoping to find someone to teach her how to communicate. A tutor, who had partial lost of sight, came from a Blind Institute to teach Helen to communicate. She used various strategies, such as finger spelling to teach what the objects name were. However, this strategy was not being effective due to the fact that Helen knew how to finger spell, but did not know what the word represented. According to Piaget's cognitive development theory, Helen's sensorimotor abilities needed to be developed so she could learn new intellectual abilities. The adaptation to the environment, according to Piaget, is essential for the child's cognitive development.

Another area the tutor wanted to improve was Helen's misbehavior. She eradicated her awful table manners and taught her how to dress herself by being consistent. She didn't allow her parents to reward her for misbehaving, thus creating Helen to reject her tutor. The tutor used what we now know as the positive and negative reinforcements (Skinner's Theory). Whenever Helen acted as instructed, she would let her play with the doll, otherwise she would insist until the desired conduct was achieved.

Finally, finger spelled words came alive to Helen when she was taken to the water pump. Her tutor spelled the word water, and that was the beginning of Helen's language development. she began to inquire about the things around her, and her tutor kept finger spelling the words to Helen, who was astonish to finally being able to discover the world around her and understand what the objects represented. This event, according to Vygotsky (Social Development Theory), is what makes lerning pertinent:teachers collaborate with the student to facilitate meaning construction by the students, making this a reciprocal learning experience.