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Sunday, March 14, 2010

Movie: The Miracle Worker

Movie: The Miracle Worker


This is the story of Anne Sullivan's struggle to teach the blind, mute and deaf Helen Keller how to communicate. Her parents seek help from the Perkins Institute and they send this tutor to help her.

In this movie we can observe different learning theories and strategies which Sullivan used to help Helen to communicate. We can observe that Sullivan let her discover the world around by the sense of touch (Mayer-Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning). Helen touched her face and she imitated (Bandura-Social Learning) her face. Later she could distinguish that those different faces represented a different feeling. Sullivan thought sign language not only to her, but also to her parents, making them part of the process of learning. Even though, the parents had different visions of Helen’s education and, sometimes the blocked the process of teaching-learning, the teacher knew that their participation in the process was going to help her. She also thought her with a little boy (Vigotsky-Social Interaction). When Helen was with him she was less aggressive and more willing to learn.

In the movie is clearly shown that Sullivan gave direct instructions (BF Skinner-Behaviorism) and repeated it them whenever it was necessarily. Meanwhile Helen’s parents rewarded her even if she had a bad behavior, Sullivan only rewarded (Pavlov-Classical Conditioning) her when she had a good behavior or did a good job.

Sullivan was not only interested in teach Helen how to behave and follow instructions; she was also wanted to teach understanding, language, not just rules. At the end of the movie we could appreciate that that happened. Helen was able to understand language, she was able to communicate and be less aggressive. This can guide to a conclusion that, every child in a way or another can learn. Using a variety of theories, strategies and, techniques we can teach a student. There are no real limitations when somebody wants to achieve something.

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