Five Learning Theories
Everyone learns in their own unique way. Our brains are all different, and our life experiences all contribute to the various ways we learn. Psychologists have spent countless hours administering tests to better understand how students learn. Current and aspiring teachers must be educated in order to be prepared to teach students every day, and understanding different learning styles is an important part of teacher education. There are numerous well-established learning theories from which teachers can learn as they prepare to assist students in the classroom. Teachers who understand learning theories can use a variety of techniques in their classrooms to accommodate various types of learning. This can assist all students in achieving academic success.
Behaviourism
Since the nineteenth century, psychologists have been developing the concept of behaviourism. Observable and quantifiable psychology is founded on behavioural learning theory. Positive reinforcement is a popular component of behaviorism—classical conditioning observed in Pavlov's dog experiments suggests that behaviours are directly motivated by the reward available. Positive reinforcement can be used by teachers in the classroom to help students learn a concept more effectively. As a result of the behaviourism theory, students who receive positive reinforcement are more likely to retain information in the future.
Cognitive theory
Cognitivism was founded in the late 1950s and helped to
shift away from behaviourism. People are no longer seen as collections of
responses to external stimuli, as behaviourists believed, but as information
processors. Cognitive psychology was influenced by the emergence of the
computer as an information-processing device that became analogous to the human
mind, which was ignored by behaviourists. As a result, its preferred methods of
instruction are lecturing and textbook reading; and, at its most extreme, the
learner is a passive recipient of knowledge from the teacher.
Plato and Descartes were two of the first philosophers to
focus on cognition and how we think as humans. Many other researchers dug
deeper into the concept of how we think, sparking further investigation. Jean
Piaget is a seminal figure in cognitive psychology, and his work focuses on
environments and internal structures and how they influence learning.
Constructivism
Constructivism emerged in the 1970s and 1980s,
propagating the idea that learners are not passive recipients of
information, but actively construct their knowledge through interaction with
their surroundings and the reorganisation of their mental structures. Learners
are thus seen as sense-makers, not simply recording but also interpreting
information. This perspective on learning resulted in the metaphor of "knowledge-construction"
replacing "knowledge-acquisition." The growing evidence in favour of
the constructive nature of learning was also consistent with and supported by
earlier work by influential theorists such as Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner. While
there are various versions of constructivism, what they all have in common is a
learner-centered approach in which the teacher becomes a cognitive guide of the
learner's learning rather than a knowledge transmitter.
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura developed a well-known social learning theory
that works within both cognitive and behavioural frameworks that encompass
attention, memory, and motivation. This theory of learning proposes that
people can learn in a social context, and that learning is aided by
concepts such as modelling, observational learning, and imitation. He
further proposed "reciprocal determinism," which holds that a
person's behaviour, environment, and personal qualities all influence each
other. He contends that children learn through observation of others as well as
"model" behaviour, which involves processes such as attention,
retention, reproduction, and motivation. The value of positive role modelling
in learning is well established.
Socio-constructivism
The rise of the perspective of "situated cognition and learning" in the late twentieth century further altered the constructivist view of learning by emphasising the importance of context, particularly social interaction. Criticism of the information-processing constructivist approach to cognition and learning grew as Vygotsky's pioneering work, as well as anthropological and ethnographic research by scholars such as Rogoff and Lave, came to the fore and gained traction. The essence of this criticism was that information-processing constructivism viewed cognition and learning as processes occurring within the mind in isolation from and interaction with the surrounding environment. Knowledge was thought to be self-sufficient and independent of the contexts in which it was found. In the new perspective, cognition and learning are viewed as interactions between an individual and a situation; knowledge is viewed as situated and a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is formed and utilised. This gave rise to a new learning metaphor as "participation" and "social negotiation."
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