LEARNING THEORY

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Learning theories are so central to the discipline of psychology that it is impossible to separate
the history of learning theories from the history of psychology. Learning is a basic psychological
process, and investigations of the principles and mechanisms of learning have been the subject of
research and debate since the establishment of the first psychological laboratory by Wilhelm
Wundt in Leipzeig, Germany, in 1879. Learning is defined as a lasting change in behaviors or
beliefs that results from experience. The ability to learn provides every living organism with the
ability to adapt to a changing environment. Learning is an inevitable consequence of living–if we
could not learn, we would die.

The evolution of learning theories may be thought of as a progression from broad theories
developed to explain the many ways that learning occurs to more specific theories that are
limited in the types of learning they are designed to explain. Learning theories are broadly
separated into two perspectives. The first perspective argues that learning can be studied by the
observation and manipulation of stimulus-response associations. This is known as
thebehaviorist perspective because of its strict adherence to the study of observable behaviors.
This perspective was first articulated in 1913 by John Watson, who argued that psychology
should be the study of observable phenomena, not the study of consciousness or the mind.
Watson believed that objective measurement of observable phenomena was the only way to
advance the science of psychology.

The second type of learning theory argues that intervening variables are appropriate and
necessary components for understanding the processes of learning. This perspective falls under
the broad rubric of cognitive learning theory, and it was first articulated by Wilhem Wundt, the
acknowledged "father of psychology," who used introspection as a means of studying thought
processes. Although proponents of these two perspectives differ in their view of how learning
can be studied, both schools of thought agree that there are three major assumptions of learning
theory: (1) behavior is influenced by experience, (2) learning is adaptive for the individual and
for the species, and (3) learning is a process governed by natural laws that can be tested and
studied.
Behavior Theory
The behaviorist perspective dominated the study of learning throughout the first half of the
twentieth century. Behaviorist theories identified processes of learning that could be understood
in terms of the relationships between the stimuli that impinge on organisms and the way
organisms respond, a view that came to be referred to as S-R theories. A central process in S-R
theories is equipotentiality. Equipotential learning means that learning processes are the same for
all animals, both human and nonhuman. By studying learning in nonhuman animals, the early
behaviorists believed they were identifying the basic processes that are important in human
learning. They also believed that learning could only be studied by observing events in the
environment and measuring the responses to those events. According to the behaviorists, internal
mental states are impossible topics for scientific inquiry, and thus are not necessary in the study
of learning. For behaviorists, a change in behavior is the only appropriate indicator that learning
has occurred. According to this view, all organisms come into the world with a blank mind, or,
more formally, a tabula rasa (blank slate), on which the environment writes the history of
learning for that organism. Learning, from the behaviorist perspective, is what happens to an
organism as a result of its experiences.

Types of behavioral learning.

There are two main types of learning in the behaviorist tradition. The first is classical
conditioning, which is associated with the work of Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), a Russian
physiologist who studied the digestive processes of dogs. Pavlov noticed that dogs salivated
in the absence of food if a particular stimulus was present that had previously been paired
with the presentation of food. Pavlov investigated the way in which an association between
a neutral stimulus (e.g., a lab technician who fed the dogs), an unconditioned stimulus
(food), and an unconditioned reflex (salivation) was made. Pavlov's classic experiment
involved the conditioning of salivation to the ringing of a bell and other stimuli that were
not likely to make a dog salivate without a previously learned association with food.

In the initial stages of the classical conditioning paradigm, an unconditioned response (UCR; in
this case, salivation) is elicited by the presentation of an unconditioned stimulus (UCS; in this
case, food). If a neutral stimulus (one that does not elicit the UCR, such as a bell) is paired with
the presentation of the UCS over a series of trials, it will come to elicit a conditioned response
(CR; also salivation in this example), even when the UCS (food) is absent. In the paradigm of
classical conditioning, the previously neutral stimulus (bell) becomes a conditioned stimulus
(CS), which produces the conditioned response (CR) of salivation. In other words, the animal in
the experiment learns to associate the bell with the opportunity to eat and begins to salivate to the
bell in the absence of food. It is as though the animal came to think of the bell as
"mouthwatering," although behaviorists never would have used terms like think of, because
thinking is not a directly observable behavior.

Even though the original work on classical conditioning was performed using nonhuman
animals, this type of learning applies to humans as well. Learned taste aversions and the
development of specific phobias are examples of classical conditioning in humans. For example,
the first time a person hears a drill at a dentist's office, it probably will not cause the palms to
sweat and the heart rate to quicken. However, through the pairing of the sound with the
unpleasant sensation of having a cavity drilled, the sound itself may come to elicit symptoms of
fear and anxiety, even if one is not in the dentist's chair. Feelings of fear and anxiety may
generalize so that the same fear response is elicited by the sight of the dentist's lab coat or the
dental chair.

The second type of learning that is categorized in the behaviorist tradition

is instrumental oroperant, conditioning. The main difference between instrumental conditioning
and classical conditioning is that the emphasis is on behavior that is voluntary (emitted), not
reflexive (elicited). The target behavior (e.g., a peck at a lever if one is studying birds) comes
before the conditioning stimulus (e.g., food), as opposed to the classical model, which presents
the conditioning stimulus (e.g., bell) prior to the target behavior (e.g., salivation).

In the instrumental paradigm, behaviors are learned as a result of their consequences. Edward
Thorndike (1874–1949) was a pioneer in instrumental conditioning, although he resisted
the label of behaviorist. In his view, the consequences of behaving in a particular way
controlled learning. Behavior was instrumental in obtaining a goal, and the consequences
of the behavior were responsible for the tendency to exhibit (and repeat) a behavior.
Thorndike named this principle of instrumental conditioning the law of effect. He argued
that if a behavior had a positive consequence or led to a satisfying state of being, the
response (behavior) would be strengthened. If, on the other hand, a behavior had a
negative consequence, the response would be weakened. Thorndike developed the
principles of instrumental conditioning using a puzzle box that required that an animal
exhibit a certain behavior (push a latch) to obtain a goal (open a door for access to food).
The animal was given the opportunity, through trial and error, to discover the required
behavior, and the behavior was reinforced through the opening of the door and access to
food. With practice, the animal decreased the time that it needed to open the door. In the
instrumental paradigm, the animal learned an association between a given situation and
the response required to obtain a goal.

Operant conditioning and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) is credited with the

development of the operant-conditioning paradigm. Similar to instrumental conditioning,
operant conditioning requires that an organism operate on the environment to achieve a
goal. A behavior is learned as a function of the consequences of the behavior, according to a
schedule of reinforcement or punishment. Unlike Thorndike, who used the concept of
reward and satisfying states, Skinner emphasized the influence of reinforcers. Reinforcers
are events that follow a response and increase the likelihood that the response will be
repeated, but they do not suggest the operation of a cognitive component such as reward
(or pleasure). Learning is influenced according to the schedules of reinforcement in the
operant paradigm. Skinner tested the operant theory by carefully controlling the
environment to study behavior and the effects of reinforcement.

According to Skinner, operant conditioning has two laws. The first is the law of
conditioning,which states that reinforcement strengthens the behavior that precedes it, which
makes it more likely that the behavior will be repeated. The second is the law of
extinction, which states that lack of reinforcement for a behavior will make that behavior less
likely to reoccur. Reinforcement consists of two types of events, those that are positive, which
means that when they are presented (e.g., present tasty food) the probability of a behavior
occurring is increased (e.g., press a lever to get the tasty food), and those that are negative, which
means that when they are removed (e.g., stop a loud sound or painful shock) the probability of a
behavior occurring is increased (e.g., press a lever to stop a loud sound or painful shock).
Punishment is defined as an event that weakens the tendency to make a response. Punishment
could involve presenting an aversive stimulus (e.g., presenting a loud sound or painful shock), or
it could involve removing access to a positive stimulus (e.g., removing a tasty food when a lever
is pressed).
Skinner also experimented with different reinforcement schedules, and he found that different
schedules produced different patterns of responding. Continuous schedules of reinforcement
deliver a reinforcer every time the target behavior is exhibited. These schedules are effective in
establishing the target behavior, but the behavior disappears quickly if the contingency is not
met. Intermittent schedules of reinforcement deliver the reinforcer on a ratio schedule. For
example, an experimenter may decide to reinforce every fourth response that an animal makes,
or a reinforcer may be presented after a fixed or random time interval. The two types of
intermittent schedules that maintain a high rate of responding and are very resistant to extinction
are variable ratio and variable interval schedules.

Strict adherence to the behaviorist tradition excluded analysis of mental or internal events.
However, Skinner acknowledged the role of thought. He maintained that thought was caused by
events in the environment, and therefore a theory of learning that was concerned with the
influence of the environment was appropriate. Like Pavlov and Thorndike, Skinner's work was
primarily conducted with nonhuman animals, but the principles of operant conditioning can be
applied to humans as well, and they are widely used in behavior therapy and education.

Cognitive Theories

Although behaviorism was a prolific and dominant theory in learning through the early decades
of the twentieth century, certain concerns and observations led to a resurgence of interest in
cognitive theories of learning. One area of concern was the distinction between performance and
learning–that is, does behaviorism describe the factors that influence performance of learned
behavior, rather than the act of learning itself? Within the behaviorist literature, evidence of
cognitive elements like expectation and categorization exist. Under an intermittent reinforcement
schedule, for example, animals increase their rate of response immediately before a reinforcer is
delivered, thus acting as though they expect it. Similarly, animals can be trained to distinguish
between types of stimuli that belong to different classes. Learning this type of distinction seems
to involve classification, which is a cognitive process. Most importantly, scientists who studied
learning recognized that the behaviorist theories could not account for all types of learning.
Humans and animals can learn something without exhibiting what they have learned, meaning
that performance does not always reflect what has been learned.
Cognitive theories grew from the concern that behavior involves more than an environmental
stimulus and a response, whether it be voluntary or reflexive. These theories are concerned with
the influence of thinking about and remembering experiences or behavior. The assumptions
about learning under cognitive theories are not the same as those for behaviorist theories,
because thinking and remembering are internal events. Inferences about the internal events such
as thinking and remembering can be made as long as they are paired with careful observation of
behavior. Cognitive theorists assume that some types of learning, such as language learning, are
unique to humans, which is another difference between these two perspectives. Cognitive
theories also focus on the organism as an active processor of information that modifies new
experiences, relates them to past experiences, and organizes this information for storage and
retrieval. Cognitive psychologists also recognize that learning can take place in the absence of
overt behavior.

Edward Tolman (1886–1959) was among the first psychologists to investigate the organization
of behavior and learning. He conducted research in the behaviorist tradition (objective research
on nonhuman species), but he introduced cognitive elements to his explanation of learning. In
Tolman's theory, however, the cognitive elements were based on observed behavior, not on
introspection. He believed that learning involved more than stimulus and response events; it
involved the development of an organized body of knowledge or expectations about a given
situation. Tolman conducted many of his learning experiments using rats whose learning task
was to run through a maze. By varying the conditions in the maze, he came to the conclusion that
learning involved an understanding about events and their consequences, and this led to
purposive, goal-directed behavior. Tolman emphasized the role of expectation and its reinforcing
influence on the repetition of behavior. He popularized the concept of cognitive maps, which
represent an organism's understanding of the relationship between parts of the environment, as
well as the organism's relationship to the environment.

In a clear break with behaviorists, Tolman noted that reinforcement was not a necessary
component of learning, and that organisms could demonstrate latent learning. Latent learning is
displayed only when an organism is motivated to show it. Tolman was also concerned with
differences in behavior that might be attributed to internal states of the organism, a consideration
that had been largely rejected by earlier theorists. In identical learning paradigms, two organisms
can show different behaviors based on their different moods, physiology, or mental states.
Social learning theory. Social learning theory focuses on the sort of learning that occurs in a
social context where modeling, or observational learning, constitutes a large part of the way that
organisms learn. Social learning theorists are concerned with how expectations, memory, and
awareness influence the learning process. Both humans and nonhumans can learn through
observation and modeling. Consider, for example, the acquisition of sign language by the
offspring of language-trained apes who learn to sign by watching their trained parents. Children
learn many behaviors through modeling. A classic experiment by Albert Bandura (1961) allowed
one group of children to observe an adult who aggressively pounded on a bobo doll (an inflatable
doll used for punching), while another group watched a nonaggressive model and a third group
had no model at all. The children who saw the aggressive adult often modeled (imitated) this
behavior when given an opportunity to play with the same doll. The children who saw the
nonaggressive model showed the least amount of aggressive play when compared to the other
two groups. Social learning theorists retain the behaviorist principles of reinforcement and
response contingencies, but they also extend the area of inquiry for learning to include
components of cognitive processing such as attention, remembering, the processing of
information about the environment, and the consequences of behavior.

Appreciation of the cognitive components of learning focused attention on the need to remember
an experience over various time intervals. Information-processing theories developed from the
cognitive perspective and involve the processes of coding, storing, and retrieving information
about the environment. Information processing is used to study the processes of memory, a
central cognitive component in modern learning theories. Theories of information processing are
a by-product of the computer revolution, and they use the language of computers (e.g., sequential
processing stages, input, output) to describe the processes of learning and memory. According to
a human information-processing perspective, learning occurs in sequential stages, beginning
with encoding information from the environment. Encoding of information involves the process
by which information from the environment is translated into usable information. The next stage
is storage, which involves keeping the information that has been encoded. Stored information
builds the "database" of past learning. The final stage in the information-processing approach
is retrieval, which involves accessing the stored information so that it can be used to perform a
task. Organisms are seen as active participants in the information-processing model. They do not
experience the environment passively or simply absorb information, but instead they seek out
certain information, and then manipulate, modify, and store it for later use.
Learning theories have often been used to provide a guide for education. Earlier applications
were concerned with the use of appropriate rewards and punishment, concerns that mirrored the
major tenets of behaviorist theories. More recently, cognitive perspectives have shaped the field
of education, and there has been more concern with learning methods that enhance long-term
retention and the transfer of information and skills that are learned in schools to novel problems
in out-of-school settings. For example, variability in encoding (learning material in different
ways, e.g. video and text) produces more durable long-term retention, even though it is a more
effortful (and generally less enjoyable) way to learn. In addition, students can become better
thinkers when they receive specific instruction in thinking skills–and when the instruction is
designed to enhance transfer. Teaching strategies that enhance transfer include spaced practice
(viewing material over time versus cramming), using a variety of examples so learners can
recognize where a concept is applicable, and practice at retrieval (repeatedly remembering
material over time) with informative feedback.

Learning theories are facing new challenges as people grapple with increases in the amount of
available information that needs to be learned, rapidly changing technologies that require new
types of responses to new problems, and the need to continue learning throughout one's life, even
into old age. Contemporary learning theories supported by empirical research offer the promise
of enhanced learning and improved thinking–both of which are critical in a rapidly changing and
complex world.

See also: Skinner, B. F.; Thorndike, Edward; Watson, John B.

Bibliography
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Benjamin, Ludy T. 1988. A History of Psychology: Original Sources and Contemporary

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Information in Ways That Engage Effective Processing." In New Directions for Teaching and
Learning, ed. Diane F. Halpern and Milton D. Hakel. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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York: Harper and Row.

Halpern, Diane F. 1997. "Sex Differences in Intelligence: Implications for Education." American
Psychologist 52 (10):1091–1102.

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Conditioning and the Status of Traditional Learning Theory." In Traditional Learning Theory
and the Transition to Contemporary Learning Theory, ed. Stephen B. Mowrer and Robert R.
Klein. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Skinner, B. F. 1938. "A System of Behavior." In A History of Psychology: Original Sources and
Contemporary Research, ed. Ludy T. Benjamin. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Thorndike, Edward. L. 1913. "The Laws of Learning in Animals." In A History of Psychology:

Original Sources and Contemporary Research, ed. Ludy T. Benjamin. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Tolman, Edward C. 1948. "Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men." In A History of Psychology:
Original Sources and Contemporary Research, ed. Ludy T. Benjamin. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Watson, John B. 1913. "Psychology As the Behaviorist Views It." In A History of Psychology:
Original Sources and Contemporary Research, ed. Ludy T. Benjamin. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Westen, Drew. 1996. Psychology: Mind, Brain, and Culture. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Diane F. Halpern

Beth Donaghey

CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH
Constructivism is an epistemology, or a theory, used to explain how people know what they
know. The basic idea is that problem solving is at the heart of learning, thinking, and
development. As people solve problems and discover the consequences of their actions–through
reflecting on past and immediate experiences–they construct their own understanding. Learning
is thus an active process that requires a change in the learner. This is achieved through the
activities the learner engages in, including the consequences of those activities, and through
reflection. People only deeply understand what they have constructed.

A constructivist approach to learning and instruction has been proposed as an alternative to the
objectivist model, which is implicit in all behaviorist and some cognitive approaches to
education. Objectivism sees knowledge as a passive reflection of the external, objective reality.
This implies a process of "instruction," ensuring that the learner gets correct information.

History of Constructivism

The psychological roots of constructivism began with the developmental work of Jean Piaget
(1896–1980), who developed a theory (the theory of genetic epistemology) that analogized the
development of the mind to evolutionary biological development and highlighted the adaptive
function of cognition. Piaget proposed four stages in human development: the sensorimotor
stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage.
For Piaget, the development of human intellect proceeds through adaptation and organization.
Adaptation is a process of assimilation and accommodation, where external events are
assimilated into existing understanding, but unfamiliar events, which don't fit with existing
knowledge, are accommodated into the mind, thereby changing its organization.

Countless studies have demonstrated–or tried to discredit–Piaget's developmental stages. For

example, it has become clear that most adults use formal operations in only a few domains where
they have expertise. Nonetheless, Piaget's hypothesis that learning is a transformative rather than
a cumulative process is still central. Children do not learn a bit at a time about some issue until it
finally comes together as understanding. Instead, they make sense of whatever they know from
the very beginning. This understanding is progressively reformed as new knowledge is acquired,
especially new knowledge that is incompatible with their previous understanding. This
transformative view of learning has been greatly extended by neo-Piagetian research.

The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky's (1896–1934) relevance to constructivism derives from
his theories about language, thought, and their mediation by society. Vygotsky held the position
that the child gradually internalizes external and social activities, including communication, with
more competent others. Although social speech is internalized in adulthood (it becomes
thinking), Vygotsky contended that it still preserves its intrinsic collaborative character.
In his experiments, Vygotsky studied the difference between the child's reasoning when working
independently versus reasoning when working with a more competent person. He devised the
notion of the zone of proximal development to reflect on the potential of this difference.
Vygotsky's findings suggested that learning environments should involve guided interactions that
permit children to reflect on inconsistency and to change their conceptions through
communication. Vygotsky's work has since been extended in the situated approach to learning.

Vygotsky and Piaget's theories are often contrasted to each other in terms of individual cognitive
constructivism (Piaget) and social constructivism (Vygotsky). Some researchers have tried to
develop a synthesis of these approaches, though some, such as Michael Cole and James Wertsch,
argue that the individual versus social orientation debate is over-emphasized. To them, the real
difference rests on the contrast between the roles of cultural artifacts. For Vygotsky, such
artifacts play a central role, but they do not appear in Piaget's theories.

For the American philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859–1952), education depended on
action–knowledge and ideas emerge only from a situation in which learners have to draw out
experiences that have meaning and importance to them. Dewey argued that human thought is
practical problem solving, which proceeds by testing rival hypotheses. These problem-solving
experiences occur in a social context, such as a classroom, where students join together in
manipulating materials and observing outcomes. Dewey invented the method of progressive
education in North America. The Fostering Communities of Learners (FCL) program, devised by
Ann Lesley Brown and Joseph Campione, is a current attempt to put Dewey's progressive
education theory to work in the classroom.

In summary, Piaget contributed the idea of transformation in learning and development;

Vygotsky contributed the idea that learning and development were integrally tied to
communicative interactions with others; and Dewey contributed the idea that schools had to
bring real world problems into the school curriculum.

Constructivist Processes and Education

There are a number of competing constructivist views in education. Constructivists tend to

celebrate complexity and multiple perspectives, though they do share at least a few educational
prescriptions.
Prior knowledge. Constructivists believe that prior knowledge impacts the learning process. In
trying to solve novel problems, perceptual or conceptual similarities between existing knowledge
and a new problem can remind people of what they already know. This is often one's first
approach towards solving novel problems. Information not connected with a learner's prior
experiences will be quickly forgotten. In short, the learner must actively construct new
information into his or her existing mental framework for meaningful learning to occur.

For example, Rosalind Driver has found that children's understanding of a phenomenon
(interpretations that fit their experiences and expectations) differ from scientific explanations.
This means that students distinguish school science from their "real world" explanations. Studies
of adult scientific thinking reveal that many adults hold non-normative scientific explanations,
even though they have studied science. This is what the philosopher Alfred Whitehead (1861–
1947) referred to as inert knowledge. Asking students what they already know about a topic and
what puzzles them affords an opportunity to assess children's prior knowledge and the processes
by which they will make sense of phenomena.

Real and authentic problems. Constructivist learning is based on the active participation of
learners in problem-solving and critical thinking–given real and authentic problems.

In anchored instruction, for example, as advanced in the work of the Cognition and Technology
Group at Vanderbilt University, learners are invited to engage in a fictitious problem occurring
in a simulated real-world environment. Rich and realistic video contexts are provided–not only to
provide relevant information for solving the problem, but also to create a realistic context. If the
students buy in to the proposed problems, they will be engaged in problem solving similar to
what the people in the video are engaged in.

There are also many examples of project-based learning in which students take on tasks such as
building a vehicle that could cross Antarctica. It is unclear whether these constitute authentic
problems–or what students learn from project-based learning.

Constructivist curriculum. A constructively oriented curriculum presents an emerging agenda

based on what children know, what they are puzzled by, and the teachers' learning goals. Thus,
an important part of a constructivist-oriented curriculum should be the negotiation of meaning.
Maggie Lampert, a mathematics teacher, guides students to make sense of mathematics by
comparing and resolving discrepancies between what they know and what seems to be implied
by new experience.

In constructivist classrooms, curriculum is generally a process of digging deeper and deeper into
big ideas, rather than presenting a breadth of coverage. For example, in the Fostering
Communities of Learners project where students learn how to learn, in knowledge-building
classrooms where students seek to create new knowledge, or in Howard Gardner's classrooms
where the focus is on learning for deep understanding, students might study endangered species,
island biogeography, or the principles of gravity over several months. As students pursue
questions, they derive new and more complex questions to be investigated. Building useful
knowledge structures requires effortful and purposeful activity over an extended period.

Cognitive conflict and social context. According to Dewey, "Reflection arises because of the
appearance of incompatible factors within an empirical situation. Then opposed responses are
provoked which cannot be taken simultaneously in overt action" (p.326). To say this in another
way, cognitive conflict or puzzlement is the stimulus for learning, and it determines the
organization and nature of what is being learned. Negotiation can also occur between individuals
in a classroom. This process involves discussion and attentive listening, making sense of the
points of views of others, and comparing personal meanings to the theories of peers. Justifying
one position over another and selecting theories that are more viable leads to a better theory.
Katerine Bielaczyc and Allan Collins have summarized educational research on learning
communities in classrooms where the class goal is to learn together, to appreciate and capitalize
on distributed expertise, and to articulate the kinds of cognitive processes needed for learning.

Constructivist assessment. Assessment of student learning is of two types: formative and

summative. Formative assessment occurs during learning and provides feedback to the student. It
includes evaluations of ongoing portfolios, and demonstrations of work in progress. Student
collaboration also provides a form of formative assessment. In FCL, for example, students report
to each other periodically on their research. In knowledge-building classrooms, students can read
and comment on each other's work with the Knowledge Forum software. Formative assessment
rarely occurs in classrooms.

Summative assessment occurs through tests and essays at the end of a unit of study. Summative
assessments provide little specific feedback. From a constructivist perspective, formative
assessments are more valuable to the learner, but with the recent emphasis in North America on
standards, and due to the poor alignment of constructivist approaches and standards, it is very
difficult to harmonize formative and summative assessments.

Technology and constructivism. Cognitive research has uncovered successful patterns in

tutorial, mentoring, and group discussion interactions. However, typical Internet chat and
bulletin-board systems do not support a constructivist approach to learning and instruction.
During the 1990s, researchers created tools such as Knowledge Forum, the Knowledge
Integration Environment, and Co Vis to more fully address constructivist principles. Each of
these tools invites collaboration by structuring the kinds of contributions learners can make,
supporting meaningful relationships among those contributions, and guiding students' inquiries.
Teachers who use information and communication technologies in their classrooms are more
likely to have a constructivist perspective towards learning and instruction. Additionally,
sophisticated information and technology communications tools can capture the cognitive
processes learners engage in when solving problems. This affords teacher reflection and
coaching to aid deeper learning. It also affords teachers the chance to learn from each other.

The teacher's role. The teacher's role in a constructivist classroom isn't so much to lecture at
students but to act as an expert learner who can guide students into adopting cognitive strategies
such as self testing, articulating understanding, asking probing questions, and reflection. The role
of the teacher in constructivist classrooms is to organize information around big ideas that
engage the students' interest, to assist students in developing new insights, and to connect them
with their previous learning. The activities are student-centered, and students are encouraged to
ask their own questions, carry out their own experiments, make their own analogies, and come to
their own conclusions. Becoming a constructivist teacher may prove a difficult transformation,
however, since most instructors have been prepared for teaching in the traditional, objectivist
manner. It "requires a paradigm shift," as well as "the willing abandonment of familiar
perspectives and practices and the adoption of new ones" (Brooks and Brooks, p. 25).

A constructivist approach to education is widely accepted by most researchers, though not by all.
Carl Bereiter argues that constructivism in schools is usually reduced to project based learning,
and John Anderson, Lynn Reder, and Herbert Simon claim that constructivism advocates very
inefficient learning and assessment procedures. In any event, the reality is that constructivism is
rarely practiced in schools.

See also: Knowledge Building; Piaget, Jean; Vygotsky, Lev.

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Mary Lamon

SCHEMA THEORY
Schemata are psychological constructs that have been proposed as a form of mental
representation for some forms of complex knowledge.

Bartlett's Schema Theory

Schemata were initially introduced into psychology and education through the work of the
British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett (1886–1969). In carrying out a series of studies on the
recall of Native American folktales, Bartlett noticed that many of the recalls were not accurate,
but involved the replacement of unfamiliar information with something more familiar. They also
included many inferences that went beyond the information given in the original text. In order to
account for these findings, Bartlett proposed that people have schemata, or unconscious mental
structures, that represent an individual's generic knowledge about the world. It is through
schemata that old knowledge influences new information.

For example, one of Bartlett's participants read the phrase "something black came out of his
mouth" and later recalled it as "he foamed at the mouth." This finding could be accounted for by
assuming that the input information was not consistent with any schema held by the participant,
and so the original information was reconstructed in a form that was consistent with one of the
participant's schemata. The schema construct was developed during the period when psychology
was strongly influenced by behaviorist and associationistic approaches; because the schema
construct was not compatible with these worldviews, it eventually faded from view.

Minsky's Frame Theory

In the 1970s, however, the schema construct was reintroduced into psychology though the work
of the computer scientist Marvin Minsky. Minsky was attempting to develop machines that
would display human-like abilities (e.g., to perceive and understand the world). In the course of
trying to solve these difficult problems, he came across Bartlett's work. Minsky concluded that
humans were using their stored knowledge about the world to carry out many of the processes
that he was trying to emulate by machine, and he therefore needed to provide his machines with
this type of knowledge if they were ever to achieve human-like abilities. Minsky developed
theframe construct as a way to represent knowledge in machines. Minsky's frame proposal can
be seen as essentially an elaboration and specification of the schema construct. He conceived of
the frame knowledge as interacting with new specific information coming from the world. He
proposed that fixed generic information be represented as a frame comprised of slots that accept
a certain range of values. If the world did not provide a specific value for a particular slot, then it
could be filled by a default value.

For example, consider the representation of a generic (typical) elementary school classroom. The
frame for such a classroom includes certain information, such as that the room has walls, a
ceiling, lights, and a door. The door can be thought of as a slot which accepts values such as
wood door or metal door, but does not accept a value such as a door made of jello. If a person or
a machine is trying to represent a particular elementary school classroom, the person or
machine instantiates the generic frame with specific information from the particular classroom
(e.g., it has a window on one wall, and the door is wooden with a small glass panel). If, for some
reason, one does not actually observe the lights in the classroom, one can fill the lighting slot
with the default assumption that they are fluorescent lights. This proposal gives a good account
of a wide range of phenomena. It explains, for example, why one would be very surprised to
walk into an elementary classroom and find that it did not have a ceiling, and it accounts for the
fact that someone might recall that a certain classroom had fluorescent lights when it did not.

Modern Schema Theory

Minsky's work in computer science had a strong and immediate impact on psychology and
education. In 1980 the cognitive psychologist David Rumelhart elaborated on Minsky's ideas and
turned them into an explicitly psychological theory of the mental representation of complex
knowledge. Roger Schank and Robert Abelson developed the script construct to deal with
generic knowledge of sequences of actions. Schema theory provided explanations for many
experiments already in the literature, and led to a very wide variety of new empirical studies.
Providing a relevant schema improved comprehension and recall of opaquely written passages,
and strong schemata were shown to lead to high rates of inferential errors in recall.

Broad versus Narrow Use of Schema

In retrospect, it is clear that there has been an ambiguity in schema theory between a narrow use
and a broad use of the term schema. For example, in Rumelhart's classic 1980 paper, he defined
a schema as "a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory" (p. 34).
Yet he went on to state that "there are schemata representing our knowledge about all concepts:
those underlying objects, situations, events, sequences of events, actions and sequences of
actions" (p. 34). Thus, schemata are frequently defined as the form of mental representation for
generic knowledge, but are then used as the term for the representation of all knowledge.

There are severe problems with the use of the term schema to refer to all forms of complex
knowledge. First, there is no need for a new technical term, since the ordinary
term knowledgehas this meaning. In addition, if schema theory is used to account for all
knowledge, then it fails. A number of writers have pointed out that schema theory, as presently
developed, cannot deal with those forms of knowledge that do not involve old generic
information. Thus, schema theory provides an account for the knowledge in long-term memory
that the state of Oklahoma is directly above the state of Texas. However, schema theory does not
provide an account of the new representation one develops of a town as one travels through it for
the first time.

Therefore it seems best to use the term schema in the narrower usage, as the form of mental
representation used for generic knowledge. However, if one adopts the narrower usage one has to
accept that schemata are only the appropriate representations for a subset of knowledge and that
other forms of mental representation are needed for other forms of knowledge. For
example, mental models are needed to represent specific nonschematic aspects of knowledge,
such as the layout of an unfamiliar town, while naive theories or causal mental models are
needed to represent knowledge of causal/mechanical phenomena.

Schema Theory in Education

Richard Anderson, an educational psychologist, played an important role in introducing schema

theory to the educational community. In a 1977 paper Anderson pointed out that schemata
provided a form of representation for complex knowledge and that the construct, for the first
time, provided a principled account of how old knowledge might influence the acquisition of
new knowledge. Schema theory was immediately applied to understanding the reading process,
where it served as an important counterweight to purely bottom-up approaches to reading. The
schema-theory approaches to reading emphasize that reading involves both the bottom-up
information from the perceived letters coming into the eye and the use of top-down knowledge to
construct a meaningful representation of the content of the text.

Broad versus Narrow Use of Schema in Education

The problem with the broad and narrow use of the term schema surfaced in education just as it
had in cognitive psychology. For example, in Anderson's classic 1977 paper on schemata in
education, he clearly takes the broad view. He attacks the narrow view and says that it is
impossible "that people have stored a schema for every conceivable scene, event sequence, and
message" (p. 421), and that "an adequate theory must explain how people cope with novelty" (p.
421). However in a paper written at roughly the same time (1978), Anderson states that "a
schema represents generic knowledge" (p. 67), and he adopts the narrow view systematically
throughout the paper. In a 1991 paper on terminology in education, Patricia Alexander, Diane
Schallert, and Victoria Hare note that the systematic ambiguity between the narrow and broad
views has made it very difficult to interpret a given writer's use of the term schema in the
education literature.

Instructional Implications of Schema Theory

A number of writers have derived instructional proposals from schema theory. They have
suggested that relevant knowledge should be activated before reading; that teachers should try to
provide prerequisite knowledge; and that more attention should be given to teaching higher-order
comprehension processes. Many of these proposals are not novel, but schema theory appears to
provide a theoretical and empirical basis for instructional practices that some experienced
teachers were already carrying out.

Impact of Schema Theory on Education

Schema theory has provided education with a way to think about the representation of some
forms of complex knowledge. It has focused attention on the role old knowledge plays in
acquiring new knowledge, and has emphasized the role of top-down, reader-based influences in
the reading process.

See also: Learning, subentry on Causal Reasoning; Literacy, subentry on Narrative

Comprehension and Production; Reading, subentries on Comprehension, Content Areas.

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William F. Brewer

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