Learning Theories
- Three main schema is Behaviorism, Cognitivism,
and constructivism
Behaviorism
- Based on the idea that knowledge is
independent and on the exterior of the learner
- Leaning and behavior changes are acquired by
linking stimuli and the response
- To a behaviorist, the learner is a blank slate that
should be provided with the information to be
learnt
- Through interactions, new associations are made
thus learning occurs
- Learning is achieved when the provided stimulus
changes behavior
o Pavlov, created the salivating dog
experiment, where he showed a
stimulus (a ringing bell every time the
dog would be fed) making the dog
salivate whenever the bell would ring
o The dog associated the bell with being
provided food so any time a bell rung
he would salivate
- It involves repeated actions, verbal
reinforcements, and incentives to take part
- Great for establishing rules, especially for
behavior management
Cognitivism
- Attributed to Jean Piaget
- Learning is internal and is a result of a student
processing and organizing new information
- Focuses on the idea that students process
information they receive rather than just
responding to a stimulus
- Behavior change is still evident but this is more
in response to thinking and processing
information
- Cognitive theories were developed in the 1900’s
in Germany from Gestalt psychology by
Wolfgang Kohler
o Gestalt roughly translates t the
organization of something as a whole,
viewed as more than the sum of its
individual parts
- Has given rise to many evidence-based
education theories including cognitive load
theory, schema theory and dual coding theory as
well as the basis for retrieval practice
- In cognitivism, learning occurs when the student
reorganizes information, either by finding new
explanations or adapting old ones
- It is viewed as a change in knowledge and is
stored in the memory rather than just viewed as
change in behavior
Constructivism
- Based on the premise that we construct learning
new ideas based on our own prior knowledge
and experiences
- Knowledge is constructed by adapting new
information based on previous experience
- Learning is unique to every individual learner
- Students adapt their models of understanding
either by reflecting on prior theories or resolving
misconceptions
- Students need prior bases of knowledge to be
effective
- Burner’s spiral curriculum
- As knowledge is being constructed, outcomes
cannot always be anticipated, teachers should
check and challenge misconceptions that may
have arisen
- When consistent outcomes are required, a
constructive approach is not the ideal theory
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
- He focuses exclusively on children
- He talks about development and not learning
- His theory is a stage theory, not a linear
progression
Schemas, are the building blocks of knowledge
Adaptation process, allow the transition from one
stage to another: equilibrium, assimilation and
accommodation
When a child has developed a working schema, it explains
how they perceive the world, the schema is in a state of
equilibrium
When the child uses the schema to deal with a new thing
or situation, the schema is in assimilation and
accommodation, wherein the schema isn’t up to the job of
explaining what’s going n and needs to be changed
Once it is changed, it returns to equilibrium and life goes
on, affirming that learning is in a constant cycle of
assimilation, accommodation, equilibrium and so on
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor
- From birth to 2 years
- The child spends their time learning basic
schemas and object permanence (the idea that
something still exists when you can’t see it)
Preoperational
- 2 years to 7 years
- Development of more schemas and the ability to
think symbolically (The idea that one thing can
stand for another)
 - Children still struggle with the theory of mind
(empathy) and can’t really get their head around
the viewpoint of others
Concrete operational
- 7 years to 11 years
- When children start to work things out their
head rather than physically in the real world
- They develop the ability to conserve (understand
something stays the same quantity even if it
looks different
Formal Operational
- 11 years to adulthood
- Where abstract thought develops, as does logic
and hypothesis testing
According to Piaget, the whole process is active and
requires the rediscovery and reconstruction of knowledge
across a process of stages
- Understanding the stage where the child is in,
informs what they should be presented with
based on what they can and cannot do at the
stage they are in
Piaget’s work has given rise to some brilliant work from
people like John Sweller who developed the cognitive load
theory, and John Flavell’s work on metacognition
Vygotsky’s Theory of Learning
- Says that social learning is an integral part of
cognitive development and its culture and not
cognitive stage that underlies cognitive
development
- He argues that learning varies across cultures
rather than being a universal process driven by
the kind of structures and process put forward
by Piaget
Zone of Proximal Development
- in which children and those they are learning
from, co-construct knowledge
- social environment in which children learn has a
massive impact on how they think and what they
think about
- they also doffer in the view of language, while
Piaget thought drives language, Vygotsky states
that language and thought becomes intertwined
at age 3
o it becomes more of an internal
dialogue of understanding the world
o derived from the social environment,
containing cognitive/linguistic skills
and tools
- elementary mental functions, the basic
cognitive processes of attention, sensation,
perception and memory
o by using such basic tools of interaction
with their sociocultural environment,
children improve them using whatever
their culture provides
o in this fashion, a cultural variation of
learning can be described quite nicely
- in this theory the ideas of scaffolding, ZPD, and
more knowledgeable other is crucial
o MKO can be a person who literally
knows more than the child,
collaboratively, the MKO and the child
operate in the ZPD, which is the space
of learning the child cannot do alone
o As the child grows the ZPD gets bigger,
they can do more things on their own,
and the process of enlarging the ZPD is
called scaffolding
- Knowing where the scaffold is set is massively
important and is the MKO’s job so that the child
can work independently and learn
collaboratively
- Language is at the heart of this all
o It is the primary means by which the
MKO and the child communicate ideas
o Internalizing it is enormously powerful
in cementing understanding about the
world
- Private speech, refers to the internalizing of
speech “inner voice”
- Social speech, is distinct from it as it occurs
among people
o overtime social speech can become
private speech, and thus learning as
the child is collaborating with
themselves
- the richer the sociocultural environment, the
more tools are available to the child in the ZPD
and the more social speech they will internalize
to private speech
Bloom’s Domain of Learning
- 1956, Benjamin Bloom, proposed the three
domains of learning; cognitive, affective and
psycho-motor
o He worked in collaboration with David
Krathwohl and Anne Harrow
throughout the 50’s and 70’s
- Cognitive Domain (Bloom’s taxonomy)
o first domain proposed in ’56 focuses
on the idea that objectives that are
related to cognition, could be divided
into subdivisions and ranked in order
of cognitive difficulty:
 knowledge
  understanding
 application
 analysis
 synthesis
 evaluation
- it was revised in 2001 by David Krathwohl and
Lorin Anderson
o the revision was the switching of
nouns into verbs making it easier to
use in curriculum and lesson planning:
 Remember, recall facts and
basic concepts
 Understand, explain ideas
and concepts
 Apply, use information in
new situations
 Analyze, make connections
between ideas
 Evaluate, justify a stand or
viewpoint
 Create, produce new or
original work
- The Affective domain (feeling domain)
o Concerned with feeling and emotions
and also divides objectives into
hierarchical subcategories, proposed
by Bloom and Krathwohl 1964
o Not usually used when planning for
math and sciences as feeling and
emotion are not relevant for those
subjects, for arts and languages the
domain is imperative whenever:
 Receiving, being aware of
the external stimulus
 Responding, responding to
the external stimulus
 Valuing, referring to the
belief of appropriation of
worth
 Oragnization, the
conceptualization and
organization of values
 Characteristic, the ability to
practice and act on their
values
- The Psychomotor domain
o Refers to those objectives that are
specific to reflex actions, interpretive
movements and discreet physical
functions
o While there are physical actions, they
are a vector for cognitive learning, not
psycho-motor learning
o Psychomotor learning refers to how
we use our bodies and senses to
interact with the world around us, such
as learning how to mover our bodies in
dance or gymnastics
- According to Anita Harrow
o Reflex movements, movements that
we possess from birth, or appear as we
go through puberty. They are
automatic and do not require us to
actively think of them
o Fundamental movements, basic
actions that commonly form part of
more complex actions such as playing
sport
o Perceptual abilities, set of abilities that
allow us to sense the world and
coordinate our movements in order to
interact with our environment
o Physical abilities, those involving
strength, endurance, dexterity, and
flexibility
o Skilled movements, movement
learned for sport, dance or playing an
instrument, “muscle memory”
o Non-discursive communication,
communication without writing,
physical actions such as facial
expression, posture and gestures
Gagne’s Conditions of Learning
- Robert Mills Gagne was an American educational
psychologist who published the conditions of
learning
- He discusses his analyses of learning objectives
and how different classes of objective require
specific learning methods, Gagne’s 5 learning
conditions:
o Verbal information, cognitive
o Intellectual skills, cognitive
o Cognitive strategies, cognitive
o Motor skills, Psycho-motor
o Attitudes, affective
- To achieve his 5 conditions of learning, he
believed that learning would take place when
students’ progress through nine levels of
learning and that any teaching session should
include a sequence of events through all nine
levels. The nine levels of learning activate the
five conditions of learning:
o Gain attention
o Inform students of the objective
o Stimulate recall of prior learning
o Present the content
o Provide learning guidance
 o Elicit performance
o Provide feedback
o Assess performance
o Enhance retention and transfer to the
job
- Conjunction with Bloom’s theory, Gagne
provides a framework that teaches can use to
plan lessons and topics, while bloom provides
the ability t set objectives that are differentiated
and Gagne gives a scaffold to build your lesson
on
Jerome Bruner
- Cognitive learning theorist, based the spiral
curriculum on his idea that: we begin with the
hypothesis that any subject can be taught in
some intellectual honest form any child at any
stage of development
- He meant that even very complex topics can be
taught to young children if structured and
presented in the right way:
o Students revisit the same topic
multiple times throughout their school
career, this reinforces the learning
each time they return to the subject
o The complexity of the topic increases
each time a student revisits, allowing
progression through the subject matter
as the child’s cognitive ability develops
with age
o When a student returns to a topic, new
ideas are linked with ones they have
previously learned, the student’s
familiarly with the keywords and ideas
enables them to grasp the more
difficult elements of the topic in a
stronger way
- Bruner’s 3 Modes of Representation, 1966
o These modes of representation refer
to the way knowledge is stored in
memory:
 Enactive (0-1 year),
knowledge through physical
actions
 Iconic (1-6 years), visual of
knowledge stored via visual
images
 Symbolic (7+ years), the use
of words and symbol to
describe experiences
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs
- Says that student’s progress through a set of
sequential needs
- As they move up through levels, they feel more
comfortable in their learning environment and
have the confidence to push further
- It is to be noted that any group of students will
have learners at different levels, some may not
have the lower levels met at home so making
sure these students feel safe and secure is of the
utmost importance as they will find it very hard
to move upper levels
- The theory lends itself to building
student/teacher relationship rather than lesson
or curriculum structure
You can have the best resources and most
highly planned lessons in the world but if you
don’t show enthusiasm, passion and empathy it
will be very difficult for you students to feel
their needs have been met
Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence
- An American developmental psychologist and
professor of cognition and education at Harvard
- He published frames of mind in 1983, laying out
the theory of multiple intelligences
- He perceived intelligence as the ability to solve
problems or make products that are useful in
one or more cultural settings
- He lists criteria he would use to judge possible
contenders for the title intelligence
o Candidates had to satisfy a range of
the conditions on his list and also be
able to solve genuine problems of
difficulties:
 Linguistic, ability to learn and
use languages in written and
spoken form to express
oneself
 Mathematical, ability to
solve problems logically to
solve mathematical problems
and to perform scientific
investigations
 Musical, having skill and in
appreciation, composition
and performance of musical
patterns, including
recognizing tone, pitch and
rhythm
 Bodily-Kinesthetic, using
mental abilities to coordinate
body movements to solve
problems
 Spatial, being able to
recognize and use patterns in
a wide or confined space
  Interpersonal, capacity to
understand the desires,
motivations, and intentions
of other people
 Intrapersonal intelligence,
capacity to understand your
own fears, feelings and
motivations
- Intelligences rarely operate independently, but
rather compliment each other as students learn
new skills and solve problems
- Intelligences are amoral, they can be used for
constructive or destructive purposes
- The seven intelligences give seven ways to teach
a subject allowing multiple strategies to be used,
allowing all students to make progress
- He believes that all seven intelligences are
required to live life well and that education
systems should include all seven and not just the
academic ones
- Naturalist Intelligence, deals with an individual’s
ability to perceive, recognize and order features
from the environment
Erikson’s 8 stages of Psychological Development
- Erik Erikson was a stage theorist who developed
Freud’s psychosexual theory and adapted it into
a psychosocial theory with eight stages
- According to him we experience 8 stages of
development, within each one there is a
dilemma that we must resolve in order to feel a
sense of competence and will allow us to
develop as well-adjusted adults
Trust v. Mistrust
- 0-1.5 years
- Infants learn that adults can be trusted
- If treated poorly children may grow up feeling
mistrust towards people
Autonomy v. Shame
- 1.5- 3 years
- The me do it stage
- Children begin to make decisions and show
preferences of elements in their environment
such as what clothes to wear or what toy they
prefer
- If children are not allowed to explore their
preferences, they may develop low self-esteem
Initiative v. guilt
- 3-5 years
- Involves children learning to plan and achieve
goals involving others
- If parents allow and support their choices, they
develop a sense of purpose and strong self-
confidence
Industry v. inferiority
- 5-12 years
- Children begin comparing themselves with their
peers
- Success at this stage result in a sense of
accomplishment in school, social and family
activities and sports
Identity v. Role Confusion
- Age 12-18
- Who am I? wat do I want to do in life?
- They try out multiple roles during this time to
find what fit the best
- A strong sense of identity and an ability to
defend their core beliefs in the face of other
opinions would be considered success at this
stage
Intimacy v. Isolation
- 18-40 years
- Progress into early adulthood shifts focus to
making and maintaining strong intimate
relationship with others
Generativity v. Stagnation
- 40-65 years
- Middle adulthood, people are concerned with
contributing to society either through their work
or parenthood
- Continued self-improvement for the benefit of
other people
Ego integrity v. despair
- 65 beyond
- In late adulthood they reflect on their lives,
feeling a sense of satisfaction or failure
Erikson’s theory, gives us a framework to base our
teaching on. Knowing what questions our students are
asking themselves and the world around them allows us to
plan effectively
Kolb’s Experiential Theory
- David Kolb, an American education theorist
proposed the four-stage experiential learning
theory, 1984
- Built on the premise that learning is the
acquisition of abstract concepts which can then
be applied to a range of scenarios
- Learning is the process whereby acknowledge is
created through the transformation of
experience
- Experience is the source of learning and
development
- Each stage in the cycle both supports and leads
into the next stage
- Learning is achieved only if all four stages have
been completed, however, a learner may travel
 around the cycle multiple times, further refining
their understanding of the topic
- No one stage is an effective learning strategy on
its own
The Peter Principle
- Laurence Perter an American educational
theorist developed the peter principle with
colleague Raymond Hull
- Originally a satirical view on how people are
promoted I organization but t became popular as
it actually made a valid point
- Not strictly a learning theory
- The principle deals with four levels of
competence
- Gives teachers a long-term planning strategy, a
framework to use when thinking about a
student’s progress
o Unconscious incompetence, not
knowing how to do a task without
knowing you don’t know
o Conscious incompetence, you still
don’t know how to do the task but
now you know you don’t know. You
are aware of a gap in your knowledge
o Conscious competence, you can now
do the task but it requires a lot of
concentration
o Unconscious competence, you can
perform the task with ease, achieved
by repeated practice
Lair’s Sensory Theory
- 1985, Dugan Laird in his book approaches to
training and development: learning occurs when
the senses are stimulated
- He quoted research that found that 75% of an
adult’s knowledge was obtained by seeing. 13%
was through hearing the remaining 12% was
learned through touch, smell and taste
combined
- Based on the research, providing visual prompts
for students will enhance their learning, making
your lessons a multi-sensual experience will
enhance learning even further
Skinner’s Behaviorist Theory
- Operant Conditioning, based on Thorndike’s law
of effect, proposing that behaviors that are
followed by positive responses are likely to be
repeated and those that are followed by
negative response not repeated
o Skinner refined the law effect by
introducing reinforcement: those
behaviors that are reinforce are
repeated and those not reinforced
tend to dissipate
- Positive reinforcement should be given for
behaviors that are desirable
o As the behavior in question becomes
commonplace the teacher should then
both reduce the frequency of the
reinforcement
o Ultimately the teacher will reduce the
frequency of the positive
reinforcements to only those
responses of the highest caliber
Roger’s Humanistic Theory
- Facilitative learning s a humanistic approach to
learning, developed by American psychologist
Carl Rogers, 80’s
- Humanism is in contrast with cognitivism and
behaviorism, both Rogers and Maslow see the
key perspective of humanism:
o People have the natural desire to learn
so they may achieve self-actualization
o It is not the outcome that is most
important but the process itself
o Students should be in control of their
learning and it should be achieved
through observing and exploring
o Teachers should be encouraging role
models, motivating, guiding and
supporting students on their own
personal journey
- Facilitative Learning, views the teacher as a
facilitator rather than a conveyor of knowledge
o The success of a teacher is in the
ability to build positive relationships
with the students
- Rogers proposed 3 attitudinal core
characteristics that a teacher should possess for
successful facilitative learning:
o Realness, teachers should be
themselves; by using their own
personality it builds an ethos of trust
between students and teachers.
Teachers should be able to convey
their feelings
o Prizing, Accepting and trusting, a
teacher should care about their
students and accept their feelings,
regardless of whether they assist or
detract from learning. Through this,
deeper trust and respect is built
o Empathy, understanding the student’s
perception of learning and their
feelings. Facilitative learning requires
certain traits to be presented to
students. Thye should be aware,
 motivated of the facilitative learning - Focus on all the good behavior in class while
conditions they have been provided ignoring the attempt to gain power
Learning becomes life, and very vital life at that. The - On no account should there be a battle of power
student is on his way, sometimes excitedly, sometimes - Black dot white square approach, Bill rogers
reluctantly, to becoming a learning, changing being. Gain Revenge
Canters Theory of Assertive Discipline - Revenge seeking is a masked attempt to gain
- Is a structured system to enable teachers to sense of belonging
manage their classrooms - Let the student know that you care about them
- Focuses on a teacher developing a positive and their education despite their actions
behavior management strategy rather than Displaying feelings of inadequacy
being dictatorial - At this stage students give up on themselves
- A teacher has the right to decide what is best for - They should be shown how to recognize small
their students and that no student should successes and achievements
prevent any other from learning - Showing an interest in them and their work will
- Teachers should be clear with boundaries as to always help slowly bring a student out of this
how they expect their students to behave or stage
work Summary:
o Students should know what these Great teaching involves a cocktail of most of these points:
boundaries are and any deviation - Building a positive relationship with students is
should be met with an assertive action key
from the teacher - Clear boundaries should be made known to the
- If a teacher gives firm and clear instruction, and student
they are met, they should be followed by - Consequences of breaking boundaries should be
positive reinforcement established earlier on
o Any deviation from the instruction - Focus on reward and positive things that happen
should be met by negative in the classroom
consequences - Treat students as people with thoughts and
Dreikur’s Classroom Management Theory feelings
- Rudolph Dreikur, proposes the theory that - It is easier and more effective to change your
mutual respect should be the basis of a group perspective to theirs that make them change to
and to feel like they have value and confidence yours
to that group
- This desire is said to be the genuine goal of social
behavior
- If students are not able to achieve this goal, they
start a series of goals of misbehavior, resulting
misbehavior is a misguided attempt at gaining
the sense of belonging they are missing:
o Gain attention
o Gain power and control
o Gain revenge
o Display feelings of inadequacy
When failing to gain social status by gaining
attention, they move on to trying to gain power
and control, failure at each successive level
results with feeling of inadequacy
Combatting 4 goals of Misbehavior
Gain Attention
- Ignore attention seeking
- Use positive reinforcement when positive
behavior is shown
- Distract student by offering alternate choices
Gain power and control