State Pedagogical University “Ion Creanga”

Theories of learning

Elaborated by: Dobler Liliana

Verified by: Șchiopu Lucia

2022
Contents
Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………...3
1. Historical Background of Theories of Learning…………………………………………………4
1.1 Educational philosophy...............................................................................................................4
2. Behaviorism …………………………………………………………………………………. ....6
2.1 Bahavioral analysis ....................................................................................................................6
2.2 Behavioral psychologists ……………………………………………………………………..6
3. Cognitivism ……………………………………………………………………………………...9
3.1 Gestalt psychology ………………………………………………………………………….. .9
3.2 Other cognitivism psychologists ………………………………………………………….....10
4 Constuctivism …………………………………………………………………………………...11
5. Humanism ....................................................................................................................................12
6. Connectivism ...............................................................................................................................14
Conclusion........................................................................................................................................16
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................18

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 Introduction

Learning is defined as a process that brings together personal and environmental experiences
and influences for acquiring, enriching or modifying one’s knowledge, skills, values, attitudes,
behaviour and world views. Learning theories develop hypotheses that describe how this process
takes place. The scientific study of learning started more seriously at the beginning of the twentieth
century. The major concepts and theories of learning include behaviourist theories, cognitive
psychology, constructivism, social constructivism, experiential learning, multiple intelligence, and
situated learning theory and community of practice. 1
There are significant differences between most theories of learning. However, all theories have
in common the fact that they look for understanding and explaining the learning process so that
teachers and educators can react accordingly, taking appropriate, effective and efficient approaches
to teaching.2

1 Most influential theories of learning | International Bureau of Education (unesco.org)

2 Learning Theories: Theories of Learning in Education | NU

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 1. Historical Background of Theories of Learning

Based on the fact that no students are alike and the way every person learns is different, gave an
input for determining which way of learning is best for education and led to the appearance of the
first theories of learning. Learning theories defines the way students receive, process, and
retain knowledge during the learning process. They serve as fundament for teachers to adapt
various learning styles during their lessons and manage their behaviour.

1.1 Educational philosophy

The first questions and answers related to teaching and learning were posed by Socrates. He is
often considered to be one of the founders of western philosophy. He developed the dialectal
method of philosophy which is based on the belief that the life which is not examined is not worth
living. Socrates was the first to ask questions like: What is knowledge?, Why do we need to learn?,
How do we learn? etc. As Socrates didn’t write a lot about his ideas, established no school and held
no particular theories of his own, much of what we know about Socrates came from the writings of
Plato.
The first theories relating to understanding how people learn date from 500 BC from the Greek
philosophers Aristotle and Plato. Plato stated that knowledge and truth were natural and that people
had an inner desire to act whereas Aristotle’s opinion was that truth and knowledge were taught.
Aristotle believed that knowledge and skills are achieved by examining, interpreting, undertaking
self- examination and developing self-belief of the knowledge and skills considered to be wise.
According to Aristotle a teacher shouldn’t keep spoon-feeding learners with information but get
them look for the answers themselves.
Aristotle’s and Plato’s theories starting from nature and nurture served as a philosophical debate
for well-known thinkers like Rene Descartes and John Locke. While Descartes revived Plato’s
rationalist concept if inborn knowledge and argued that truth and knowledge existed within human
beings prior to experience, Locke revived Aristotle’s empiricist view with the concept that a child is
born without any knowledge, tabula rasa, that can get knowledge directly or indirectly from
experience of the world through seeing, hearing, and feeling, categorised as ideas of sensation, and
through thinking, questioning and believing, categorised as ideas of reflection.
The cornerstone of modern pedagogical thinking remains Rousseau’s theory on education
which was based on a belief that the inherent goodness of human beings and the effect of society in
corrupting them. He argued that bringing up children in harmony with the nature and its laws would
facilitate learning and preserve goodness. According to his thinking, people should be able to learn

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what they want to learn, when they want to learn, and teaching should be based on discovery,
guided by the teacher.
By the end of the nineteenth century the debate was continued by a new variety of theorists
who developed the discipline of psychology. John Dewey’s belief that traditional education was too
concerned with the delivery of pre-ordained knowledge and not focused enough on the learner’s
actual learning experience remains the cornerstone of many educational approaches and learning
programmes.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, behavioural psychologists suggested that humans
were only advanced mammals who reacted to stimuli. Behaviourism remains the basic theory of
learning and teaching which was followed by many significant theories of learning.

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 2. Behaviourism
Behaviourism is based on the principle of stimulus and response. The theory is rooted in the
late nineteenth-century studies about the way people behave and the emergence of the discipline of
psychology. The main premise on behaviourism is that people need to be directed and that if the
stimulus is something that the individual wants (a reward) or fears (a punishment), then the
individual will respond accordingly and there will be a noticeable change in behaviour. It assumes
that the teacher decides what needs to be done, how it will be done and what evidence of
behavioural change needs to be produced.
Behaviorism was criticized as an autocratic, transmission-led approach that fails to recognize
the independent and enquiring nature of people.
2.1 Behavior analysis
In behavior analysis, learning is the acquisition of a new behavior through conditioning and
social learning. The three main types of conditioning and learning are: classical conditioning, where
the behaviour becomes a reflex response to an antecedent stimulus, operant conditioning, where
antecedent stimuli results from the consequences that follow the behavior through a reward
(reinforcement) or a punishment, and social learning theory, where an observation of behavior is
followed by modeling.
„The basic idea of behaviourism is that learning consists of a change in behaviour due to the
acquisition, reinforcement and application of associations between stimuli from the environment
and observable responses of the individual. Behaviourists are interested in measurable changes in
behaviour. Thorndike, regarded as the first pure behavioral psychologist, put forward that (1) a
response to a stimulus is reinforced when followed by a positive rewarding effect, and (2) a
response to a stimulus becomes stronger by exercise and repetition. This view of learning is akin to
the “drill-and-practice” programmes.”3
2.2 Behavioral psychologists
The term “behaviorism” was invented by John Watson (1878-1958), largely credited as the
founding father of the behaviorist movement. Although he was not the first of his generation to look
at how behavior could be modified through neutral stimuli, his work is generally considered to be
the most conspicuous and arguably the most controversial among the behaviorists. Watson was able
to demonstrate that people can be conditioned to produce emotional responses to objects, to
postulate that anyone can be trained to be anything, and that learning is a direct consequence of the
conditioning.

3 Most influential theories of learning | International Bureau of Education (unesco.org)

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 Skinner, another influential behaviourist, proposed his variant of behaviourism called “operant
conditioning”. According to his view, „rewarding the right parts of the more complex behaviour
reinforces it, and encourages its recurrence. Therefore, reinforcers control the occurrence of the
desired partial behaviours. Learning is understood as the step-by-step or successive approximation
of the intended partial behaviours through the use of reward and punishment.”4 According to
Skinner’s theory teachers should: “offer rewards for good behavior only if the rewards are things
the learner cherishes, threaten punishments for bad behavior only if the punishments are things the
learner fears and keep in mind that positive reinforcement will have a longer-lasting effect than
negative reinforcement.”5 The best known application of Skinner’s theory is “programmed
instruction” whereby the right sequence of the partial behaviours to be learned is specified by
elaborated task analysis.
Edward Tolman (1886-1959) took a different viewpoint from his contemporaries. He rejected
the notion of focusing on one-off-stimulus-response relationships and outlined his theory of latent
learning in which people build up cognitive maps of their environment from past experiences.
Tolman’s approach was attractive to many teachers who were repelled by the dry, mechanistic,
earlier theories of learning. According to his principles, in the classroom teachers test learner’s prior
knowledge or skills at the start of the lesson, adapt the lesson plan to the learning level of the
students, and use the learners with existing knowledge or skills by pairing them off in group
activities with less skilled learners.
Robert Gagne (1916-2002) was one of the Neo-behaviorists who pioneered the science of
instruction and identified what mental conditions were necessary for effective learning. He
suggested that the process of instruction can have three main phases: engagement, delivery and
assessment which is much similar to the nowadays lesson’s procedure.
On the whole, “behaviorist view the learning process as a change in behavior, and arrange the
environment to elicit desired responses through such devices as behavioral objectives, Competency-
based learning, and skill development and training. Educational approaches such as Early Intensive
Behavioral Intervention, curriculum-based measurements, and direct instruction have emerged from
this model.”6
Today behaviorism is used as a tool for behavior management. For example teachers can
repeatedly use body language and non-verbal or physical cues to reinforce and manage behaviour
and provide positive reinforcement, like rewards and recognition, to students who show outstanding
improvement, effort, or performance.

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5 Bates B., Learning theories simplified and how to apply them in teaching, 2016, p. 35
6 [Accesat 2 ianuarie 2023] Available from Learning theory (education) - Wikipedia

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 The theory of behaviorism remained the basis of teaching and learning untill it was challenged
in the period between the two world wars by psychologists who argued that thinking and learning
was a developmental cognitive process in which individuals create knowledge rather than receive it.

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 3. Cognitivism
Cognitive psychology was initiated in the late 1950s. Cognitivism grew out of dissatisfaction
with the behaviorist approach which was thought it was too focused on achieving a specific
outcome and not on developing the individual’s potential. People are no longer viewed as
collections of responses to external stimuli, as understood by behaviorists, but information
processors.
Cognitive psychology paid attention to complex mental phenomena, ignored by behaviorists,
and was influenced by the emergence of the computer as an information-processing device, which
became analogous to the human mind. In cognitive psychology, learning is understood as the
acquisition of knowledge: the learner is an information-processor who absorbs information,
undertakes cognitive operations on it, and stocks it in memory. Therefore, its preferred methods of
instruction are lecturing and reading textbooks; and, at its most extreme, the learner is a passive
recipient of knowledge by the teacher.
There are many branches within cognitivism, such as constructivism and connectivism which
are seen by other as separate theories. Critics on the cognitive approach argue that it is too focused
on personal developmental encounters rather than on learning outcomes, and that not all the people
want to spend a vast amount of time on processing information.

3.1 Gestalt psychology

Cognitive theories grew out of Gestalt psychology which was developed in Germany in the
early 1900s by Wolfgang Kohler and was brought to America in the 1920s. The German word
Gestalt is roughly equivalent to the English emergence, configuration or organization and
emphasizes the whole of human experience. Over the years, the Gestalt psychologists provided
demonstrations and described principles to explain the way we organize our sensations into
perceptions. In Gestalt theory, psychologists say that instead of obtaining knowledge from what's in
front of us, we often learn by making sense of the relationship between what's new and old. Because
we have a unique perspective of the world, humans have the ability to generate their own learning
experiences and interpret information that may or may not be the same for someone else. They
believe that for learning to occur, prior knowledge must exist on the topic. When the learner applies
their prior knowledge to the advanced topic, the learner can understand the meaning in the advanced
topic, and learning can occur. Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to consider how human
memory works to promote learning, and an understanding of short term memory and long term
memory is important to educators influenced by cognitive theory. They view learning as an internal

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mental process where the educator focuses on building intelligence and cognitive development.The
individual learner is more important than the environment.

3.2 Other cognitivism psychologists

John Dewey (1859-1952) argued that modification has to be viewed in the context of the individual
and their environment and not set apart. He criticized the old school: “its passivity of attitude, its
mechanical massing of children, its uniformity of curriculum and method. It may be summed up by
stating that the center of gravity is outside the child. It is in the teacher, the textbook, anywhere and
everywhere you please except in the immediate instincts and activities of the child himself. On that
basis there is not much to be said about the life of the child. A good deal might be said about the
studying of the child, but the school is not the place where the child lives.”7 In his opinion the child
has to be the center around whom “the appliances of education revolve; he is the center about which
they are organized.”8 Based on his observations there were made a lot of changes in the educational
systems in America, Europe and Asia as it promoted the learner centered approach.
Jean Piaget is considered the most influential of the cognitive theorists. His belief that people
construct knowledge (as opposed to receiving it) is in the center of most cognitive theories. He
suggests that the construction of knowledge is based on the individual’s experiences which, in turn,
are influenced by their emotional, biological and mental stage of development. Piaget argued that
there are four stages of development: the sensorimotor stage, the pre-operational stage, the concrete
operational stage, and the formal operational stage. Piaget’s Four Stages of Development indicate
the learner’s ability to understand abstract, complex concepts.
Lev Vigotsky believed that knowledge and thought are constructed through social interraction
with family, friends, teachers and peers. He referred that we learn from the people as Most
Knowledgeable Others (MKOs) and the process of learning through social interaction as being in
the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). He suggested that when learners were in the ZPD, they
developed an understanding of a subject that may have been beyond the previous level of
comprehension. He also developed the concept of scaffolding to describe the teacher’s role in
engaging with people and supporting their development while they have been in the ZPD. (Bates B.
2016: 46) According to L. Vigotsky learning is a collaborative process, social interaction is
fundamental for cognitive development and students learn best when working collaboratively with
those whose level of proficiency is higher than their own allowing them to complete tasks they are
not yet able to do independently while the teacher acts as facilitator.

7 Dewey J., School and society, 1915, p.35

8 Ibid.:35

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 4. Constructivism
Constructivism emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, giving rise to the idea that learners are not
passive recipients of information, but that they actively construct their knowledge in interaction
with the environment and through the reorganization of their mental structures. Learners are
therefore viewed as sense-makers, not simply recording given information but interpreting it. This
view of learning led to the shift from the “knowledge-acquisition” to “knowledge-construction”
metaphor.
Constructivism does not propound that learning principles exist and are to be discovered and
tested, but rather that learners create their own learning. The growing evidence in support of the
constructive nature of learning was also in line with and backed by the earlier work of influential
theorists such as Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner. While there are different versions of
constructivism, what is found in common is the learner-centred approach whereby the teacher
becomes a cognitive guide of learner’s learning and not a knowledge transmitter.
A major influence on the rise of constructivism has been theory and research in human
development, especially the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky. Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories
form a cornerstone of the constructivist movement. The emphasis that these theories place on the
role of knowledge construction is central to constructivism.
In recent years, constructivism increasingly has been applied to learning and teaching. The
history of learning theory reveals a shift away from environmental influences and toward human
factors as explanations for learning. This shift began with the advent of cognitive psychology,
which disputed the claim of behaviorism that stimuli, responses, and consequences were adequate
to explain learning. 9
Constructivism has many varieties such as active learning, discovery learning and knowledge
building, but all versions promote a student's free exploration within a given framework or
structure. The teacher acts as a facilitator who encourages students to discover principles for
themselves and to construct knowledge by working answering open-ended questions and solving
real-world problems. To do this, a teacher should encourage curiosity and discussion among his/her
students as well as promoting their autonomy.

9 Dale H. Schunk, Theories of learning: an Educational Perspective, 6th edition, 2012; p 229

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 5. Humanism
Humanism is based on the belief that the individual is self-determining, free to make his own
choices. It is a person-centered activity in which the individual plays a part in deciding what role
they should play determining what they should be allowed to learn.
The basic premise of humanism is that people have a natural potential for learning and that
significant learning takes place when the individual can see that the subject matter is relevant to
them. In this situation, the teacher acts as a facilitator, encouraging learning rather than identifying
specific methods or techniques of instruction.
Although the catalysts for the humanist movements, the Montessori and Summerhill schools,
were launched at the beginning of the twentieth century, the theory wasn’t developed until the early
1940s. It was popularized throughout the 1960s and the 1970s as a result of a group of
psychologists questioning the virtue of the behaviorist approach (which they felt portrayed a
negative view of the person’s capacity for self-determination) and the cognitivist approach (which
they argued was too obsessed with the meaning and understanding).
As the movement grew to empower more people in making decisions about issues that affect
their lives, so the emphasis switched from teacher-centered to learner-centered learning. Supporters
of the humanistic approach argue that students appreciate not being evaluated or judged and relish
the opportunity for their thoughts to be understood. (Bates B., p 58)
According to an article of Western Governors University the humanistic theory approach
engages social skills, feelings, intellect, artistic skills, practical skills, and more as part of their
education. Self-esteem, goals, and full autonomy are key learning elements in the humanistic
learning theory. Abraham Maslow is considered the father of the movement, with Carl Rogers and
James F.T. Bugental adding to the psychology later down the line.
Maslow and the humanists believed that behaviorism and other psychology theories had a
negative perception of learners—for example operant conditioning in behaviorism psychology
suggested that students only acted in a good or bad manner because of the reward or punishment
and could be trained based on that desire for a reward. Maslow and humanistic psychology suggests
that students are inherently good and will make good decisions when all their needs are met.
Humanistic psychology focuses on the idea that learners bring out the best in themselves, and that
humans are driven by their feelings more than rewards and punishments. Maslow believed this and
wrote many articles to try and demonstrate it.
Maslow’s most famous work was the “Hierarchy of Needs” in which he suggested that an
individual’s response to learning is dominated at any given moment by whichever need has priority.

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The hierarchy of needs is divided into two phases: lower-order needs and higher order needs. The
lower-order needs relate tot he physiological and safety aspects of learning (physical and
psychological) while higher-order needs relate to belonging, esteem and self-actualisation. Maslow
argued that progression to higher levels is not possible unless the lower- levels needs have been met
and claimed that the motivation to progress through each level can be driven either by intrinsic or
extrinsic forces. It is in the inner desire to want to achieve (intrinsic motivation), however that is the
cornerstone of the humanistic approach.

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 6. Connectivism
Connectivism was first introduced in 2005 by two theorists, George Siemens and Stephen
Downes. Connectivism was first introduced in 2005 by two theorists, George Siemens and Stephen
Downes. While Siemens tends to focus on the social aspects of connectivism, Downes focuses on
non-human appliances and machine-based learning. According to connectivism, learning is more
than our own internal construction of knowledge. Rather, what we can reach in our external
networks is also considered to be learning. In connectivism, students are seen as “nodes” in a
network. A node refers to any object that can be connected to another object, like a book, webpage,
person, etc. Connectivism is based on the theory that we learn when we make connections, or
“links,” between various "nodes" of information, and we continue to make and maintain
connections to form knowledge.
Connectivism builds on already-established theories to propose that technology is changing
what, how, and where we learn. In their research, Siemens and Downes identified eight principles
of connectivism.
Those main principles of connectivism are:
➢Learning and knowledge rests in the diversity of opinions.
➢Learning is a process of connecting.
➢Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
➢Learning is more critical than knowing.
➢Nurturing and maintaining connections are needed for continual learning.
➢The ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
➢Accurate, up-to-date knowledge is the aim of all connectivist learning.
➢Decision-making is a learning process. What we know today might change tomorrow. While
there’s a right answer now, it might be wrong tomorrow due to the constantly changing information
climate.
Before these principles came on the scene, many theories positioned students solely as receivers
of information. However, connectivism supports the theory that knowledge is distributed across
networks where connections and connectedness inform learning. Connectivism relies heavily on
technology, so the first step to creating a connectivist classroom is to introduce more opportunities
for digital learning—like online courses, webinars, social networks, and blogs.
In a connectivist viewpoint, the new learning responsibilities shift from the teacher to the
learner. Unlike traditional teaching methods and other theories like constructivism or cognitivism,
the educator’s job is to guide students to become effective agents for their own learning and

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personal development. In other words, it’s up to the learner to create their own learning experience,
engage in decision making, and enhance their learning networks.
Both the student and the educator can benefit from connectivism in the classroom. If you’re
considering adopting this theory in your current or future classroom, consider the following
benefits:
It creates collaboration.
Within connectivism, learning occurs when peers are connected and share opinions, viewpoints, and
ideas through a collaborative process. Connectivism allows a community of people to legitimize
what they’re doing, so knowledge can be spread more quickly through multiple communities.
It empowers students and teachers.
Connectivism shifts the learning responsibilities from the teacher to the student. It’s up to the
learner to create their own learning experience. The role of the educator then becomes to “create
learning ecologies, shape communities, and release learners into the environment” (Siemens, 2003).
It embraces diversity.
Connectivism supports individual perspectives and the diversity of opinions, theoretically providing
for no hierarchy in the value of knowledge.

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 Conclusion
All in all, from the past to the present times, all theorists brought important ideas that led o the
present learning process. All the theories have had a great contribution to what we call today school
education. From behaviorism teachers provide positive reinforcement to students who show
improvement, effort or performance and manage behaviour în classroom through body language,
non-verbals of physical cues. Cognitivism is applied through studentțs engagement in group or class
discussions.

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 Bibliography

1. Bates Bob., Learning theories simplified and how to apply them in teaching, SAGE Publications
Ltd, 2016
2. Dewey John, School and Society, The University of Chicago Press, 1915

3. Dale H. Schunk - Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective: 6th (sixth) Edition, 2012
4. Dr. Suzana Miovska Spaseva, JOHN DEWEY’S EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF HOWARD GARDNER’S MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
THEORY (IJCRSEE) International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and
Education Vol. 4, No.2, 2016. https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/2334-847X/2016/2334-
847X1602057A.pdf
5.UNESCO International Bureau of Education, Most influential theories of learning, Most
influential theories of learning | International Bureau of Education (unesco.org)
6. National University, Learning Theories: Theories of Learning in Education, Learning Theories:
Theories of Learning in Education | NU
7. Western Governors University, Connectivism Learning Theory,
https://www.wgu.edu/blog/connectivism-learning-theory2105.html
8. Western Governors University, What is humanistic learning theory in education?
https://www.wgu.edu/blog/what-humanistic-learning-theory-education2007.html#close
9. Wikipedia, Learning theory (education), Learning theory (education) - Wikipedia

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