Week 1: Overview

How People Learn

Educators have been trying to understand the way people learn for a long time. Although we rely on our own observations and experiences in teaching, we can benefit from considering some of the current research and recommendations published by respected publishers, institutions or researchers/instructors.

To help you make sense of the vast array of perspectives on learning that underly educational research, you may find the following four categorizations, based on different beliefs about reality and the nature of knowledge and learning. If you prefer a more detailed visual exploration of learning theories, see the two resources presented in the following section, Visual learning theories.

Behaviourism includes theories that are based on changes in behaviour that can be directly observed and measured. Cognitivism includes theories that focus on the way the human brain take in information and stores it for recall and application. Constructivism includes a range of theories that begin from a subjective perception of reality and may include a belief that learning occurs through social interactions. A final theory (still argued by many) is Connectivism. This theory was developed to address the way learning has changed due to the exponential increase in information due to advances in digital technologies and connectivity. A central belief is that learning occurs primarily (most effectively?) through networked learning.

Learning Theories

Some of the important questions you may ask about each are included in the table, followed by the names of some of the leading theorists.

	Behaviourism	Cognitivism	Constructivism	Connectivism
How does learning occur?	stimulus -> response; observable behaviour main focus, chaining events	input -> process -> output (learning) structured, computational	meaning created by each learner (personal);focus on social learning	Distributed within a network, social, technologically enhanced, recognizing and interpreting patterns
What factors influence learning?	nature of stimulus (reward; punish), timing of events	existing schema, previous experiences	Engagement, participation, social, cultural	Diversity of network
What is the role of the memory	Repeated experiences are remembered - timing & type of reward / punishment are most influential	Encoding to long term memory, retrieval	Prior knowledge remixed to current context	Adaptive patterns, representative of current state, existing in networks
How does transfer occur?	Stimulus, response	Duplicating knowledge constructs of "knower"	Socialization	Connecting to (adding nodes)
What types of learning are best explained by this theory?	Task-based learning	Reasoning, clear objectives, problem solving	Social, vague ("ill defined") problem solving	Complex learning, rapid changing core, diverse knowledge sources
Names of some theorists	I. Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, J. Watson	D. Ausubel, J. Bruner, R. Gagne	J. Dewey, L. Vygotsky, E. von Glaserfeld	S. Downes & G. Siemens