Learning Theories

Learning theories are an organized set of principles explaining how individuals acquire,

retain, and recall knowledge. Thanks to learning theories, a better understanding of how

individuals process in their learning is explained. Several views were differently debated

about the way humans learn. Each of which provides sound arguments on which the precepts

of the targeted theory stands on.

1. Behaviourism

Behaviourism, also called “ The Learning Perspective” or “ The Behavourist Theory” , is

a philosophy of psychology based on the assumption of what all organisms do - including

acting, thinking, and feeling - can be regarded as behaviours. The behaviourist school

maintains that behaviours can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal

physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind. Behaviourism comprises

the position that all theories should have observational correlates. This does not, however,

exclude that there are no philosophical differences between exterior observable processes

like actions and interior observable processes as thinking and feeling. One of the

assumptions of behaviourist thought is that all behaviour is determined by the environment

either through association or reinforcement. Some behaviourists argue simply that the

observation of behaviour is the best or the most convenient way of investigating

psychological and mental processes. Others believe that it is in fact the only way of

investigating such processes, while still others argue that behaviour itself is the only

appropriate subject of psychology. These common psychological terms (belief, goals, etc.)

have no referents and/or only refer to behaviour. Those taking this point of view sometimes

refer to their field of study as “behaviour analysis” or “behavioural science” rather than

psychology.
 Behaviourism, by focusing on observable events, sets its own limits on what can be studied.

Thoughts, feelings and other inner mental states cannot be studied empirically, so have no

place in behaviourist theory. By contrast, environmental conditions are relatively easy to

study. Behaviourists recognize that in order to study environmental influences on behaviour,

one must be able to define the environmental characteristics involved in a situation. With

regard to the environment, sights, sounds and smells are all considered examples of stimuli. A

stimulus is any event, situation, object or factor that is measurable and which may affect

behaviour. For behaviourists, an important element in understanding a particular behaviour is

to identify the stimulus or stimuli involved. They recognize that in order to study

environmental influences on behaviour, one must be able to define accurately the

environmental characteristics involved in a situation. Besides this, they also regard behaviour

as a response to a stimulus. They assume that what people do is determined by the

environment they are present in, which provides stimuli to which they respond, and the

environments they have been through in the past, which caused them to learn to respond to

stimuli in particular ways. Behaviourists are unique amongst psychologists in believing that it

is unnecessary to speculate about internal mental processes when explaining behaviour: It is

enough to know which stimuli elicit which responses. They also believe that people are born

with only innate reflexes i.e stimulus-response units that do not need to be learned and most

of a person’s complex behaviours are the result of learning through interaction with the

environment. Two processes are used by behaviourists to explain how people learn:

a-Classical Conditioning: In Classical Conditioning, people learn to associate two stimuli

when they occur together, such that the response originally elicited by one stimulus is

transferred to another. The person learns to produce an existing response to a new stimulus.
 b-Operant Conditioning: People learn to perform new behaviours through the

consequences of the things they do. If a behaviour they produce is followed by a

reinforcement , then, the behaviour being repeated increases in future i.e it is strengthened. A

consequence can be reinforcing in two ways: either the persons get something good (positive

reinforcement) or they avoid something bad (negative reinforcement). While Classical

Conditioning only allows people to produce existing responses to new stimuli, Operant

Conditioning allows them to learn new responses.

Within behaviourism, B.F.Skinner (1959) suggested a framework for the study of learned

behaviour. He argued that even if thoughts and other mental states could be studied, they

would have no real value in explaining behaviour. Instead, the environment in which a

response occurs, the response itself, and the response’s consequence are all that necessary to

understand behaviour. By insisting that mental states are both inaccessible to study and to

understand behaviour, Skinner was advocating a point of view which has come to be called

“Radical Behaviourism”.

Although, many have criticised the restrictions of behaviourism, the reality is that the study

of Classical and Operant Conditioning has significantly added to the overall understanding in

psychology. The appeal of behaviourism is reflected in the fact that it has influenced the

attitudes and methods of many psychologists, and has even contributed in educational field.

2. Cognitivism:

In the late 1950’s, learning theory began to make a shift away from the use of behavioral

models to an approach that relied on learning theories and models from the cognitive sciences.

Psychologists and educators began to change their insights towards observable behavior, and

stressed instead more complex cognitive processes such as thinking, concept formation and

information processing (Snelbecker, 1983). Within the past decade, a number of authors in the

field of instructional design have openly and consciously rejected many of traditional
behavioristic assumptions in favor of a new set of psychological assumptions about learning

drawn from the cognitive sciences. Whether viewed as an open revolution or simply as a

gradual evolutionary process, there seems to be the general acknowledgment that cognitive

theory has moved to the forefront of current learning theories.

Cognitivism - also known as Cognitive Development - is "The psychology of learning

which emphasises on human cognition or intelligence as a special endowment enabling

people to form hypotheses and develop intellectually"(Anderson,1985,p.49). The underlying

concepts of Cognitivism involve how humans think and gain knowledge. It involves several

mental activities such as memory, problem solving skills, and intelligence.

3. Constructivism

The philosophical assumptions underlying both the behavioral and cognitive theories are

primarily objectivistic; that is: the world is real, external to the learner. The goal of instruction

is to map the structure of the world onto the learner (Jonassen, 1991b). A number of

contemporary cognitive theorists have begun to question this basic objectivistic assumption

and are starting to adopt a more constructivist approach to learning and understanding:

knowledge “is a function of how the individual creates meaning from his or her own

experiences” (p.10). Constructivism is not a totally new approach to learning. Like most other

learning theories, constructivism has multiple roots in the philosophical and psychological

viewpoints of this century, specifically in the works of Piaget, Bruner, and Goodman (Perkins,

1991). In recent years, however, constructivism has become a “hot” issue as it has begun to

receive increased attention in a number of different disciplines.

Constructivism is an approach that views humans comprehend more efficiently the

information they have constructed by themselves (Taber, 2011). According to constructivist

world situations for enabling learners to interact and collaborate with one another.

Constructivism is related with information processing, and more particularly, to the

component processes of cognition. It accentuates the concept that knowledge acquisition is

an adaptive process and emerges from active engagement. These speculations conduct not

only to defining principles that maintain the external nature of knowledge, but also to the

belief of the existing reality to individuals (Learning theories, n.d). Hence, knowledge, from

Constructivists’ point of view, is the result of the accurate internalisation and construction of

the external reality. People build up their understanding on different schemata which they

acquire progressively from their surrounding environment.

Constructivism emphasises upon the premise that learning reflects the human

development. It occurs within a socio-cultural context. Individual development drifts from

social interactions. They are promptly accepted by individuals and contribute in building up

knowledge tied to the environment. The main concern of Constructivism is to study the

relationship between individuals and the social and cultural milieu (Roya & Hanieh, 2010). It

views each learner as a singular individual because every person is complex and

multidimensional. Not only does it acknowledge the uniqueness and complexity of the

learner, but also promotes it as an integral part of the learning process whose presence can

never be underestimated (Wertsch, 1997).