WHAT IS A THEORY?

 an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of

action.
 provides a general explanation for observations made over
time,
 Explains and predicts behavior,
 Can never be established beyond all doubt
 May be modified
 Seldom has to be thrown out completely if thoroughly tested
but sometimes a theory may be widely accepted for a long
time and later disproved.

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SENSORY STIMULATION THEORY
 Its principle is that effective learning occurs when the
senses are stimulated.
 75% knowledge held by adults is learned through seeing,
13% through hearing. Other senses- touch, smell & taste
account for 12%.
 By stimulating the senses, particularly the visual sense,
learning can be enhanced.
 If multi-senses are stimulated, greater learning takes place.
 How: through greater variety of colors, volume levels, strong
statements, facts presented visually, use of variety of
techniques and media.

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REINFORCEMENT THEORY
 positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment.
Note: much ‘competency based training’ is based on this
theory.
 Very useful in learning repetitive tasks, but higher order
learning is not involved.
 Criticism – too rigid

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HOLISTIC LEARNING THEORY
 principle: the individual personality consists of many
elements, specifically the intelligence, emotions, the body
impulse (or desire), perception and imagination that all
require activation if learning is to be more effective

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FACILITATION THEORY
(THE HUMANIST APPROACH)
Carl Rogers, Premise: learning will occur by the educator
acting as a facilitator, by establishing an atmosphere in
which learners feel comfortable to consider new ideas and
are not threatened by external factors.
Believe that human beings have a natural keenness to learn;
The most significant learning involves changing one’s concept
of oneself.

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FACILITATION THEORY
Teachers are:
 More able to listen to learners, especially to their feelings,
 pay as much attention to their relationship with learners as
to the content of the course
 Willing to accept feedback, both positive and negative and
to use it as constructive insight into themselves and their
behavior.

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FACILITATION THEORY
Learners
 Are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning
 Provide much of the input for the learning which occurs
through their insights and experiences
 Are encouraged to consider that the most valuable
evaluation is self-evaluation and that learning needs to focus
on factors that contribute to solving significant problems or
achieving significant results.

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EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Kolb’s 4-stage learning process

 The process can

begin at any of the
stages and is
continuous (no limit
to the # of cycles). Have an
experience
 Without reflection
we would simply
continue to repeat Plan next steps, Review that experience
our mistakes. experimenting to find
solution

Conclude from that experience

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EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
 Learning is through 1) concrete experience,2) observation &
reflection, 3) abstract conceptualization, 4) active
experimentation.
 People begin with their preferred style in the experiential
learning cycle.
 Hence 4 learning styles: activist (prefer to learn by doing),
reflector ( like to observe & reflect), theorist (like to have
everything organized into a neat schema ), pragmatist
(enjoys the planning stage and keen to test things out in
practice)

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ACTION LEARNING
 Links the world of learning with the world of action through a
reflective process within collaborative learning groups-
“action learning sets”.

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CURRENT EDUCATIONAL GOALS AND METHODS: TWO
VIEWS
 Directed instruction: Grounded primarily in behaviorism and
the information-processing branch of cognitive learning
theories
 Constructivist instruction: Evolved from other branches of
thinking in cognitive learning theory.

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PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS
 Objectivist: knowledge has a separate, real existence of its
own outside the human mind. Learning happens when this
knowledge is transmitted to people and they store it in their
minds.
 Constructivist: humans construct all knowledge in their
minds by participating in certain experiences; learning
occurs when one constructs both mechanisms for learning
and her own unique version of the knowledge, colored by
background, experiences, and aptitudes.

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METHODOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
Directed
Teacher: transmitter of
knowledge; expert source;
director of skill/concept
development through structured
experiences
Student: receive information;
demonstrate competence; all
students learn same material
Curriculum: based on skill and
knowledge hierarchies; skills
taught one after the other in set
sequence.
Constructivist
Teacher: guide and facilitator as
students construct their
own knowledge;
collaborative resource and
assistant as students
explore topics.
Student: collaborate with other;
develop competence;
students may learn different
material
Curriculum: based on
projects/problems, etc. that
foster both higher and lower
level skills concurrently.
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THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS: DIRECTED

Behavioral theories: concentrate on immediately observable, thus,

behavioral, changes in performance (tests) as indicators of
learning.

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 Behaviorist
(‘stimulus-response’ )

 Behavior is more controlled by the consequences of

actions than by events preceding the action. A
consequence is an outcome (stimulus) after the behavior
influence future behaviors. (e.g. a child reasons she will get
praise if she behaves well in school).
 Since internal learning processes cannot be seen directly,
the focus is on cause-and –effect relationships that can be
established by observation.

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 Behaviorist
(‘stimulus-response’ )

 Human behavior can be shaped by ‘contingencies of

reinforcement”:
 positive reinforcement – increase in desired behavior
from a stimulus (study hard- praise)
 Negative reinforcement -increase in desired behavior
from avoiding or removing a stimulus (not finish
assignment – detention).
 Punishment – decrease in undesirable behavior from
undesirable consequences. (cheating– failure)

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 THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS:
DIRECTED (CONT.)
 Information Processing Theories:
 Behaviorisms focus only on external directly observable
indicators of learning, information-processing theory (first and
most influential of the cognitive-learning theories) try to
visualize what is impossible to observe directly.
Human brain has 3 kinds of memories:
 Sensory registers--memory that receives all the information a
person senses (1 second)
 Short-term (working) memory (5-20 seconds)
 Long-term memory (indefinitely).

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 THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS: DIRECTED (CONT.)
Information-Processing Theory: Model of human memory system

Lost
Lost

Sensory Working Long

Input Register attention (short term
(through term) memory
Rehearsal
eyes, memory
mouth, etc.) Meaningful
learning
Organizing
Elaborating May lost if not
using regularly
Imagery

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MORE DIRECTED: GAGNE’S PRINCIPLES
Build on behaviorism and information-processing theories, Gagne
translated principles from learning theories into practical
instructional strategies.
Events of instruction (9): to arrange optimal ‘conditions of
learning’.
1. Gaining attention
2. Informing the learner of the objective
3. Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning
4. Presenting new material
5. Providing learning guidance
6. Eliciting performance
7. determining assessment
8. total assessment
9. Enhancing retention and recall

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ONE MORE GAGNE
• Learning hierarchies: The development of ‘intellectual skills
requires learning that amounts to a building process.
• Lower level skills provide a necessary foundation for higher level
ones. E.g. to learn long division, students first have to learn all
prerequisite skills including number recognition, addition and
subtraction, etc.
• Gagne’s work has been widely used to develop systematic
instructional design principles (major influence in business,
industry, and military training).

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CONSTRUCTIVISM
The differences among those who think of themselves as
constructivists makes it difficult to settle on a single definition.
Theorists like Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bruner are credited with
fundamental premises of constructivism.

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SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
Dewey:
 curriculum should arise from student interests
 Curriculum topics should be integrated, not isolated.
 Education is growth, rather than an end in itself.
 Learning occurs through its connection with life, rather than through participation in
curriculum.
 Learning should be hands on and experience based, rather than abstract.

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SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM (CONT.)
Vygotsky:
 Cognitive development is directly related to and based on social development.
 Zone of proximal development: difference between two levels of cognitive
functioning (adult/expert and child/novice).
 Scaffolding: the assistance that an expert gives a novice to help him/her reach
higher than would be possible by the novice’s efforts alone.

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PIAGET (CONT.)
Piaget’s basic assumptions:
1. Children are active and motivated learners
2. Children’s knowledge of the world becomes more integrated
and organized over time
3. Children learn through the processes of assimilation and
accommodation
4. Cognitive development depends on interaction with one’s
physical and social environment
5. Cognitive development occurs in four qualitatively different
stages.

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PIAGET: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Child’s 4 stages of cognitive development:
1. Sensorimoter (birth-2 yrs.) –explore world through senses
and motor activity. Cannot differentiate between self and
environment
2. Preoperational: (2-7) – develop greater abilities to
communicate via speech and to engage in symbolic
activities (drawing object, play pretending and imaging).
3. Concrete operational (7-11) – increase in abstract reasoning
ability and ability to generalize.
4. Formal operations (12-15) – can form and test hypotheses,
organize information, reason scientifically, show results of
abstract thinking in the form of symbolic materials.

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BRUNER: LEARNING AS DISCOVERY
Bruner also categorized children’s cognitive development stage:
 Enactive stage (0-3) no internal representation
 Iconic stage (3-8) internal representation with external objectives
 Symbolic stage (8-) children can create mental images of objects
and store them in their minds for later use.
Discovery learning: an approach to instruction through which
students interact with their environment – by exploring and
manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and
controversies, or performing experiments.
However, teachers found that discovery learning is most
successful when student have prerequisite knowledge and
undergo some structured experiences.

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GARDNER: MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
Of all theories embraced by constructivists, Gardner is the only one that
attempt to define the role of intelligence in learning.
Types of intelligence:
Linguistic; Musical; Logical-mathematical; Bodily-kinesthetic;
Intrapersonal; Interpersonal.
Educational implication: teachers need to try to determine which types of
intelligence each student has and direct the student to learning
activities that capitalize on these natural abilities.

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