Applying Learning Theories

Introduction to Learning Theories

EDU622-0603A-01: Applying Learning Theories

Unit 1 IP

Dr. Trude Fawson

American Intercontinental University

June 17, 2006

Introduction

How do we come to know what we know? What is knowledge? These questions are important not only for epistemologists or philosophers who study knowledge, but, as well for those interested in the sciences and education. Whether knowledge is seen as absolute, separate from the knower and corresponding to a knowable, external reality or as seen as part of the knower and relative to the individual’s experiences with his environment have far-reaching implications.

In ancient times, people believed that only God could provide glimpses of the ‘real’ world. During the Renaissance, the scientific method evolved as the perceived device of uncovering ‘the truth’. Still, the modern view trusts in the ability of science to reveal ‘the world’.

Early epistemological theories emphasized knowledge as being the awareness of objects that exist independent of any subject. Thus, objectivism saw knowledge as a representation of a real world that is thought of as existing, separate and independent of the knower; and this knowledge should be considered true only if it reflects that independent world. In contrast, the constructivist view argues that knowledge and reality do not have an objective or absolute value or, at the least, that there is no way of knowing this reality.

John Watson’s 1913 Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It proposed abandoning Instrospectionist attempts to make consciousness a subject of experimental investigation focusing instead on behavioral manifestation of intelligence. B. F. Skinner later hardened behaviorist views to exclude inner physiological processes along with inward experiences as items of legitimate concern. Consequently, the “cognitive revolution” of the sixties styled itself as a revolt against behaviorism even though the processes cognitivism hypothesized would be public and objective and not the sort of private subjective processes Watson banned.

The philosophical assumptions underlying both the behavioral and cognitive theories are primarily objectivistic. Contemporary cognitive theorists have begun to question this basic objectivistic assumption and are adopting a more constructivist approach to learning and understanding. Like other learning theories, constructivism has roots in the philosophical and psychological viewpoints of this century.

Learning Theories Matrix

Behaviorism

Cognitivism

Constructivism

Names of

Major

Theorists

C. Lloyd Morgan

(1852-1936)

Ivan Pavlov

(1849-1936)

Edward Thorndike

(1874-1949)

John B. Watson

(1878-1958)

Edward C. Tolman

(1886-1959)

Clark L. Hull

(1884-1952)

Gilbert Ryle

(1900-1976)

B.F. Skinner

(1904-1990)

Albert Bandura

(1925-

John R. Anderson

(1947-

Sir Frederic Bartlett

(1886-1969)

Nathaniel Braden

(1930-

J.S. Bruner

(1915-

Hermann Ebbinghaus

(1850-1909)

Howard Gardner

(1943-

David