Learning Theories

by Stephan Rinke

1. Behaviourism

1.1. Black box—observable behaviour main focus

1.2. Nature of reward, punishment, stimuli

1.3. Memory is the hardwiring of repeated experiences

1.4. Transfer through

1.4.1. Stimulus, response

1.5. Task-based learning

2. Constructivism

2.1. Social, meaning created by each learner (personal)

2.2. Influencing factors

2.2.1. Engagement, participation, social, cultural

2.3. Transfer occurs through Socialisation

2.4. Memory: Prior knowledge remixed to current context

2.5. Social, vague (“ill defined”)

3. Cognitivism

3.1. Structured, computational

3.2. Existing schema, previous experiences

3.3. Encoding, storage, retrieval

3.4. Duplicating knowledge constructs of “knower”

3.5. Reasoning, clear objectives, problem solving

4. Connectivism

4.1. Learning occurs

4.1.1. Distributed within a network

4.1.2. social

4.1.3. technologically enhanced

4.1.4. through recognizing and interpreting patterns

4.2. Influencing factors

4.2.1. Diversity of network

4.2.2. strength of ties

4.2.3. context of occurrence

4.3. Memory

4.3.1. Adaptive patterns

4.3.2. representative of current state

4.3.3. existing in networks

4.4. Transfer through

4.4.1. Connecting to (adding) nodes and growing the network

4.5. Complex learning, rapid changing core, diverse knowledge sources