Theories of Learning

Claire O’Malley
School of Psychology
Outline
 Three perspectives on learning:
 Associationist
 skill acquisition
 Constructivist
 representational change
 Sociocultural
 apprenticeship to communities of practice
 Implications for teaching
1. Learning as skill acquisition
 Re-representing
declarative (explicit)
knowledge as
condition-action rules
(procedures / implicit)
 Progressive
automatisation of
procedures
 Associationism

Fred Skinner John Anderson

1904-1990

1947-
 Skinner’s Learning Theory
 Conditioning stimulus-
response (S-R)
associations through
reinforcement
 Shaping behaviour
through selective
reinforcement

Operant conditioning
 Anderson’s ACT theory
Facts Skills
(knowing (knowing
that) how)
Experts
 Remember better
 Use different problem solving strategies to
novices
 Have better & more elaborated problem
representations
 Superior performance is based on knowledge
not some basic capacity
 Become expert through extensive practice
Stages of skill acquisition
 Declarative representation
 Proceduralisation
 Condition-action rules
IF same weight on each side
THEN the beam is balanced
IF any side has more weight
THEN that side of the beam goes down
 Automaticity
Tutoring
 Identify goal structure of problem space
 Provide instruction in the problem
solving context
 Immediate response to learner errors
 Provide reminders of the learning goal
 Support successive approximations to
competent performance
Implications for design
 Learning by doing (active engagement)
 Learning taxonomies (e.g., concept classification vs rule
following) guide selection of learning objectives and
instructional strategies
 Conditions can be identified that lead to effective learning
(I.e., to achieve x objective, arrange for y conditions)
 Explicit formulation of behavioural (observable) objectives
 Focus on learning outcomes
 Consistency between objectives, instructional strategies &
assessment
Implications for design
 Decomposition of tasks
 Parts-to-whole instructional strategy (I.e., learn sub-
tasks first)
 Small successes
 Response-sensitive feedback
 The closer the training to job performance, the more
effective (I.e., just-in-time learning)
 Direct instruction, practice & transfer
 Individualised instruction (I.e., adapted to individual
needs)
2. Representational change
 Restructuring prior
knowledge to
accommodate new
information
 Process of explicitation
of implicit knowledge
Constructivism

Jean Piaget
1896-1980

Jerome Bruner
1915-
Jean Piaget
 Worked with Binet on
developing intelligence tests
 Clinical interviews and
observational methods
 Interested in the relation
between biological and
psychological development
 Goal was to develop a scientific
method for understanding how
knowledge is acquired
 Genetic epistemology
 Knowledge develops by becoming increasingly
organised and adaptive to the environment
 Intellectual development takes place through the
active construction of knowledge by the
individual acting in the world
 Knowledge construction is driven by the need to
resolve conflicts between prior knowledge and
new information as it is encountered
 Evidence for Piaget’s theory
 Children in different cultures pass through
the same stages and sub-stages predicted
by Piaget’s theory (up to & including
concrete operations)
 Rates of development vary across cultures
(décalages)
 Schooling & literacy affect rates of
development
 BUT formal operational thinking is not
universal
Two major problems
 The progressive construction of logic passes
through a series of universal stages
 The same (i.e., isomorphic) problems framed in
different ways could be solved by very young
children or could present problems for adults
 Logic as the appropriate framework for thinking
about the development of mind
 but logic is only one (specialised) form of reasoning
 other forms (e.g., pragmatic reasoning schemas)
are just as rational
J.S. Bruner (1915- )
 Emphasis on processes of coming to
know rather than structure of knowledge
 Domain dependent individual
differences rather than universal stages
 But shared Piaget’s emphasis on the
importance of action and problem
solving
Modes of representation
 Enactive – similar to Piaget’s notion of practical
intelligence
 E.g., child can sort objects according to shape
 Iconic – representations bearing one-to-one
correspondence with represented object
 E.g., picture of object
 Symbolic – representations that do not have one-to-
one correspondences
 E.g., ‘+’, ‘x’
 Instruction
 Instruction should concern the experiences
and contexts that make students willing and
able to learn (readiness)
 Curriculum should be structured so that it can
be easily grasped (spiral organisation)
 Instruction should be designed to enable
extrapolation (going beyond the information
given)

 NB: scaffolding (and relation to Vygotsky…)

Development and learning

 Piaget
 Development as active construction of
knowledge; learning as passive formation of
associations (therefore not of interest!)
 More recent developmental theory
reconciles the distinction between
learning and development
 E.g., Constraints theory (Case; Karmiloff-
Smith; Gelman)
 NB: see Siegler (2000)
Implications for design
 Stages of information processing
 Cognitive task analysis can be used to
identify errors and target instruction
 Attentional demands
 Prior knowledge
 Working memory load
 Distinction between declarative and
procedural knowledge
 But see Rittle-Johnson et al., 2001
Implications for design
 Skill compilation
 Meaningful encoding (chunking; elaboration)
 Forms of representation
 Metacognition, self-regulation
 Motivation
 Experts versus novices
 Developmental constraints on learning
 Conceptual change (schemas, mental models)
3. Apprenticeship
 Learning as legitimate
peripheral participation
in communities of
practice
 Learning as situated in
practical action
 Learning as meaning-
making
Sociocultural theory

Lev Vygotsky

Michael Cole
 Vygotsky (1896-1934)
Genetic (developmental) method

Higher mental processes in the

individual have their origins in
social processes

Higher mental processes can be

understood by studying how they
are mediated by tools, artefacts
and signs

Zone of proximal development

The Social Origins of Mind
‘Genetic law of cultural development’
“development appears on two planes, first on
the inter-psychological then on the intra-
psychological”
(Vygotksy)
The Zone of Proximal Development
"the distance between a child's actual
developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving and the
higher level of potential development as
determined through problem solving
under adult guidance or in collaboration
with more capable peers"
(Vygotsky)
 The Individual, Social & Cultural
INTRA-INDIVIDUAL
DOMAIN
The child experiences concepts The child learns, through media,
in practice & through parents, teachers & peers, the
negotiation of meaning frameworks for making sense

INTERPERSONAL SOCIOCULTURAL
DOMAIN DOMAIN

Co-ordinated interaction with peers and Smith, Cowie &

teachers filters the cultural framework. Blades (2003),
This interaction is itself defined by p. 494
culture.
 Scaffolding & contingent tutoring
David Wood (based on Bruner’s theory)
 Goals
 The learner should not succeed too easily
 Nor fail too often
 Principles
 When learners are in trouble, give more
help than before (scaffolding)
 When they succeed, give less help than
before (fading)
Example: ‘Tower of
Nottingham’
 Levels of instruction
Level 1 General encouragment
“Carry on!”, “You’ve made a pair”
Level 2 Specific verbal information
“Get a bigger one”, “Turn them round”
Level 3 Selection
Pointing at or handing over material, as well as
verbal cues
Level 4 Orientation
Lining up blocks
Level 5 Demonstration
Successful construction by tutor
Contingent Instruction
Contingent Non-contingent
Tutor Learner Tutor Learner
4c -- 4c --
-- success -- success
3c -- 5n --
-- success -- in trouble
1c -- 1n --
-- in trouble -- wrong blocks
2c -- 1n --
-- wrong construct -- success
3c -- 3n --
Situated Learning

Jean Lave

Barbara Rogoff
Problems for cognitive psychology
 Practical action is not always driven by plans
 People aren’t very good at formal reasoning
 Transfer of knowledge from context to context
is hard to achieve
 Ecological validity is problematic because we
treat context as a ‘nuisance variable’
Paradigms of person-environment
interaction
 Behaviourism
 individual as passive recipient of
information from the environment
 Constructivism
 focus on individual activity; environment
seen as a ‘trigger’
 Contextual/Sociocultural
 environment mediates individual activity
 Characteristics of a situated or
contextual approach
 Recognition of the relationship between
psychological processes and their social,
cultural and historical settings
 Explanation of how different contexts create
and reflect different forms of mental
functioning
 Explanation of how human action is mediated
via context
School vs Everyday Life
 Different types of social ‘niche’
 Differences in who determines what is
of interest and when
 Tasks in everyday life are socially
negotiated and reflexive
 People don’t just act in task
environments — they help to create and
maintain those task environments
 The culture of learning
just plain folks students practitioners
causal stories laws causal models

situations symbols conceptual

situations

negotiable fixed meanings negotiable

meanings meanings

socially constructed immutable concepts socially constructed

understanding understanding
Situated Problem Solving
"take three-quarters of two-thirds of a cup
of cottage cheese"

3/4 x 2/3

OR
Situated Learning
Learning as apprenticeship, or
‘legitimate peripheral participation’ in
‘communities of practice’

(Lave & Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate

Peripheral Participation, 1991)
Implications for design
 Learning in context
 Communities of practice construct and
define appropriate discourse, practices
 Learning as active participation
 Knowledge in action
 Mediation of artifacts
 Tools and artifacts as cultural
repositories
Implications for design
 Cognitive tools embody cultural rules, norms and
beliefs
 Situations make sense within a historical context
 Cognition as dynamic interplay between
individual and social levels of activity
 Interactionism: just as situations shape individual
cognition, individual cognition shapes situations
 Roles, identities and constructions of self (e.g., as
worker, learner, etc.)
 Readings & resources
 Alessi, S. & Trollip, S.R. (2000) Multimedia for Learning.
Pearson Higher Education. Chapter 2.
 Bransford, J. et al. (2000) How People Learn. National
Academy Press. Chapters 2-4, 6-7.
 Jonassen, D.H. & Land, S.M. (2000) (Eds.) Theoretical
Foundations of Learning Environments. Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates. Chapter 3.
 Laurillard, D. (2001) Rethinking University Teaching: A
Framework for the Effective Use of Educational
Technology. Routledge. Chapters 1-4.
 Rittle-Johnson, B., Siegler, R.S. & Alibali, M.W. (2001)
Developing conceptual understanding and procedural
skill in mathematics: An iterative process. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 93(2), 346-362.
 Readings & resources
 Siegler, R.S. (2000) The rebirth of children’s learning.
Child Development, 71(1), 26-35.
 Smith, P., Cowie, H. & Blades, M. (2003) Understanding
Children’s Development. Blackwell (4th Ed.) Chapter
15.
 Wood, D.J. & Wood, H. (1996) Vygotsky, tutoring and
learning. Oxford Review of Education, 22, 5-15.
 http://tip.psychology.org