Theories of Learning

Abstract

There are a host of theories of learning. Many of these have been around for a long while, and all of them offer sound insight into how people learn, but none offer a unifying theory of learning. Of all these theories, four are treated in this chapter: behaviorism, constructivism, cognitivism, and connectivism. The issue becomes one of selecting a learning theory that matches instructional content and learner characteristics. Instructional objectives guide how the instruction is to be delivered and assessed. These objectives cover three domains: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective with skills contained within them structured hierarchically. The learner's age, interests in the subject content, the nature of the subject, and time available for instruction significantly affect the instructional process. The most important thing an instructor can do is to make the content in their course interesting and relevant to their students.