Theorising about learning and knowing

Much of the recent rhetoric in higher education focuses on teaching and learning. As we move into the environment where student experiences and expectations are measured, quantified, and publicised, then the mechanisms for understanding how we engage these individuals in their learning becomes more important. We can use this understanding of how students learn in order to better inform our programme design, teaching, classroom management, and the development of academic practice. Humans are meaning interpreters, we reify the abstract, we seek, we explore, and we learn. The challenge for educators is that we often do not take the opportunity to disentangle the mechanisms of learning from the practices of teaching. Over the coming chapter we will explore different theoretical perspectives on learning; these positions underpin the work which follows where, in each chapter, academics advocate solutions for some of the key issues facing teaching and learning in higher education today. This chapter will consider different theoretical positions on learning from a largely psychological perspective with clear applications to education. Importantly, we are considering the theoretical approach to learning that we can apply to students; thoughts will be proposed which can be used to understand what we mean when we discuss knowledge, an issue which will emerge throughout the text. Finally, these issues are contextualised within higher education in a practical sense, including the way this underpins curriculum design.