Ways of Learning

Learning Theories for the Classroom

Alan Pritchard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315460598
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Métodos de enseñanza de la educación

While most teachers are skilled in providing opportunities for the progression of children's learning, it is sometimes without fully understanding the theory behind it. With greater insight into what is currently known about the processes of learning and about individual learners, teachers are better equipped to provide experiences and situations that are more likely to lead to effective acquisition of knowledge, concepts and skills.

Ways of Learning has been widely used and now, fully updated, it seeks to provide further insight into the ways in which learning takes place, which teachers can make use of in their planning and teaching, including:

? an overview of learning

? behaviourism and the beginning of theory

? cognitive and constructivist learning

? multiple intelligences and learning styles

? difficulties with learning

? the influence of neuropsychology

? other theories, philosophies and names

? relating theory to practice.

The fourth edition of this book includes developments in areas covered in the preceding editions, as well as expanding on certain topics to bring about a wider perspective; most notably, a new consideration of learning styles and a new chapter detailing important thinkers and writers from the history of education and their continuing influence along with other theories, ideas and thoughts not included in the rest of the book. The book also reflects changes in government policy and is closely related to new developments in practice.

Written for trainee teachers, serving teachers and others interested in learning for various reasons, Ways of Learning serves as a valuable introduction for students setting out on higher degree work who are in need of an introduction to the topic.

1

Learning

Learning is something about which we all have an understanding and in which we have all participated. This participation will have been in a very wide range of settings, both formal and informal and ranging from, for example, the relative confines of a school classroom to the wide open spaces of the countryside, or a quiet corner where a chance conversation led to deeper understanding of some topic or another.

Learning is not exclusive to the domain of an education system. Learning begins a very long time before school; continues for even longer after school; and happens rapidly, and in parallel with school, in a great number of different ways and settings. Learning proceeds in a number of different ways, and has been described and explained by many different interested researchers and opinion-makers over many years.

How is ‘learning’ currently defined?

Without looking for too long, and without delving too deeply into learnèd sources, it is possible to find a range of definitions of the process of learning. Table 1.1 contains a sample of these definitions.

Table 1.1 Definitions of learning

■ A change in behaviour as a result of experience or practice. ■ The acquisition of knowledge. ■ Knowledge gained through study. ■ To gain knowledge of, or skill in, something through study, teaching, instruction or experience. ■ The process of gaining knowledge. A process by which behaviour is changed, shaped or controlled. ■ The individual process of constructing understanding based on experience from a wide range of sources.

Each of us will identify more or less strongly with different definitions from the list presented. In everyday terms, it is supposed that learning is the process of gaining more knowledge or of learning how to do something – ride a bike, for example. As we will see, learning is viewed differently by those who have spent time investigating and experimenting in the field, according to the context of their work and other factors exerting influence at the time. We will look at the work of both behaviourists and cognitive psychologists and consider the very different approaches that each takes and the very different definitions that each might offer of a process that, for most of us, comes very naturally.

A basic understanding of processes of learning is essential for those who intend to develop activities that will have the potential to lead to effective learning taking place in classrooms; that is, teachers. In more recent times, there has been a reduction in the emphasis given to learning about ‘learning’, from a theoretical standpoint, in initial courses for teacher education in the UK. This has been for a variety of reasons. For example, in recent years, there has been a proliferation of regulations from central government that have made great demands on the training providers and substantially squeezed the time available for teaching. There has also been an emergence of alternative entry routes into teaching, some of which can be called ‘work based’. This, too, has led to a reduction of the time available for theoretical work. To be fair – and in the view of most of those involved in teacher education – the balance between practice and theory has been improved, but this has been at the expense of some areas of teaching that have traditionally made up the curriculum for initial training courses.

The last years of the twentieth century and the first decade or so of the twenty-first have seen a great deal of regulation aimed at the institutions responsible for the training of teachers. There has also been a shift towards more school-based training through various schemes, which has, to some extent, had the effect of reducing the amount of what could be called ‘taught input’. The latest incarnation of school-based training is the School Direct scheme, which offers school-based, ‘on-the-job’ training for ‘high-quality’ graduates (DfE 2012a), either with a sizeable bursary or with a salary. In tandem with this, there has been a big increase in the level of accountability to the government, through the medium of the Teacher Training Agency (later renamed the Training and Development Agency for Schools; later still, reconfigured as the Teaching Agency; and now operating as the National College for Teaching and Leadership) and through the inspection of teacher training by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). This has been a political drive towards raising standards in schools; improving the quality of teachers; and arriving at consistency and uniformity among the trainers, which had previously been missing. Another, more recent initiative, which has expanded greatly since the election of the Conservative Government in 2010, is the introduction of academy-status schools, whereby schools can fully opt out of local authority control.

One of the many outcomes of these reforms seems to have been that teachers in training are not always fully introduced to more than introductory ideas of learning theory, which underpin the approaches taken by effective teachers. In some cases, trainees are not always introduced to recent and current ideas relating to learning, such as those that are considered in later chapters of this book. Though only anecdotal, it seems that some recently qualified teachers, when introduced to basic ideas from learning theory as a part of a higher degree programme of continuing professional development, have expressed surprise that this had not been covered in their initial training. Some would argue that initial training is not the place to dwell on what can be seen as uncontextualised theory and that, after some time in post, when theory can be related very directly to practice, is the best time to consider theory or, at least, to revisit it.

The current standards that trainee teachers have to meet in order to obtain qualified teacher status (QTS) do not explicitly refer to learning theory, but some of the standards, if they are to be met effectively, rely on more than a passing familiarity with theory and research (DfE 2012b). For example, in ‘Part One: Teaching’ of the standards document, it is stated that teachers must ‘demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how pupils learn and how this impacts on teaching’ (DfE 2012b). Related to this, the standards document also sets out that teachers should be able to ‘promote a love of learning and children’s intellectual curiosity’ as well as having a ‘secure understanding of how a range of factors can inhibit pupils’ ability to learn’ (DfE 2012b). It seems fairly obvious that teachers need to know about and understand the mechanics of the learning process, and this is reinforced, by statute, in the regulations contained in the Teachers’ Standards document.

More recently, the importance of more than a passing familiarity with learning theory has been underlined. Brante et al. (2015) in reporting the findings of a study into teacher training and education emphasise … ‘the importance of explicitly identifying the implications of learning theories for classroom instruction in teacher education, to make the studied theories useful in practice for the student teachers in learning situations’. They continue with a note of caution by pointing out that, ‘Although these theories do not give teachers ready-made tools to use in teaching, they can be used as guiding principles for designing and analysing classroom learning, in this way providing their teaching with a scientific basis’. This reinforces the notion of the critical value of classroom practice which is underpinned by a sound knowledge and understanding of current, and other relevant, theory.

Lunenberg and Korthagen (2009) stress the importance of connections between theory and practice that can be made, and should be made, by trainee teachers. They say that a highly developed sense of the connection, and a level of expertise in working between the theory and practice … ‘is needed not only to take care of this connection, but to help novice teachers in developing their own insight into this connection, and to promote their capacity to keep making this connection over and over again in their future careers’. They suggest that novice teachers need help, especially in the early stages of their training, in establishing and maintaining this important connection.

More recent guidance from the government (DfE 2016a), guidance for teacher trainers to assist in the process of guiding trainees towards the attainment of the standards for the award of QTS, states that trainees should … ‘be introduced to the most relevant and recent research, propositions and theories relevant to good classroom practice, and should be encouraged to view these with a critical eye, questioning outcomes, conclusions and limitations’. Still more guidance from the same government source, this time in the report the ITT Behaviour Working Group (DfE 2016b) says that trainees need to understand … ‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, dyslexia, Asperger’s; the basic psychology of: motivation; long and short term memory; concentration; learning; cognitive load, spacing and interleaving; group dynamics’. The first items in this list refer to particular conditions which invariably lead to learners having particular special needs, (these conditions are introduced in a later chapter) and the later items refer to much of the theoretical and practical content upon which this book is based.

We need to be aware that strategies are not the same as theory. Theory is something that is able to explain what is observed, upon which strategies – what is actually done in the classroom to achieve particular learning outcomes – are based. Certainly, it is possible to teach would-be teachers a range of approaches (strategies) to adopt in their work with children, and this will lead to trainees having knowledge of the strategies under consideration; but to approach this teaching without considering the underlying theory would be to leave the job only half completed and to provide the trainees with little understanding of the reasons for such approaches.

A brief historical perspective

Although the history of a philosophical interest in learning can be traced back to ancient Greece, the modern history of the psychology of learning dates back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. William James, an American philosopher and physician, is considered to have been in at the very beginning of the serious study of mental processes. He said in 1890 that psychology was the ‘science of mental life’. (James 1890) It is from this approximate starting point that the study of the mind and of human behaviour – and, in particular, the study of learning – began to grow.

Early interest in learning, or training, was centred purely on behaviour. As we will see, the followers of this work developed the area of learning psychology referred to as ‘behaviourism’. Behaviourism developed rapidly through the early years of the twentieth century, and almost, but not quite, alongside this growing interest in behaviour and the modification of behaviour came the growing realisation that the unseen mental processes involved in learning, and the contribution of factors apart from environmental rewards or gratification, had an important bearing on the understanding of how we learn.

So, in very general terms, two branches of the psychology of learning developed and have made important inroads into the practice of teaching over recent decades. First, there is behaviourism; second, ‘constructivism’, which is an aspect of a very much larger field of understanding and study, that of cognitive psychology. Both of these branches have a series of sub-branches, but it is reasonably fair to divide learning theory in this way. As we will see, behaviourism is concerned with what can be seen happening – behaviour. Constructivism rests on the idea that knowledge and, more importantly, understanding are constructed by individual learners and an understanding of the mental processes involved; the underlying structures relating to knowledge and understanding are deemed to be of prime importance.

Other developments

Apart from the binary divide between behaviourism and cognitive constructivist descriptions of learning, there are other research findings which have led to some important developments with ramifications for learning and learners. Some of these developments have become important only to be reconsidered in the light of fresh evidence and, then, to reduce in value and credibility. For some time, for example, the importance of individual learning preferences and the notions of learning styles was stressed by some theorists. Various classifications of learner types were developed – ‘visual’ and ‘auditory’ for example – and teachers were encouraged to pay special attention to individual learning preferences. Over a relatively short time span, research has progressed and ideas have moved on and the importance of learning styles has waned.

Another development in our understanding of how learning proceeds was the publication of Howard Gardner’s work on what he has called ‘multiple intelligences’ (1983). He describes a picture of a set of different intelligence strengths – including areas such as linguistic, mathematical and physical – that we all have in different proportions, giving each of us a different profile of intelligences that will affect the way in which we approach problems and the ease with which we might understand new ideas according to how they are presented.

Metacognition is another example of the development of our realisation that learning is a vast and complex subject. ‘Metacognition’ refers to knowledge and thought about thinking and learning itself. It is proposed that if an individual learner is able to gain insight into their own thought processes and come to understand better the ways in which they learn, then they are better equipped as learners and likely to make good progress at times when they might otherwise find learning less than straightforward.

Another developing area of knowledge about learning that we will highlight here (and consider in more detail in Chapter 6; detractors from the commercial and political nature of some developments here will be considered too) is what was, for some, originally termed ‘brain-based learning’. This is not a good term for the burgeoning area of research that is now, even more than at the time of publication of the previous editions of this book, forging important links between psychology, neuroscience and the everyday practicalities of learning. Accordingly, the term ‘brain-based learning’ has fallen into disuse and the area of study linking neuroscience and education has a new name: neuroeducational research.

Neuropsychology is defined as the study of the relationship between brain functioning and abilities such as memory, attention, language and reasoning (Fuchs 2009) and, as such, it is a branch of psychology that studies the links between the structure and function of the brain and behaviour. It is, then, the area of study that deals with the relationship between our body’s nervous system – in particular, the brain – and higher-order mental functions, such as those relating to language, memory and perception and the ways in which what we do – specifically, learning, in the context of this book – is controlled and affected by both the structure of the brain and the way that it functions. This is a massive, intriguing and rapidly developing domain.

Clearly, neuropsychology has a very close relationship to how we consider learning. Neuropsychology draws heavily on neuroscience research and, in recent years, this has led to many advances and to new light being shed upon old precepts. There has been a move towards putting to rest what have become known as the ‘myths of brain-based learning’ while, at the same time, informing new ideas about learning and the structure and behaviour of the brain. However, some writers, notably Rose and Rose (2016), approach the whole area of neuropsychology with extreme caution, and with a hint of scepticism. They, perhaps rightly, consider that we are at too early a stage in the development of the full understanding of the brain and, in particular, the links between brain function and classroom practice, to be able to make definitive statements or to develop clear guidance for teachers.

There are some aspects of learning research, not included, or considered only tangentially, in previous editions of this book, which will be explored later. These aspects are not complete theories, but they are considerations put forward as additional descriptors of the processes involved in learning. They may not apply in all situations, and certainly they may not appeal to all educators, but they are included here as a means of broadening the scope of the book, and giving further insight into the work of researchers, educationalists, theorists and philosophers who have all contributed to the vast body of understanding which we, as teachers, can refer to and make use of in our work. Such topics as anchored instruction, attention span, cognitive flexibility theory, conditions of learning, constructionism, mindfulness and the Zeigarnik effect (to list a but sample of what is to be covered) will be outlined and discussed.

2

Behaviourism and the beginnings of theory

Th...