The answer to this question depends partly on the outcome of your work on the rest of this section. This should help you to bring academic theory and personal understanding together in ways that you find interesting and enriching. Sometimes it is important to realise that you are being asked to produce different sorts of writing. To do this you will need to draw on a skill that you probably already have. This is the skill of adapting your communication, in this case your written communication, so that it achieves its purpose. For example, writing a letter asking for a free sample is likely to be very different from writing a complaint letter.
So far this section has discussed ‘theory? without saying what this word means. In academic writing, it is often a good idea to define any key words or phrases that you need to use. One way to do this is by using a dictionary. A dictionary definition of theory is: ‘a supposition or system of ideas intended to explain something … a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based? (New Oxford Dictionary, 1998, p. 1922). Using a general dictionary can have its drawbacks, especially if the key word is being used in a specialised way. However, in this case, the definition ties in well with what we hope you will do with theory. We hope that you will use theory to guide what you do (your practice). In this unit the practice that we focus on is your learning.
As you might guess, there are many, many theories in existence. You might have heard, for example, of Darwin?s theory of evolution or Einstein?s theory of relativity. On Learning to change we are focusing on theories about learning ? there are a number of these too. We do not have the time to go into all of these and, in any case, the purpose of introducing theory into the unit is to give you the opportunity to use it for your own development and change. It can be difficult to understand bits or snippets of theory without having an idea of the context these theories come from. So, the next section gives you a brief overview of some of the main strands of ‘learning theories?. This overview aims to make it easier to understand the important aspects of two particular theories which are discussed later in more detail.
This is a good time to remind you that the reason we are introducing theory is that we think you will find it useful to understand your own learning and, as a result, be in a stronger position to decide about personal change. We hope that this sounds like a reasonable idea. But actually, it is surrounded by all sorts of possible difficulties. To start with, you might feel that you manage perfectly well without having to stop and think about theory. You might even think that having to do this might get in the way of living your life. If this is true for you, then we are going to have to convince you that theory can have practical and even personal uses.
To do this, the authors of Learning to change needed to be sure that they focused on the direct usefulness of any theory. Academics have favourite theories but, in this unit, we have tried to control the impact of our interest in a particular theory. You might want to decide whether you think we have been successful in doing so. One way that we have tried to set limits is to select only a limited number of theories. In this section we are going to focus on three different sets of theory. These have been chosen to present different viewpoints about learning which we think show ways that we can use theory to understand our learning. These three theories (or sets of theory) are:
The next activity will give you an overview of some learning theories. We think that this will help put later sections in a broader context. However, it is also the basis of another activity which asks you to begin thinking about possible connections between this sort of theory and your own learning. In other words it is really asking, ‘How useful do you think this might be??
Read the overview of learning theories that follows. You are asked to read this twice. On the first read through, make notes in your Learning Journal on what you see as the main points of the content. When you read through for a second time, note down whether it helps you understand your own learning in any way.
Many theories see learning as what happens when an individual animal or human being responds to something that happens. This has been described as the way that a biological organism responds to their environment.
Some theories see these responses as being outside our control, as being automatic. A good example of this is Ivan Pavlov?s theory of classical conditioning. This theory argues that all animals (including humans) have little or no control about what they learn in response to what happens to them. Pavlov tried to show this in famous experiments which caused dogs to learn to salivate when a bell was rung, not just when they were given food. This is known as classical conditioning.
Later theorists like B.F. Skinner argued that individual human beings, and other animals, played an important part. Different reactions meant that different learning might take place in response to external events that appear to be similar. It is worth noting that both Pavlov and Skinner saw learning simply as the result of responses to events in the environment. There was, according to them, no need to think about the events.
This was challenged by some theorists, including Albert Bandura. He argued that learning did occur as a result of people (or animals) thinking about events and attempting to make sense of them. There is an emphasis in Bandura?s learning theory on the importance of observational learning. As its name suggests, observational learning is ‘learning through watching the behaviour of another person? (Gross, 1996, p. 173). This is sometimes referred to as ‘modelling?. In this form of learning, the observed ‘model? is the key aspect of the environment which is required for learning to take place. The focus is still on how an individual ‘organism? learns; but the inclusion of another person into the picture means that learning is no longer seen as a straightforward response by the learner to their environment.
The next type of learning theory is called ‘insight learning?. This is associated with Wolfgang Köhler who argued that the chimpanzees he studied could change how they saw a problem when they were supplied with a previously missing ingredient ? such as a stick to reach an object (Gross, 1996, p. 174).
These theories are seen as the basis of ‘learning theories? in psychology. Despite their differences stances, they all tend to see learning as something that is concerned mainly with what goes on within an individual. With the possible exception of Bandura?s learning theory, they pay little attention to the way the learning occurs as the result of interaction between people.
It would be interesting to think about which task you found easier. Did you find it easier to extract the main points of the content or did it seem straightforward to work out whether it was useful or not?
Having read about some of the learning theories that have been developed within psychology, we would like you to think about two things. The first is to think about how you approached the task itself. The second is the issue of what information seems to be there. Let?s take each of these in turn.
First, it would be worth asking yourself what you felt and thought about being asked to read ‘An overview of learning theories?. Did you think that the title suggested that it might be rather demanding? You might have thought that it was important to try and remember details in case you need to use them for an assignment. On the other hand, you might have thought, ‘This might be interesting; I wonder how it links up with the rest of Learning to change ? ?. This leads on to thinking about how you went about reading and making notes on this overview. Did you feel that you had to read in great detail and so made notes about more or less everything? If your notes on the overview are almost as long as the overview itself, it is possible that you have taken this approach. If you were able to highlight just two or three key points, and were able to connect these to other learning, then your approach to reading the overview may have been different. One good way to arrive at this sort of understanding is by using techniques of ‘scanning? and ‘skimming? as you read. You may remember that you were asked to read the overview twice. Your first reading could have used scanning where you let your eyes run quickly over the text to see what points seem likely to be important. The second read through could use skimming. To do this, you return to some of the points you identified in your scan read and make sure you are clear about them and how they relate to each other.
You will be interested to know that the way that students approach tasks like the one you have just done has been of ongoing interest to academics trying to develop ideas about how people learn. We will explore this in more detail when we come to look at the theory developed by Noel Entwistle later in this section.
So far this comment has focused on how you approached this activity. Reflecting on this should help you create a clearer idea about your approach to learning. But we also need to think about the content of the overview too. The overview broadly suggests that there are a number of learning theories that agree that the environment ‘makes? the individual learn. However, there are some important differences about the way that the theories saw individuals. Some (like Pavlov) did not seem to give much of a role to the individual ‘organism?. In contrast, Köhler suggests that an ‘organism? like a chimpanzee might have the capacity to solve problems. It is true that these problems were in the ‘environment? ? but the chimps? responses were not determined just by the environment.
It is harder to guess what you might think about the relevance of these ideas. Perhaps the notion that learning comes about because of the way we interact with our environment is a good place to start. There are important consequences in taking this view. It side-steps the debate about whether only ‘intelligent? people can learn. Instead it seems to say that we all have to interact with our environment, so we will all learn. It also seems to imply that these interactions are all different, even unique. This would suggest that our learning is unique to us. That makes it hard to say that some people are ‘better? learners than others. You might also accept that if our environment is an important (perhaps central) aspect of our learning, then it is important to create environments in which good learning can occur. If someone?s environment makes them feel ‘stupid?, then some very unhelpful learning has happened.
So, these theories may be very useful when it comes to how our beliefs about ourselves as learners are shaped. These beliefs are clearly important ? if we believe that we are incapable of doing something it is less likely that we will succeed in doing it. This ‘self-fulfilling prophecy? can also work to our advantage, if we can have confidence in our qualities, knowledge and skills.
However, there is a problem that is caused by the way these theories focus on the environmental factors that are involved in learning. The theories in the overview give different roles to the individual ? compare the role of Pavlov?s dogs and Köhler?s chimps, for example. Within each theory each individual is assumed to be much the same. So neither Pavlov nor Köhler suggests that there may be dogs (or chimps) that react differently. Even Köhler suggests that all chimps who have reached a particular stage in their development and find themselves in the same situation (with bananas that can be reached by sticks) will act in much the same way. If this is applied to human beings (as done by B.F. Skinner) the assumption would have to be that all human beings in similar situations will experience similar learning.
The second important problem stems from the focus on the role of the environment. Some of the theories suggest that our environments need to provide particular things at just the right time in order to be able to take our learning forward. For example, Köhler developed the idea of ‘ripeness? to describe when the chimps were ready to use a stick to reach the object. If they were not ‘ready?, the stick would go unused and the object would stay out of reach. This means that for useful learning to take place, the environment needs to fit in with our ever-changing learning. There are some special environments that aim to be especially well tuned in to changing learning needs. These include schools and colleges and other situations. Similarly on-the-job training attempts to provide learning that suits those it is being given to.
The mention of schools and other providers of education should also remind us that the environment includes other people. Indeed, it is possible to argue that other people are the most important aspect of any environment. This is certainly true of ‘learning environments?. It is not a coincidence that the outcomes of school and college inspections are mainly decided on the basis of the quality of the work done by the teachers. However, it may have occurred to you that ‘other people? are absent from the theories we have been discussing. These theories do not seem to say very much about the importance of other people in our learning. As you may have realised from the previous section of this section, other people are important because we can learn from, and with, other people. Other people may even learn from us. Other people are also important because they get together and form groups. These groups may be quite small or local, for example, a local dance or salsa club.
At the other extreme, people group together as nations; for example, they are identified as being Japanese or Spanish. The majority of people studying this unit will be based in the United Kingdom (UK). A combination of factors means that the UK is made up of a number of different countries including Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. At the time this book was written these nation-regions had the power to make their own laws about how learning opportunities were provided to people. So the ‘other people? are important because they pass laws and create frameworks, not just for learning, but for policies on employment and skills.
So there are areas that do not seem to be covered in the theories we have looked at so far. It is therefore possible to say that the ‘scope? of these theories is limited. This is an important way to think about theory. It is often useful to ask yourself what the theory covers and what it does not. Once you have worked out the scope of a theory it becomes much easier to see whether you need to look elsewhere for a theory that covers some of the aspects that are important to you.
Figure 18 Dance club flyer offering lessonsLong descriptionLet?s move on to think about the gaps in the first set of theories that you have looked at. These can be summarised as:
We have noted the importance of other people in the previous part of this section, but this ‘everyday? evidence does not seem to figure in the theory we have looked at so far. Later in this section, you will come across theoretical attempts to take account of this aspect of learning. We will explore theories that include the importance of the wider frameworks in the next section.
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