Learning Theories

The Learning Process

Advances in science over the last 50 years have allowed researchers to make considerable strides in documenting the thinking and learning process. Cognitive scientists have begun collaborating with educators, child development experts, and researchers to bring together ideas within a formal educational context.

Although children’s minds were once believed to be essentially blank slates that must be filled with information, observations of young children have indicated that human learning begins at early stages of infancy through an active, rather than a passive, learning process. In fact, infants attend to particular information such as language, number, physical attributes or properties, and spatial sense prior to formal instruction of these concepts. These findings provide the foundation of the idea that learning is based on experience and that knowledge develops as individuals build on the ideas generated from these experiences, then subsequently reflecting on their conclusions. Therefore, the three principles that define the process of thinking and learning are as follows: (1) humans glean isolated bits of information from their experiences—both natural encounters and formal instruction; (2) the individual generates networks of related knowledge to prioritize, connect, and organize the collected information; and (3) the learners take control of learning by identifying a purpose, defining a plan to achieve the purpose, and monitoring their process toward achieving the desired goals.

Consider a 4-year-old child playing with wooden blocks. Her exploration leads her to arrange the blocks in various ways, from a horizontal line of blocks on the floor, to a more complex cognitive feat of balancing blocks vertically to construct a castle tower. She begins by attending to bits of information she collects during the experience as she observes the attributes and properties of the wooden blocks. Then, through trial and error, she begins to notice features of the blocks and her construction methods that either inhibit her building process or contribute to her architectural success. She continually reflects on her experiences, talking to herself during the play scene, as she organizes and connects information she gleaned through her observations to become a more productive builder. The young engineer reminds herself of these conclusions as she finalizes her construction after earlier attempts to build a tower ended in the blocks collapsing. She begins to place a long, wide rectangular block atop a smaller rectangular prism near the apex of the tower, then seeing it wobble, removes it and puts it at the base.

To understand this as a learning experience, one must examine how the individual acquired [Page 962]knowledge. In this case, the young child generated information regarding the attributes of the blocks that she later could relay to her teacher: “I need a flat one like this, but this [pointing to the long, wide rectangular prism] is too big and too heavy for this skinny one on top [points to the top block in the tower]. It keeps falling.” Through her construction attempts, she was able to prioritize and relate the properties of the blocks to her experiences with trial and error as she built the tower. Finally, by reflecting on her experience with her teacher, she was able to apply the newly acquired knowledge in a subsequent building experience as she and a friend used blocks to build a castle later in the week.

...