Learning theories

Teacher’s approach in a classroom is depend on how students learn the content of a subject. Psychologists have studied how learning occurs and have suggested several learning theories. These theories can be divided into behaviour, social and cognitive. Behaviourism learning theory focuses on behaviour and environment, social learning theory focuses on behaviour and thinking cognitive learning theory focuses on thinking.

According to behavioural psychologists, learning is a change in behaviour that occurred in an individual as a result of experience. This learning process will be experienced by every individual from birth that made it difficult for us to differentiate and separate learning with growth because both are inter-related. Behaviourism focuses on human behaviour that can be observed and measured. Behavioural psychologists believed all things can be observed. We cannot see thinking but we can make observation on human behaviour. From the behaviour we can make a conclusion about what is being thought. Prominent behaviourists are Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike and Skinner.

Social learning theory was introduced by Albert Bandura. Social learning theory stipulates that social, cognitive and behavioural factors play an important role in learning. Social learning theory believes that human are active creatures, able to choose and use developmental processes to relate events and communicate.

Cognitive psychologists believe that learning is an active mental process to gain, store, memorise and apply knowledge. The focus of cognitive psychologists’ research is on the process of individual’s active mind to understand his environment. The way a person thinks about his situation, including his belief, expectations and feelings, influence the facts that he learns as well as the way learn them.

In a nutshell, there are different teaching and learning theories which have been studied by different psychologists. These theories can be used by teachers to facilitate their teaching and learning process. In addition, teachers need to understand the different approaches which can be used based on these teaching and learning theories.