Albert Bandura
Theory: Social (or observational) learning theory
Theory: Modeling
Children learn by observing others
Distributed cognition - a person is able to learn more in a group setting than alone
Observational learning requires several steps:
- Attention: Attending to the lesson
- Retention: Remembering what was learned
- Reproduction: Trying out the skill or concept
- Motivation: Willingness to learn and ability to self-regulate behavior
Jerome Bruner
Theories: Discovery learning and scaffolding
Learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas based on knowledge or past experiences. Discovery learning allows students to discover information by himself or in a group.
Scaffolding - instructional support provided by a teacher or capable peer in a learning situation
John Dewey
Theory: Learning through experience
Father of progressive education - cooperative learning, project-based learning, and arts-integration activities
- School is a social institution and a process of living, not an institution to prepare for future living
- Schools should teach children to be problem solvers by helping them learn to think
- Students should be active decision makers in their education
Erik Erikson
Theory: 8 stages of human development
- Infancy (0-1) Trust vs. Mistrust
- Toddler (1-2) Autonomy vs. Doubt
- Early childhood (2-6) Initiative vs. Guilt
- Elementary/middle school (6-12) Competence vs. Inferiority
- Adolescence (12-18) Identity vs. Role Confusion
- Young adulthood (18-40) Intimacy vs. Isolation
- Middle adulthood (40-65) Generatively vs. Stagnation
- Late adulthood (65-death) Integrity vs. Despair
Carol Gilligan
Theory: Stages of the ethic of care (moral development of women)
- Pre-conventional - Individual survival
- Conventional - Self-sacrifice is goodness
- Post-conventional - Principle of nonviolence
Lawrence Kohlberg
Theory: Theory of moral development
Pre-conventional (Birth to 9)
- Obedience and punishment
- Individualism, instrumentalism, and exchange
Conventional (9-20)
- Good boy/good girl - approval of peers and others
- Law and order - abiding the law and responding to obligations
Post-conventional (20+ or maybe never)
- Social contract - genuine interest in the welfare of others
- Principles conscience - respect for universal principles and the requirements of individual conscience
Abraham Maslow
Theory: Hierarchy of needs
- Physiological needs: Very basic needs - air, water, food, sleep, sex
- Safety needs: Secure home and family
- Love and belongingness needs: people need to belong to groups - schools, clubs, families, gangs, churches, etc
- Esteem needs: self- esteem results from competence or the mastery of a task, ensuing attention and recognition received from others
- Self-actualization - People who have achieved the first 4 levels can maximize their potential. They seek knowledge, peace, self-fulfillment
Maria Montessori
Theory: Follow the child
Believed childhood is divided into four stages: Birth - 6 6 - 12 12 - 18 18 - 24
Three stages of the learning process:
- Introduce a concept by lecture, lesson, experience, read-aloud
- Process the information and develop an understanding of the concept through work, experimentation, and creativity
- “Knowing” - the ability to pass a test with confidence, teach the concept to another, or express understanding with ease
Jean Piaget
Theory: Stages of cognitive development (cognitivist)
- Sensorimotor (Birth-2) Explore the world thru senses and motor skills
- Preoperational (2-7) Believe that others view the world as they do. Can use symbols to represent objects.
- Concrete operational (7-11) Reason logically in familiar situations. an conserve and reverse operations.
- Formal operational (11+) Can reason in hypothetical situations and use abstract thought
B.F. Skinner
Theory: Operant conditioning
Grandfather of behaviorism - conducted much of the experimental research that is the basis of behavioral learning theory. His theory of operant conditioning is based on the idea that learning is a function of change in observable behavior. Changes in behavior are the result of a persons response to events (stimuli). When a stimulus-response is reinforced (rewarded), the individual becomes conditioned to respond.
Lev Vygotsky
Theory: Zone of Proximal Development
Vygotsky is credited with social development theory of learning.
-Social interaction influences cognitive development
Zone of Proximal Development - Students learn best in a social context in which an adult or peer teaches something that a student could not learn on their own
Benjamin Bloom
Theories: Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning domains
Cognitive Domain (Knowledge)
- Knowledge - To recall information
- Comprehension - To understand meaning of instruction and
- Application - To use a concept in a new situation
- Analysis - To separate concepts into parts
- Synthesis - To build a pattern from diverse elements
- Evaluation - To make judgements
Psychomotor Domain (Skills)
- Perception - To use senses to guide motor activity
- Set - To be ready to act
- Guided responses - To use trial and error
- Mechanism - To respond in a habitual way with movements performed with some confidence
- Complex overt responses - To perform complex movements skillfully
- Adaptation - To use well-developed skills and able to modify
- Origination - To create new movement patterns
Affective Domain (Attitude)
- Receiving phenomena - To be aware, selective attention
- Responding to phenomena - To actively participate
- Valuing - To determine worth
- Organization - To organize values into priorities
- Internalizing values- To control behavior using own value system
Howard Gardner
Theory: Multiple intelligences
- Verbal/linguistic - students learn best by saying, seeing, and hearing words
- Logical/mathematical - conceptual thinkers, use mental math, reason problems easily
- Visual/spatial - Think in mental pictures and visual images
- Bodily/kinesthetic - athletically gifted and acquire knowledge through bodily sensations
- Musical - have sensitivity to pitch, sound, melody, rhythm, and tones
- Interpersonal - have the ability to engage and interact with people socially
- Intrapersonal - make sense of their own emotional lives as a way to interact with other
- Naturalist - have the ability to observe nature and see patterns
Nitza Hidalgo
Theory: 3 levels of culture
- Concrete - clothes, music, games, food
- Behavioral - social roles, language, nonverbal communication (gender roles, family structure, political affiliation)
- Symbolic - values and beliefs (customs, mores, religion)
Luis Moll
Theory: Funds of knowledge
Working-class Mexican-Americans students have abundant knowledge that the schools do not know about that can be intellectual resources for a school
David Ausubel
Theory: Advance organizer
The advance organizer is introduced before learning begins. It is designed to help students link their prior knowledge to the current lesson’s content (KWL chart)
Lee Canter
Theory: Assertive discipline
Teachers clearly communicate expectations and class rules and follow through with expectations. Students have a choice to follow the class rules or face consequences.
William Glasser
Theories: Choice theory (or control theory)
Teachers focus on the students’ behavior, not students, when resolving classroom conflicts (class meetings)
Students who have a say in the rules, curriculum, and environment of the classroom have a greater ownership of their learning (safe place to learn)
Jacob Kounin
Theory: With-it-ness
Awareness of what is happening in their classrooms.
Ivan Pavlov
Theory: Classical conditioning (behaviorist)
Pavlov’s dogs - trained to salivate to bell
Unconditioned response - one that is naturally occurring
Unconditioned stimulus - one that automatically produces an emotional or physiological response
Conditioned stimulus - one that creates an emotional or physiological response after learning
Conditioned response - a learned response to something that was previously neutral
Edward Thorndike
Theory: Behaviorism
Connectionism -the theory of mental associations
The association between stimulus and response is solidified by a reward or confirmation.
Thorndike’s Law of Effect states that “responses that produce a desired effect are more likely to occur again whereas responses that produce an unpleasant effect are less likely to occur again”.
Praise and planned ignoring
John B. Watson
Theory: Father of Behaviorism
Based on the belief that behaviors can be measured, trained, and changed.
He believed that all behaviors were the result of conditioning. Any person, regardless of his or her background, could be trained to act in a particular manner given the right conditioning.
