The different approaches to learning and the many different theories can appear confusing to a teacher learner. I know this happened to me the first time I studied principles of learning. Sometimes these different theories appear to be saying different things but then they appear to be not saying different things. Sometimes there is a lot of overlap between the different theories. In addition, once I learnt about constructivism I liked it because it fits well with my teaching practices. So then I wondered if I was supposed to be a constructivist in my teaching.

I recalled being thoroughly confused until I learned something in a course I took in school that clarified this for me. I remembered the nugget of knowledge but lost the source. This nugget of knowledge explained that the different theories of learning can be thought of as windows of a large room; each gives a different perspective and different view into human learning. In Paul Belanger (2011) “Theories in Adult Learning and Education”, Belanger also talks about the many ways of looking at learning theories. The angle that interests me the most is the teacher’s role.

Jarvis, Holford, & Griffin (2003), explains behaviourist approaches to learning in our reading ‘The Theory and Practice of Learning’. They discuss two types: instrumental teaching characterized by the teacher is a sage on stage. The other approach is discovery learning or problem solving. In problem solving students are in a trial and error learning situation and are conditioned by the positive outcomes of their experience when they have the freedom to discover for themselves the outcomes of their work. On the other hand, the teacher can intervene by providing positive reinforcement when the trials are going right, (answers are correct) and negative reinforcement when the outcomes, or answers, are incorrect. This removes student’s autonomy and when the teacher’s intervention is high, the element of discovery or trial and error is removed and both the learning process and outcomes are controlled by the teacher and the situation is that of the sage on stage. Sage on stage is a reference to the teacher as the provider of knowledge and teaching in a didactic manner characteristic of the behaviourist approach to learning.

References

Jarvis, P., Holford, J., & Griffin, C. (Eds.). (2003). The Theory and Practice of Learning. Routledge.