Insights from Learning Theory
Ok. Here’s the word of the day – murmuration – a flock of starlings. It’s one of nature’s most stunning displays, and the makers of this great little video capture the feeling of awe it inspires just right, I think.
Why are we so enthralled by such a display, I wonder? It could be because of the plain beauty of it. Or perhaps there is some hidden poetry there. Or some deep but not-yet-understood meaning. Naturally, people study this kind of phenomenon, stripping it of its mystery perhaps, but exposing even more interesting truths about nature, physics, biochemistry, chaos, collective behaviour. A group of starlings is known as a murmuration, and is an example of a swarm – in this case, a multitude of birds, each one acting according to only small local cues, the sudden gesture of its neighbor signaling a response in kind, all resulting in a kind of intelligent collective enterprise, a sense of unity among many. It makes, for me, a good metaphor for learning.
Metaphors are a potent way to think about learning, I think. This is just one. In these pages, we will explore some of the more prominent theories of learning which lend themselves well to or can be illuminated by metaphor. It’s important to have some grounding in this so you can better understand the shifting territory occupied by people who think about what learning is. As Learning Strategists, you are engaged in about as direct a way as possible in the enterprise of learning. But what assumptions underly your work? What do you think is actually happening between teacher and student? What is learning anyway? How do we recognize it when it happens? What conditions are necessary for effective learning? How are mental models established? What role does motivation play in learning? What factors impede effective learning? To what extent does your teaching result in learning? Why or why not? What is the relationship between study and learning? What is study, anyway? These are some of the questions that are explored by learning theorists and, even though theory and practice have a complicated relationship in education that often confounds this, it’s this body of theoretical thinking that ultimately leads to the effective design of educational enterprises like ours.
Naturally, this is deep subject matter, with a long history and tendrils of complexity. We’ll just scratch the surface. We’ll look through a few “isms”: Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism, Humanism, a brief word about Student Development Theories, and even briefer words about Connectivism and complexity learning theory. (Although they could be included here, we will offer some thoughts about the more recent influences of “science of learning” and “psychology of learning” in their own sections). It’s not necessary for you to be experts on ALL of this but it is necessary for you to ask informed questions about your practice and be aware of some of these foundational bodies of thought.
Behaviourism
Have you ever trained a dog? Well, behaviourist teaching is sort of the same idea – behaviour modification based on the concept of conditioning. Behaviour, say the behaviourists, as opposed to, say, mental functions, is observable and, therefore, the only thing worthy of measurement as we seek to demonstrate learning. Learning is achieved when behaviour is modified according to some desired objective and we (educators) modify (student) behaviour by providing some sort of stimulus (reinforcement or punishment).
Learning is caused by the experiences outside the learner and it is the job of the educator to provide those experiences. Naturally, I am over-simplifying. This reference to dogs has me guilty of making one out of straw. After all, this is a model of human learning that is deeply entrenched in our collective psyche, and has given rise to many of our most recognizable constructs in education, for better or worse – learning outcomes, grades, standardised curriculum, point systems. The longevity of these structures do attest in some way to their usefulness, if not their credibility. Learning does involve behaviour change. It does involve some form of conditioning, and it does involve “teaching”. What’s missing from this decidedly teacher-centred model, is the experience of the learner – prior knowledge, context, inner life – the things upon which we now place so much emphasis. Behaviourist models fell out of favour (even as they still persist largely to this day) as more humanistic approaches emerged and some educators began to question the mechanistic approach encoded by behaviourists (ie. determine the desired outcome, create a curriculum based on that desire, teach the curriculum using a system of rewards and punishments to reinforce behaviour, measure the behaviour change before and after the intervention to determine the extent of learning). The complaint and indeed the existential concern about behaviourist approaches has been that the orange was being neglected in the clockwork. That complaint is well founded. I have it myself. But it arises out of deeper, more profound concerns than the simple practicalities of education. It is more tribal in character which, when it comes to simple practicalities, is not terribly helpful. There are babies in the bathwater always worth preserving and it is obvious to see, not only the enduring influence of behaviourist models but their obvious rightness as some part of the story.
What does this mean for learning strategy support?
I submit that it will be your instinct to fall into a behaviourist mode of teaching when you are doing this and that’s OK. You may have picked up on a slight bias against this kind of learning paradigm whose mechanical cause-effect logic fails to acknowledge complex human inner thought processes. It dismisses these as un-observable so, therefore, in the positivist tradition, un-worthy of attention. However, the fact is, we and the students who come to see us will be accustomed to the behaviourist approach, so deeply is it entrenched in our way of “doing” education. And there’s no reason why it cannot become part of our larger repertoire. After all, there is a desired outcome here: the development of better study and academic skills and stances, and more confident learning processes in our students. These are, arguably, observable things and they can be taught. So, yes. I equate the behaviourist approach here simply to the idea of direct instruction and, while this may go against a certain “learning strategy support orthodoxy” it is something we should provide. Students want it and need it. We should provide it and measure it. So, while our main objective is to generate conversation with our students, it will be useful and necessary to first provide them with some direct instruction on elements of learning and study so that those conversations can become more fruitful. Without a little confidence and a shared vocabulary, students will not be able to effectively engage in the types of conversations we so badly want to have with them. You are in a way, “training” your students, conditioning them to become more legitimate members of the post-secondary academic community, to change their behaviour towards this end. But it’s only part of what you will be doing.
Cognitivism
Critics of behaviourism cite the fact that it fails to acknowledge the inner thought processes of human beings. One of the things arising out of that criticism is the notion of cognitivism and a whole branch of cognitive science. Folks like Jerome Bruner and David Ausubel emphasized, not behaviour, but mental processes as integral to learning – the brain is not a blank slate – it is a processing centre, constructing algorithms and mental schema, making connections between new and prior knowledge, recalling, and storing information. The favoured metaphor for learning became the “brain as computer”, and the resulting emphasis in learning theory focused on inputs, processing, storage and outputs. Learning is a matter of information processing in the brain.
As we learned more about brain functions, this metaphor became very powerful in education and indeed continues to inform many of the foundational tenets of learning strategy work, especially the work emanating from the “science of learning”. The assumptions here are very much rooted in the idea that knowledge is a “thing” out there in the world, external to the learner and the aim of education is to “encode” that knowledge in memory. These ideas have led usefully to strategies in the “classroom” that employ the use of multiple techniques of delivery to help students use different modalities to process information.
What does this mean for learning strategy support?
Again, this kind of learning theory strikes me as missing something of the complexity of learning, but it certainly does offer some useful ways to think about our work with students. Perhaps most importantly, it highlights the significance of “individual learners” and the fact that they will be bringing a different set of experiences and histories into our work with them, which will affect the way they “process” information there. The obvious pedagogy that emanates from that is to offer a variety of experiences with our teaching – the use of technology, visual aides, talking, listening, mind maps, organizational schemes, etc. etc. At its simplest level, cognitivist learning theory helps us to recognize the importance of offering variety to help students experience the information we give them in multiple ways. They are more likely to “encode” these experiences as a result. Gagne’s Nine Conditions for Learning (explained in another section) is a good example of practice that emanates from cognitivist learning theory. And, as Learning Strategists, you are or will become quite familiar with the discourse around “retrieval practice”, the strategies to recall information from memory – something central to this approach. Cognitivism has had a deep influence on the notion of “learning disability”, a still little understood phenomenon, but now commonly described through the lens of “neuroplasticity” or “neurodiversity”, an emphasis on brain physiology, chemical reactions, and neural pathways. This is important to think about, as no doubt, in your work, you will encounter many students with so-called learning disabilities. And we are collectively and individually influenced, to a profound degree, by prevailing perspectives and orthodoxy, which tends to isolate our thinking from other perspectives. I mention this to further remind us of the complexities involved here, and the importance, in this work, of adopting a stance of syncretism, not dogma.
Constructivism
Far be it from me to offer a full rendering of constructivist learning theory here. Like I said, we just need to scratch the surface of these ideas to prompt thinking and deeper reflection upon our work. Again, metaphors help. Think of the root of the word – “struct” which probably conjures up images of structures, buildings. Brent Davis (2007) reminds us of a more useful way to think of the idea of structure and it comes from biology, as in, organic structure, or the structure of an ecosystem. It is this more biological sense of the word structure that more fittingly underpins constructivist learning theory – something organic, complex, un-predictable. If behaviourist and cognitivist theories conjure the notion of learning as a straight pathway (“course”), constructivist theory conjures the notion of learning as labyrinthine – full of crossroads and choices.
Learning is not about something so simple as behaviour change (behaviourism) or acquisition and processing of knowledge (cognitivism). Rather, it involves whole beings as they experience the world – their history, their situation, their interpretation, their bodily sensations, their culturally and socially-specific orientation. Knowledge (whatever that is) is not a thing to be acquired but a thing to be constructed by individuals in interaction with the world. This is work that emanates principally from the work of Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and John Dewey and signals the shift from teacher-centred education to “learner”-centred education, and the prevailing view that teachers or “more competent others” are not there to cause learning, but to facilitate it. Students learn as they encounter new information, new experiences of the world, and must, through an often-disquieting process, assimilate, or accommodate this newness with their current beliefs and worldviews.
What does this mean for learning strategy support?
Well, if learning is to be viewed in this way, then the notion of teaching must change fundamentally. Teaching is, according to a constructivist, not the cause of learning, but the trigger. Constructivist thinking plays big in tutoring, coaching, advising circles which is why we so often think of what we do not so much as teaching as facilitating (making easy). The word teaching implies that we have something that the student wants/needs and that it’s our job to give it to them (deliver). They learn when they acquire it, and we measure that by observing behaviour change. Facilitation, on the other hand, does not imply any of that. Our job as facilitators is simply to help students find their own meaningful experiences of the world, to guide them, to enable learning to happen effectively. These are the kinds of (admittedly abstract) notions that pervade learning support orthodoxy. We are facilitators, enablers not (gasp) instructors or teachers. So, we help trigger thought through conversation to help students discover their own voices. This is all good stuff. Conversation is the best kind of learning (see Diana Laurillard’s “Conversational Framework”). This will inform your work with students as you work towards less “instruction” and more facilitation, where you can become creative by using techniques like asking open-ended questions, problem-solving techniques, inquiry-based learning, etc. These techniques require confidence and some skill. The danger, in my mind, is when we abandon completely any of our more traditional methods of straight up teaching in favour of these more facilitative techniques. I don’t see it as an either/or situation. I think learning strategy work is a complex human interaction that requires a nuanced approach that draws upon a variety of foundations. Engaging in a cat-and-mouse game of open-ended questioning in our obsessive adherence to “facilitation” can get pretty silly and counter-productive on occasion. Sometimes students need something more straightforward to engage them – something like direct instruction. And it’s no sin to provide that. What distinguishes a superior Learning Strategist is having an expansive repertoire, knowing what to draw upon in the situation, and a willingness to take risks – not blind adherence to one “theory” or another.
Student Development Theory
Student development theory, or more rightly, theories, provide the conceptual foundation for work in Student Affairs. The work of Learning Strategists is, in my opinion, an uneasy fit in the world of Student Affairs, but given that it’s where it often finds itself situated in the post-secondary structure, some familiarity with Student Development Theory is warranted and useful. The uneasy fit I refer to is simply an acknowledgement that, while the concerns of Learning Strategists are integral to the academic mission, the primary concerns of Student Affairs are essentially separate from it. Its concerns are about overall student success and therefore has its focus on things like crisis response, social programming, housing, career development, identity development, mental health etc. – things outside the classroom. In that realm, theories that centre students’ social, physical, psychological, cognitive development are primary. And, in Student Affairs’ preoccupation with the development of its own “curriculum”, these theories figure prominently. Part of the reason for that is that they perfectly ground the common vision of Student Affairs work – the “whole student”. In a nutshell, these theories postulate and articulate a set of developmental stages that students undergo as a result of or coinciding with attendance at college or university. There is a preoccupation in these theories with sequence and hierarchy – a desire to articulate types, and phases and developmental timelines. So, students will undergo various psychological developments, or cognitive developments, or psycho-social developments and student development theories are attempts to identify these and give them a typology. So, we hear about “stages” or “vectors” or “levels” Naturally, I am oversimplifying and only broadly summarising what is a deep body of thinking and work by an impressive cast of thinkers who have left indelible marks on educational thought (Dewey, Maslow, Bloom, Tinto, Pascarella, to name but a few).
What does this mean for learning strategy support?
I’m not actually sure what this means for learning strategy work. But, firstly, by virtue of often being situated in a Student Affairs context, it behooves us to be familiar with its foundational tenets, and to contextualize our work in broader student concerns. We, too, are naturally concerned with the “whole student” (in other words, human beings). Also, these various articulations of student developmental stages can help orient our work in some useful ways. From my perspective, and with apologies to the theories themselves which are much more complex, I bristle a bit at attempts to reduce blindingly complex phenomenon (like human beings) to convenient typologies. Students attending college or university are not a monolith and they arrive at our doorsteps, not as occupying a “vector” but as unique people in all their complicated glory. So, I wouldn’t suggest much more connection than that and would leave it to you to explore these theories if they interest you.
Humanism
I include a brief mention here of so-called “humanistic” learning theory which asserts that learning has something also to do with the human individual and their pursuit of self-actualization, to realize their potential. This paradigm is wrapped up in notions about authority, the traditional elitism of higher education, and the nurturing of character over intellect. It is very much a student-centred approach and demands a relinquishing of traditional authority in the classroom. It is an acknowledgement that learning is best and most enduring when it is in alignment with the individual student’s intrinsic desires and motivations.
What does this mean for learning strategy support?
I think we are very much involved in this kind of sentiment, and we ground our work in the idea that the affective, emotional side to learning is of real importance. This may be especially acute in our situation as we interact with many students struggling to make the transition to post-secondary education and struggle with their identities as students in this context. It is also true that we lie somehow outside the traditional classroom and all the burdens of traditional educational bureaucracy inherent in that. We are in a position to operate without those constraints, to interrogate traditional modes of educational authority and to acknowledge individual students in this humanistic way. Again, some caution is necessary, though. Many of our students come to us for guidance and direction – not for self-actualization. Sometimes they simply want to know what the latest APA conventions are or tips on how to avoid procrastination. We should not get too ahead of ourselves in lofty pursuits to interrogate authority, or to spend too much time “nurturing potential” or exploring identity, except as another dimension to our work, not the dimension.
Emergence, Connectivism, and Complexity
One thing most of us agree on is that learning is not just complicated, it’s complex. Humans have forever been trying to articulate how learning works so that we can design our educational enterprises accordingly. Ideas have changed with the times as objectives and interests have changed. These days there is the usual hand-wringing about a new generation and failing education systems and the need for reform. That has always been the way. And we can play a part in those conversations. Students come to us for help with their learning and study strategies. Our goal is pretty clear – to help students develop increased confidence in their abilities as students in a university setting. And we’ll do that in conversation with them. So, I want to include here a brief word about complexity theory as it relates to learning – a very interesting direction in learning theory and, again, fertile ground for metaphor.
Briefly, complexity thinking is first a reaction against Newtonian, positivist views of the universe in which there are knowers and, external to them, things “out there” that are knowable, discernible and measurable by reducing all things to constituent parts – a mechanised universe. Complexity thinking, conversely, recognizes the existence of systems in our midst that can only be understood as entities that are more than the sum of their parts – things like weather systems, stock markets, ecosystems, the internet, swarms of starlings (to bring us back to the original video that kicked off this section). Complexity thinkers seek to understand the system as a whole. Increasingly, thinkers in education are bringing this kind of lens to their work in understanding learning and, more broadly, education itself as a complex system. Learning, in this view, is to be seen as something emergent rather than prescribed. Jazz music comes to mind as a metaphor. Connectivism emerges from this thinking as a kind of new(ish) learning theory – one that acknowledges the influence and reality of digital technology in the increasingly networked lives of students. Knowledge, in this view, is distributed across networks and successful learners are those that can make fruitful connections across these networks. The theory was very much the rage in the early 2000’s and led to the concept of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) among other developments. In my view, this framing helps us loosen our grip on the rigidity of educational structures that are so deeply embedded and encourage us make room for emergence over predictability; surprise over structure, process over outcome. On the other hand, connectivism has also failed to live up to the hype, and the underlying emphasis on learner agency (learnification of education) is over-wrought. Agency is, of course, a worthy goal, but many students, particularly those more novice in the post-secondary context, need guided structure, not just agency to create their own learning experience. But, again, this is compelling food for thought, and the ideas of complexity theory are, in many ways, much more elegant, expansive, and hopeful than what has prevailed in the preceding centuries.
What does this mean for learning strategy support?
Well, if we view teaching and learning through this kind of lens, we cease to see learning as something prescribed according to determined objectives. We see it as something that emerges unpredictably towards the “…as-yet unimagined” (Davis 2007). Our job as educators, then, is to create conditions where the space of possibility is expanded beyond what we typically desire and predict as outcomes. In this way, we can become freer to explore, to operate without the constraints of instructional design “models”. Metaphors abound here – teach without a net, be educational bricoleurs, do pedagogical parkour, engage in what Dave Cormier describes as rhizomatic learning, take a few calculated risks in our work now and then. And see what happens.
