What is the most effective learning theory in your opinion? Explain how does it modify one’s behavior? Support your answer with relevant examples.
Answers
Explanation:
Learning is defined as a process that brings together personal and environmental experiences and influences for acquiring, enriching or modifying one’s knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, behaviour and world views. Learning theories develop hypotheses that describe how this process takes place. The scientific study of learning started in earnest at the dawn of the 20th century. The major concepts and theories of learning include behaviourist theories, cognitive psychology, constructivism, social constructivism, experiential learning, multiple intelligence, and situated learning theory and community of practice.
The basic idea of behaviourism is that learning consists of a change in behaviour due to the acquisition, reinforcement and application of associations between stimuli from the environment and observable responses of the individual. Behaviourists are interested in measurable changes in behaviour.
Challenging the assumption in many of the learning theories that learning is a universal human process that all individuals experience according to the same principles, Howard Gardner elaborated his theory of ‘multiple intelligences’ in 1983. His theory also challenges the understanding of intelligence as dominated by a single general ability. Gardner argues that every person’s level of intelligence actually consists of many distinct “intelligences”. These intelligences include: (1) logical-mathematical, (2) linguistic, (3) spatial, (4) musical, (5) bodily-kinesthetic, (6) interpersonal, and (7) intrapersonal. Although his work is speculative, his theory is appreciated by teachers in broadening their conceptual framework beyond the traditional confines of skilling, curriculum and testing. The recognition of multiple intelligences, for Gardner, is a means to achieving educational goals rather than an educational goal in and of itself.