Learning is a process that unites environmental and personal experiences in order to acquire, modify, or enrich one’s knowledge, values, skills, behavior, and world views. Learning theories engage in developing hypotheses that could describe the mechanics of these processes. The principal theories and concepts of learning comprise behaviorist theory, social cognitive psychology, and human memory model. This essay will dwell upon the similarities and differences of these theories, their value in teaching at different grade levels, subject matter areas, and topics.
The main common feature of the three models is relying on personal experience. As Eggen and Kauchak (2020) describe it, “people want their experiences to make sense” (p.282). The difference is in the type of such experience. Behaviorism suggests that conclusions from correctness and/or failures of one’s own actions lead to learning. The social cognitive theory views the valuable experience as the one obtained from observation of one’s surroundings. The human memory model unifies both sources of experiences and focuses on their procession (Pitchard, 2017). The second common feature to be named is the emphasis on memorizing the abovementioned experiences. However, in behaviorism, memory helps to make conclusions on whether such experiences were positive or negative. In the social cognitive model, it dictates how one perceives other people’s actions and decides to copy them or not. In the human memory theory, this central concept is divided into sensory, short-term, and long-term stages, discussing how information is processed at each level (Bates, 2019).
In view of everything mentioned above, the behavioral and social cognitive theories are the most valuable at primary and secondary grade levels and in such practical areas of application as mechanics, drawing, and ethics. In addition, they are indispensable for punishment and rewarding in class and at law enforcement institutions, as they address the processes of reproducing the personal and socially acquired experiences. The human memory model comes later, from secondary to higher grade levels, because it comprises the above two models and supplements them with more complex superstructures of memory layers. It is highly efficient in learning foreign languages, algebra, and such abstract sciences as psychology, philosophy, and even pedagogics.
References
Pitchard, A. (2017). Ways of learning (4th ed.). Routledge.
Eggen, P. & Kauchak, D. (2020). Using educational psychology in teaching (11th ed.). Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Bates, B. (2019). Learning Theories Simplified:…and how to apply them to teaching (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.