Five Ways to Think About Learning, Explained

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Five Ways to Think About Learning

Educational Psychology · Chapter 1: Foundations of Education and LearningSection 1.4 · lesson 4 of 10010 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Behavior, cognition, development, society, and construction.

  • Compare the five major perspectives in educational psychology
  • State each framework's founding assumption and key theorists
  • Match a perspective to the learning goal it best serves
  • Identify each perspective inside a single integrated lesson

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,335 words). Read along, or search it.

Foundations of Education and Learning

Five Ways to Think About Learning

Ask five educational psychologists why a student failed a test. You will get five different answers, and none of them is wrong. That is not a weakness of the field. It is the structure of the field. No single perspective fully captures the complexity of human learning. Over more than a century, five major frameworks emerged. Behaviorism, cognitive theory, developmental theory, social-cognitive theory, and constructivism. Each illuminates a different dimension of how learning occurs. In this section we will take each one seriously, on its own terms. We will name its founding assumption, its key theorists, and its classroom strategies. And we will finish with a single lesson that uses all five at once.

Five Lenses

Why One Theory Is Never Enough

Before we take these one at a time, a word about how they relate. Each grew up around a different question, in a different decade. Behaviorism came first, and it studied only what could be seen from outside. Cognitive theory followed, and it opened the box marked mind. Developmental theory asks what a learner is ready for at a given age. Social-cognitive theory studies what students absorb by watching other people. Constructivism asks whether understanding is being built, or merely copied. Notice that none of the five actually refutes the others. They overlap, they argue, and every one of them is still in use.

The Questions

What Each Lens Asks About a Lesson

The most useful way to hold these five is as lenses, not as camps. The same classroom looks different through each one. A behaviorist lens asks what observable responses are being reinforced. A cognitive lens asks how information is being processed and stored. A developmental lens asks whether this content suits the student's stage of growth. A social-cognitive lens asks how peers and models are shaping what students attempt. And a constructivist lens asks a harder question. Are students building genuine understanding, or just mimicking correct answers? Each lens produces a different insight, and its own body of evidence. Skilled teachers do not choose between them. They switch between them.

Behaviorism

Learning as Observable Change

Behaviorism dominated American psychology from about nineteen ten to nineteen sixty. Its claim is that learning is a change in observable behavior produced by experience. The founding assumption is severe. What happens inside the mind is inaccessible, and therefore scientifically irrelevant. What matters is the relationship between stimuli and responses. B.F. Skinner's operant conditioning extended earlier work by Watson and Pavlov. Behavior, Skinner showed, is shaped by its consequences. Behaviors followed by positive reinforcers increase in frequency. Behaviors followed by punishment, or by losing something good, decrease. Skinner also built programmed instruction, an early form of adaptive learning. For him, teaching was the art of arranging contingencies of reinforcement.

Behaviorism Applied

Where It Works, and Where It Breaks

Behaviorism is far from dead. Look at any behavior management system. Token economies, praise, behavior contracts, point systems. All of them apply Skinnerian logic directly. Applied Behavior Analysis, widely used in special education, comes straight from it. But the limitations are as important as the applications. Behaviorism struggles to explain complex cognitive achievements. Language acquisition. Mathematical problem-solving. Creative writing. In nineteen fifty-nine, the linguist Noam Chomsky published a critique. It attacked Skinner's account of how children acquire language. That critique contributed significantly to the cognitive revolution in psychology. A theory can be genuinely useful and still be badly incomplete.

Cognitive Theory

The Mind Comes Back Into View

The cognitive revolution ran through the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies. It returned attention to everything behaviorism had bracketed off. Attention, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving. The organizing metaphor was information processing. The mind as a system that encodes, stores and retrieves information. Three lines of research shaped how educators think about this. George Miller worked on the capacity of working memory. His famous paper was called The Magical Number Seven. Alan Baddeley proposed a multi-component model of working memory. Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed three stores. Sensory, short-term, and long-term. Every lesson places a cognitive demand on a system with hard limits.

Cognitive Applied

Designing for a Limited Working Memory

Three moves, and all of them are about protecting working memory. First, chunk. Break complex material into smaller units. Second, model first. Use worked examples before asking for novel problem-solving. Third, strip the extras. Remove information that competes for attention. Then there is schema theory, which explains something teachers observe constantly. Prior knowledge is organized into mental frameworks. New information has to connect to one of those frameworks to stick. That is why activating prior knowledge at the start of a lesson works. A quick chart, some brainstorming, or an analogy will do it. Mnemonics, concept mapping and elaborative interrogation come from the same source.

Developmental Theory

Is This Student Ready for This?

Developmental theory asks a question the other lenses skip. Is this student ready for this? It rests on Piaget's cognitive stages, and on Erik Erikson's psychosocial stages. Erikson proposed eight stages across the whole lifespan. Each involves a central conflict, and how it resolves shapes personality. Industry versus inferiority runs from about six to twelve. Children in it develop a sense of competence, or a sense of inadequacy. Which one they develop depends partly on whether tasks overwhelm them. Identity versus role confusion runs from about twelve to eighteen. Adolescents build a coherent self by exploring roles, values and relationships. So give younger children achievable challenges, and give teenagers room to explore. Vygotsky adds one correction to all of this. Development is not purely maturational. It is driven by social interaction, and by cultural tools such as language. So peer dialogue is not merely motivational. It changes what a student can think.

Social-Cognitive

Learning by Watching Someone Else

Albert Bandura noticed something behaviorism could not accommodate. A great deal of human behavior is acquired without any direct reinforcement. His Bobo doll experiments, in nineteen sixty-one, made the point unmistakable. Children who watched an adult behave aggressively toward a doll did the same. Nobody rewarded them for it. This is observational learning, also called vicarious learning. Bandura's second contribution is self-efficacy. It is a person's belief in their ability to succeed at a specific task. Self-efficacy is one of the most robust predictors of academic achievement we have. Students who believe they can learn mathematics work harder and persist longer. They outperform equally capable students who doubt themselves. His triadic model says behavior, personal factors and environment all shape each other.

Constructivism

Knowledge Is Built, Not Delivered

Learners actively construct meaning. They do not passively receive it. Knowledge is not a copy of reality transmitted from teacher to student. It is built by each learner, out of experience and prior knowledge. Piaget is the root. Jerome Bruner and Ernst von Glasersfeld extended it. Dewey's pragmatism fed into the same tradition. Bruner's discovery learning guides students to find principles themselves. His spiral curriculum makes a bolder claim still. Any subject can be taught to any age group in an intellectually honest way. You revisit the same concepts in greater depth as students mature. Social constructivism, influenced by Vygotsky, adds the collaborative part. Understanding gets built through dialogue and shared meaning-making.

Side By Side

Five Perspectives, Five Toolkits

Behaviorism, from Skinner, gives you token economies and behavior contracts. Cognitive theory, from Miller and Baddeley, gives you chunking and worked examples. Developmental theory, from Piaget, Erikson and Vygotsky, gives you scaffolding. Social-cognitive theory, from Bandura, gives you modeling and mastery experiences. Constructivism, from Dewey and Bruner, gives you inquiry and Socratic seminars. Effective teachers do not commit to one perspective dogmatically. They match the perspective to the learning goal. Routines and basic skills? Reach for behaviorist techniques. Memory and comprehension? Cognitive strategies. Deep understanding and transfer? Constructivist approaches, and be patient.

All Five At Once

One Biology Lesson, Five Theories

Here is one high school biology lesson on natural selection. It opens with a brief think-pair-share, activating prior knowledge. That is cognitive theory, doing schema activation. Then a short video of a naturalist explaining the concept. That is social-cognitive theory, providing a model. Then students act as predators, selecting colored prey from a checkered background. They discover variation and selection pressure themselves. That is constructivism. Scaffolded note organizers go to students who need support. That is developmental. Participation points reward engaged behavior. That is behaviorism. So why not just pick one theory and be consistent? Because each captures real truths, and each has real limits. Behaviorism cannot explain complex cognition, and stage theory underestimates variation.

About Educational Psychology at UPI Study

Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) is a self-paced online course of 100 video lessons in 11 chapters, from memory, conditioning and child development to motivation, individual differences, assessment, instruction and educational technology. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.

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Why students take Educational Psychology with UPI Study

How people learn, and how to teach themEducational Psychology explains how students learn, develop and stay motivated, and how teachers assess and support them. It is a standard course in education and teaching degrees and a common psychology elective.
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130,000+students helped with college creditsACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Where the credit goes

Universities that work with NCCRS

Educational Psychology carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Thomas Edison State UniversityThomas Edison State UniversitySigned partnerUniversity of the PeopleUniversity of the PeopleSigned partnerCharter Oak State CollegeCharter Oak State CollegeSigned partnerStrayer UniversityStrayer UniversitySigned partnerColumbia Southern UniversityColumbia Southern UniversitySigned partnerIndiana TechIndiana TechSigned partnerPenn StatePenn StateWorks with NCCRSSouthern New Hampshire UniversitySouthern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRSSUNYSUNYWorks with NCCRS +many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Five Ways to Think About Learning

What are the five major perspectives in educational psychology?
The five major perspectives are behaviorism, cognitive theory, developmental theory, social-cognitive theory and constructivism. Each asks a different question: what responses are reinforced, how information is processed, whether content suits the learner's stage, how models and peers shape behavior, and whether students are building real understanding. None refutes the others, so skilled teachers use them as lenses and switch between them.
What is the difference between behaviorism and cognitive theory?
Behaviorism studies only observable behavior, treating learning as a change in behavior produced by experience and shaped by its consequences, as in Skinner's operant conditioning. Cognitive theory opens up the mind, studying attention, memory and reasoning through an information processing model. Noam Chomsky's 1959 critique of Skinner's account of language helped spark the cognitive revolution of the 1950s through 1970s.
What is constructivism in education?
Constructivism is the view that learners actively build meaning from experience and prior knowledge rather than passively receiving it. Rooted in Piaget and extended by Jerome Bruner and Ernst von Glasersfeld, it supports discovery learning and Bruner's spiral curriculum, which revisits concepts in greater depth as students mature. Social constructivism, influenced by Vygotsky, adds that understanding is built through dialogue.
How do teachers choose which learning theory to use?
Effective teachers match the perspective to the learning goal instead of committing to one theory. Behaviorist techniques suit routines and basic skills, cognitive strategies such as chunking and worked examples suit memory and comprehension, and constructivist approaches suit deep understanding and transfer. A single biology lesson can combine all five, from activating prior knowledge to modeling, discovery, scaffolding and participation points.

About the Educational Psychology course

How many college credits is Educational Psychology?
Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
How much does Educational Psychology cost and what is included?
$250, paid once, with lifetime access: all 100 video lessons, a practice quiz after each, the graded work and final exam, and an official transcript when you finish. Students who want several courses choose UPI Study PRO instead.
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
UPI Study has signed partner agreements with universities such as Thomas Edison State University, University of the People and Charter Oak State College, and works with universities such as Penn State, SNHU and SUNY. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities. Use "Find my college" on this page to check yours.
How long does Educational Psychology take?
It is self-paced with no deadlines. The 100 lessons total about 15 hours of video; most students add reading and practice time and finish in a few weeks to a few months, on their own schedule.
How are the exams done?
Quizzes and assignments are online in the course. The final exam is taken online with proctoring; a person on the UPI Study team checks assignments, usually within two days.
How do my credits reach my college?
When the course shows 100% complete, request the official transcript from your dashboard. It is sent to the college you name, and you can send it to more than one. Check your college first with "Find my college" on this page, or ask Athena.

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100 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.

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