Why this is true is complicated. (If you’re teaching, you may have more pressing concerns than being able to define obscure learning theories which don’t seem to have a place or role in what you’re teaching tomorrow.) I thought it might be useful to have a brief overview of many of the most important learning theories teachers should know in a single graphic, which is why I was excited to find Richard Millwood‘s excellent graphic.
Millwood is Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, Director of Core Education UK. (You can read his blog here.) While the graphic is necessarily brief (and has a few typos), I found it did a great job of bringing together a lot of the most critical–and common–learning theories in one place.
If you get nothing else from a post like this, perhaps the most critical takeaway is that there are dozens of theories that underpin what and how you teach already, and that the better you understand them, the better chance you’ll have to master your current approach and begin to bring new possibilities into your classroom as your ‘teaching brain’ makes room for this kind of thinking.
Some definitions were a bit too brief, so I added language for clarity or depth (though a few I need to go back and further deepen and explain, like ‘Interpersonal Relations.) Let me know in the comments if you have any suggested citations or ideas that could improve the resource. I’ll continue to add resource, links, and citations as relevant.
For related reading, see our Dictionary for 21st-Century Teachers.
A Visual Summary: 32 Learning Theories Every Teacher Should Know
1.Instructivism
The premise behind ‘Instructivism’ is that teachers take on a central role in the learning process and transfer that knowledge directly to the students.
See also Transfer and Direct Instruction.
2. Multiple Intelligences
We have several different ways of learning and processing information, but these methods are relatively independent of one another: leading multiple intelligences as opposed to a (single) ‘general intelligence) factor among correlated abilities.
3. Experiential Learning
Knowledge is continuously gained through both personal and environmental experiences. The learner must be able to reflect on the experience, use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience, and make decisions and solve problems to use the ideas gained from the experience.
4. Learning Styles
Optimal learning demands that students receive instruction tailored to their learning styles. (And stop learning styles don’t work.)
5. De-schooling Society
School is damaging to education: “The pupil is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something (well) or new.”
6. Homeschooling
Homeschooling: Characterized primarily by the family being responsible for the child’s ‘education.’ There’s a spectrum of approaches available from reproducing school at home, to project-based learning in authentic and self-actuated and organized learning environments, to complete ‘unschooling.’
7. Unschooling
The underlying assumption of Unschooling is that children will learn naturally if given the freedom to follow own interests and a rich assortment of resources.
An educational movement guided by passion and principle to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action.
9. Interpersonal Relations
Teacher types: lion-tamer, entertainer and new romantic–the problem of self-judgment in assessment
10. Montessori Education
Montessori Principles:
- Mixed-age classrooms, with classrooms for children aged 2.5 or 3-years-old to 6-years-old.
- Student choice of activity within a prescribed-range of options
- Uninterrupted blocks of work time
- A ‘Constructivist’ or ‘discovery’ model where students learn concepts from working with materials rather than by direct instruction
11. Scientific Pedagogy
Education-based on science that modifies and improves the individual
12. Experiential Education
The process that occurs between the teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content.
13. Constructionism
The underlying principle of Constructionism as a learning theory is that the learner is not a passive ‘vessel,’ but must actively participate in their own learning. It requires learners to build on existing knowledge when acquiring new knowledge.
14. Social Constructivism
A learning theory founded on the idea that meaning is both built and socially-negotiated through interactions with others.
15. Constructivism: Radical Constructivism
Knowledge as mental representation:
1a. Knowledge is not passively received either through the senses or by way of communication;
1b. Knowledge is actively built up by the cognizing subject;
2a. The function of cognition is adaptive, in the biological sense of the term, tending towards fit or viability;
2b. Cognition serves the subject’s organization of the experiential world, not the discovery of an objective ontological reality.
A framework for unifying otherwise disparate ‘strands’ of teaching and learning. In ‘PBL,’ students learn through the design, completion (and often ongoing iteration) of ‘projects.’ One way to think of PBL is in contrast to traditional ‘units’ of ‘instruction.’
17. Genetic Epistemology
A human being develops cognitively from birth throughout his or her life through four primary stages of development; sensorimotor (0-2), preoperational (2-7), concrete operational (7-11), and formal operational (11+). Assimilation (occurs through the) incorporation of new experiences into existing mental schema; accommodation changes mental schema.
18. Zone of Proximal Development
The area of capabilities that learners can exhibit with the support from a teacher.
19. Scaffolding
Scaffolding is the support given during the learning process which is tailored to the needs of the student with the intention of helping the student achieve his/her learning goals.
20. Discovery Learning
Learners obtain knowledge by forming and testing hypotheses.
21. Meaningful Learning
New knowledge to acquire is related with/to previous knowledge.
22. Mastery Learning
In Mastery Learning, ‘the students are helped to master each learning unit before proceeding to a more advanced learning task.”
23. Educational Objectives
Taxonomy of learning objectives that educators set for students in three ‘domains’: Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor. Learning at the higher levels is dependent on achieving lower levels (first). Designed to motivate educators to focus on all three domains, creating a more holistic form of education.
24. Radical Behaviorism
Learning as a process of forming associations between stimuli in the environment and the corresponding responses of the individual. Reinforcement strengthens responses and increases the likelihood of another occurrence when the stimulus is present again.
25. Communities of Practice
Groups of people who share a concern of a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
26. Situated Learning
According to Northern Illinois University, Situated Learning is “an instructional approach developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in the early 1990s, and follows the work of Dewey, Vygotsky, and others (Clancey, 1995) who claim that students are more inclined to learn by actively participating in the learning experience. Situated learning essentially is a matter of creating meaning from the real activities of daily living (Stein, 1998, para. 2) where learning occurs relative to the teaching environment.”
27. Conversation Theory
A cybernetic and dialectic framework that offers a scientific theory to explain how interactions lead to ‘knowing.’
28. Competency-Based Learning
Competency-Based Learning is an approach to learning that focuses on actual, observable skills (or ‘competencies’) rather than grasp of concepts as measured by traditional academic assessments. Though mastering competencies obviously requires understanding of concepts, it is not driven towards that end.
29. Problem-Based Learning
An approach to learning where the solving or important ‘problems,’ often through inquiry and Project-Based Learning catalyzes the learning experience.
30. Place-Based Education
The emphasis of a meaningful ‘place’ (that is, one meaningful to the learner) in the circumstance of learning.
31. Question-Based Learning
A formal process of inquiry where questions are formed, then improved based on the revelation of relevant, significant, and accurate data.
See also, the Question Formation Technique.
32. Learning Blends/Combination Learning
An alternative to traditional academic ‘lessons,’ combination learning blends are combinations of learning ingredients (e.g., topic, audience, outcome, apps,
A Visual Summary: 32 Learning Theories Every Teacher Should Know
