Theories of Learning
Introduction
This brief paper aims to establish the evolution of learning theories leading to connectivism. It will try to establish how learning has been impacted by technology and need to develop practices learning in a new learning environment where information is always on hand at all times and places. It is important to create tools that respond to these new needs.
Looking into the history of ideas about what the process of human learning means to note that theories of learning based teaching and learning strategies of education systems are not immune to the emerging challenges of the digital era. Behaviorism, one of the three most important lines of thought in this area, was consolidated in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century proposing an approach that conceived the mind as a black box and gave emphasis to external stimuli and observable behaviors, essential in the aspects of an emerging industrial society. Similarly, the bases of constructivism was developed in Europe in socio-economic contexts and very particular intellectual (with Piaget in Switzerland and Vygotsky in Russia), while the conception of the brain as symbolic machine, own the cognitive theories of learning appeared with the first computers in the mid-twentieth century.
Contemporary and Emerging Theories of Learning
Not surprising, then, that the emergence of new conceptions of multiple natural and social phenomena affect the way in which learning is understood.
Introduction
This brief paper aims to establish the evolution of learning theories leading to connectivism. It will try to establish how learning has been impacted by technology and need to develop practices learning in a new learning environment where information is always on hand at all times and places. It is important to create tools that respond to these new needs.
Looking into the history of ideas about what the process of human learning means to note that theories of learning based teaching and learning strategies of education systems are not immune to the emerging challenges of the digital era. Behaviorism, one of the three most important lines of thought in this area, was consolidated in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century proposing an approach that conceived the mind as a black box and gave emphasis to external stimuli and observable behaviors, essential in the aspects of an emerging industrial society. Similarly, the bases of constructivism was developed in Europe in socio-economic contexts and very particular intellectual (with Piaget in Switzerland and Vygotsky in Russia), while the conception of the brain as symbolic machine, own the cognitive theories of learning appeared with the first computers in the mid-twentieth century.
Contemporary and Emerging Theories of Learning
Not surprising, then, that the emergence of new conceptions of multiple natural and social phenomena affect the way in which learning is understood.