api: YAML JSON TOON Database
version: 1.0.0
format: yaml
dataset:
  id: 2834
  slug: learning-theories
  title: Learning Theories
  description: Major theories of how humans and animals learn.
  summary: Major accounts of how people learn, from behaviorist conditioning through cognitive and constructivist theories to instructional models. Each entry gives the core claim in one line, which is enough to tell the theories apart and to pick the right one for a design or research question.
  use_when:
    - You are choosing a framework for instructional design, training or a literature review.
    - You need to distinguish theories that are often blurred, such as behaviorism and cognitivism.
  caveats:
    - "Theories answer different questions: some explain acquiring behavior, others explain acquiring concepts, others describe how to structure instruction."
    - Several are better supported for some kinds of learning than others; none is a complete theory of learning.
  related:
    - stages-of-development
    - cognitive-biases
    - personality-trait-models
  entry_count: 17
  fields:
    - section: data
      field: theory
      type: string
      example: Classical Conditioning
    - section: data
      field: description
      type: string
      example: Learning through association of stimuli.
  category: Psychology
  category_slug: psychology
  tags: psychology,learning,behavior
  view_count: 52
  created_at: 1793403093
  updated_at: 1793403093
data:
  - theory: Classical Conditioning
    description: Learning through association of stimuli.
  - theory: Operant Conditioning
    description: Learning through reinforcement and punishment.
  - theory: Observational Learning
    description: Learning by watching and imitating others.
  - theory: Constructivism
    description: Learners actively construct knowledge from experience.
  - theory: Cognitive Load Theory
    description: Working memory capacity limits learning and instruction.
  - theory: Behaviorism
    description: Learning understood as observable behavior change shaped by stimuli, reinforcement and the environment, without reference to internal mental states.
  - theory: Cognitivism
    description: Learning as the processing, storage and retrieval of information in memory, with attention to mental structures such as schemas.
  - theory: Social Learning Theory
    description: Bandura's account that people learn by observing models, with attention, retention, reproduction and motivation shaping what is imitated.
  - theory: Social Constructivism
    description: Vygotsky's view that learning happens through social interaction and language, supported within the zone of proximal development.
  - theory: Zone of Proximal Development
    description: The gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with skilled guidance.
  - theory: Scaffolding
    description: Temporary, adjustable support from a teacher or peer that is withdrawn as the learner becomes competent.
  - theory: Experiential Learning
    description: Kolb's cycle in which concrete experience, reflection, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation feed one another.
  - theory: Information Processing Theory
    description: A model of learning based on sensory, working and long-term memory, with limited capacity at each stage.
  - theory: Spacing Effect
    description: Material is retained longer when study is spread over time than when it is massed into one session.
  - theory: Mastery Learning
    description: Bloom's approach of requiring mastery of one unit before moving to the next, with feedback and corrective instruction.
  - theory: Andragogy
    description: "Knowles's set of assumptions about adult learners: self-directed, experience-rich, problem-centered and internally motivated."
  - theory: Connectivism
    description: A proposal that learning in networked environments consists of building and traversing connections between nodes of information.