CSCL - A brief overview & interesting links for further study

  




 

 

Psychological theories; A brief survey of the changing views of learning

First of all; why do we provide a separate section on learning theories?

The reason we provide this separate link on learning theories is that these theories have had a profound influenced on the use of IT in education. We feel it is necessary to treat the basic ideas of these theories before we move into the specifics of how technology (IT) has been used in education in recent years (next main section). For this section we have used a variety of sources but our most important source has been; "Learning & Awareness; Ference Marton, Shirley Booth; (1997)".

 

What is learning & how does it occur?

The question; "what is learning?" seems simple enough. However, philosophically it is a very hard question to "answer", and this is why it has been a challenging topic for philosophers for centuries. The schools of thought on the nature of learning have been many and varied, but at the most basic level they differ on only a limited number of fundamental questions. These are questions like; "How does learning occur?", "What are the properties of knowledge? (absolute, relativistic..)" etc.. We will not try to provide a comprehensive overview of all the views of learning and knowledge that can be found, but will concentrate on the dominant ideas and views of our century.

Our century; From behaviourism to Cognitivism to Constructivism;

If we speak in very broad terms about the trends in our century, we can identify three fundamentally different ideas about the nature of learning and what the properties/ nature of knowledge are. In other words the approaches not only include a view of how learning occurs, but also a view of what knowledge actually is (i.e is knowledge given and absolute or constructed and relativistic? etc...). These three basic approaches or psychological theories are referred to as behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism.

As stated above the reason that we include a section specifically on these psychological theories is that they lie at the heart of much of the change that can be observed in the use of technology in education during our century. It is important to note that there is a lot more to these theories than what we present here. To reiterate the important point for us and what we focus on here is that "changes" in the dominant psychological theories of learning have resulted in changes in the use of computers in education. We will get back to the specific aspects of this in the next main-section where we deal with the traits and background of CSCL as a research paradigm.

N.B!; A web site that gives brief overviews of learning theories can be found on the Internet 

     (Referencedate; 25th of April 1998)

Brief overviews of behaviorism, cognitivism & constructivism follows. The overviews concentrates on the main differences between the theoretical positions and are very general. There is a lot more to these "fields" than we present here;

 

Last updated; 09.07.98.
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