Theories of Learning
About 6 min · Child Psychology and Pedagogy · English
Time worked out from the lesson's 315 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.
Theories of Learning form the backbone of Child Psychology and Pedagogy in HP TET. This topic explains how children acquire knowledge, skills and behaviours—knowledge essential for any teacher designing lessons or managing classrooms.
Key ideas
- Behaviourism views learning as a change in observable behaviour caused by external stimuli; it ignores internal mental states. Key idea: Stimulus → Response → Reinforcement.
- Classical Conditioning (Pavlov): Learning occurs when a neutral stimulus is paired repeatedly with an unconditioned stimulus until it alone produces the response. Example: Bell + Food → Salivation; later Bell alone → Salivation.
- Operant Conditioning (Skinner): Behaviour is shaped by consequences—reinforcement (positive/negative) increases behaviour; punishment decreases it. Skinner Box experiments demonstrated this.
- Cognitivism focuses on internal mental processes—memory, attention, perception, problem-solving. Learning is information processing, not just behaviour change.
- Constructivism holds that learners actively build knowledge by connecting new information to prior experience. Two branches: Cognitive constructivism (Piaget—individual construction) and Social constructivism (Vygotsky—knowledge built through social interaction).
Watch out for
- Confusing Classical and Operant Conditioning
- Mixing Piaget and Vygotsky
- Ignoring Negative Reinforcement ≠ Punishment
Quick reference
- Pavlov → Classical Conditioning → Stimulus–Response association → Dog–Bell–Salivation.
- Skinner → Operant Conditioning → Behaviour shaped by reinforcement/punishment.
- Thorndike → Laws of Effect, Exercise, Readiness → Trial-and-error learning.
- Piaget → Cognitive Constructivism → Schema, assimilation, accommodation.
- Vygotsky → Social Constructivism → ZPD, scaffolding, MKO.
Check yourself: 3 questions
1. A teacher rewards a student with praise every time the student answers a question correctly in class. This approach is primarily based on which learning theory?
2. The concept of 'Zone of Proximal Development' was proposed by which psychologist?
3. In Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory, the 'Zone of Proximal Development' refers to:
This lesson is cut from the topic's note, not rewritten. Fact-checked on 21 Oct 2026: an AI-assisted check of this note against cited sources; the errors it found were corrected that day. Some errors may remain. The questions are from Shishya's validated question bank.
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