In the act of classical conditioning, the learner comes to respond to stimuli other than the one originally calling for the response (as when dogs are taught to salivate at the sound of a bell). One says in such a situation that a new stimulus is learned. In the human situation, learning to recognize the name of an object or a foreign word constitutes a simple instance of stimulus learning. Such an event is called sign learning, because, in knowing the sign for something, people to some extent make a response to the sign similar to that which they would make to the object itself. Learning new vocabularies, new terms and conventions, or algebraic and chemical symbols all involve some degree of classical conditioning. It is thought probable that one trains the emotions in the same way, for people may learn to feel pleasure not only when they meet the original situation causing the pleasure but also when they see some wider context associated with it. That idea is important in school teaching and helps in a general way to explain children’s positive and negative feelings toward school, feelings that may have arisen originally from difficulties in learning specific school subjects.

Operant, or instrumental, conditioning is so called because, in making their responses, learners provide the instrument by which a problem is solved. Such learning is more important to schoolwork, for teachers are concerned ultimately with drawing forth new responses from their students. Learning is active, and, after the early acquisition of vocabulary, terminology, and rules (by stimulus learning), the learner must use this material in problem-solving responses. By reinforcement (e.g., a reward), both sorts of learning can be combined.

Conditioning theories are not wholly adequate to explain school learning, since the learner is not simply a responder. Intervening between the stimulus and the response is the learners’ total conscious structure, made up of the results of experience, previous teaching, attitudes, and their own capacity to comment upon and edit their own responses. Simple reinforcement is also inadequate in that the stimulus and the response are not linked in an exclusive one-to-one basis. Several stimuli may evoke a single response, and several responses may be made to a particular stimulus. Those form the behavioral bases for the formation of concepts and transfer effects from one topic to another. The two basic modes of stimulus-response learning provide a ground analysis of school learning, but the complexity of academic achievement calls for much elaboration on the simple model.

Cognitive theories

Cognitive theories are appropriate to the school situation, for they are concerned with knowing and thinking. They assume that perceiving and doing, shown in manipulation and play, precede the capacity to symbolize, which in turn prepares for comprehensive understanding. Although the sequence of motor-perceptual experience followed by symbolic representation has been advocated for a long time, Piaget offered the first penetrating account of that kind of intellectual growth. His views have exercised great influence on educators.

Cognitive theories of learning also assume that the complete act of thought follows a fairly common sequence, as follows: arousal of intellectual interest; preliminary exploration of the problem; formulation of ideas, explanations, or hypotheses; selection of appropriate ideas; and verification of their suitability.

Teaching based on cognitive theories of learning recognizes, first, the growth in quality of intellectual activity and capitalizes on that knowledge by organizing instruction to anticipate the next stage in development but not await it; otherwise there would be no instruction. That is, instruction should pace development but not outstrip it. Second, it seeks to tune the learning situation to the sequences of the complete act of thought and to arrange, simplify, and organize the subject matter accordingly. Some educators emphasize strongly the arousal phase; in many modern science curricula there is, thus, the idea of inquiry training, which tries to arouse in the child a spontaneous rather than a directed interest. Other educators are concerned more with the middle intellectual phases of the thinking sequence—especially the playing with hypotheses or hunches and the working with organizing ideas and concepts.

Once started, the motivation of cognitive learning depends less on notions of reinforcement and more on standards of intellectual achievement generated by learners themselves. Accordingly, learners may begin to have aspirations and to set themselves future standards that are influenced by their past performances and those of their fellows.

Maturation and readiness theories

Readiness theories of learning lean heavily on the concept of maturation in stages of biological and mental development. It is assumed that a child passes through all stages of development in reaching maturity. The teacher finds out what a child is ready for and then devises appropriate materials and methods. Much of the work on reading skills, for instance, makes use of the readiness concept. The Italian educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952) claimed that “periods of sensitivity,” corresponding to certain ages, exist when a child’s interest and mental capacity are best suited to acquiring knowledge of such things as textures and colours, tidiness, and language.

Insofar as Piaget offered a learning theory, it was based on the idea of readiness. But his approach to development does not overemphasize maturation and readiness, for he pointed out that, after the first few months of life, maturation is marginal in its effects, whereas experience is essential. Development through different intellectual phases, he believed, is necessarily coincident with relevant active experience; readiness is actively promoted, not passively entered, and the teacher must endeavour to be a step ahead of any particular level of readiness.

Structural theories

The second half of the 20th century saw a revival of the concept of the structured wholeness of experience, which Gestalt psychologists had first introduced early in the century. The whole of experience, in that view, is more than the sum of its parts. In educational terms, a new experience—such as a new historical text, an exposition in science, or a problem rider in geometry—begins by seeming relatively formless and unstructured. Learners, who do not yet know their way about the material, begin by seizing upon what appears to them to be important features or figures. They then reformulate the experience in those new terms. The insight gradually becomes more and more structured until finally they reach an understanding or a solution to the problem. It may be that, in all those processes, learners may try anything they can think of, usually in a haphazard way.

Piaget improved upon Gestalt notions by suggesting a thought structure of a more adaptable nature—one that becomes more differentiated and intuitive with experience. He listed three psychological properties of a structure: wholeness, relationship between parts, and the principle of homeostasis, whereby a mental structure adjusts itself to new experience by assimilation and accommodation. That kind of structuralism found quite independent advocates in other fields. The American linguist Noam Chomsky, for example, has argued that there are innate linguistic structures in the young mind, just as Piaget insists that there are thought structures.

A belief in the structural nature of experience would conceive of the teacher as an encourager, example provider, coanalyzer, and cobuilder of mental structures that originate in the learner in a relatively undifferentiated state. Learners are assumed to be active in forming structures and to be making the best they can of the situation they are experiencing. The teacher’s task is to help and moderate this process of the learners’ active construction. That notion works easily and well with able children but entails careful selection with less able students.

Others have also stressed the structural nature of advanced cognitive learning. Each area of human knowledge, in that view, is said to have its own unique structure composed of its concepts and their relationships and its own basic modes of progress. It is suggested that teaching a school subject should not lead to too much tampering with the inherent structural order of the subject but should follow the structure and lines of development of the subject itself. Teaching should not be contrived and artificial. Thus, economics should be taught as an economist views it or physics as a physicist views it or language as a linguist views it. Although such ideas are generally attractive, they have not been widely translated with any success into actual school practice.