A Pragmatic System for Reconceptualizing, and Teaching, Behaviorist, Cognitive, and Situative Perspectives on Learning

• In Event: Educative Experience in Teacher Education

Abstract

Each of the perspectives in learning theory – the behaviorist, cognitive, and situative – offer different visions of how learning works. These three theoretical perspectives form a complex and sometimes contradictory web of theory and practice, posing a challenge to those who teach educational psychology. This conceptual paper proposes a new way of understanding, and teaching, these perspectives, one rooted in the concept of “experience” as it is employed by John Dewey and Charles S. Peirce. In this system, these theoretical perspectives are seen, not as separate and independent descriptions of the whole of learning, but rather as descriptions of different aspects of learning experience. This system forms the basis of a pragmatic method for teaching, and utilizing, these perspectives.

Authors

• Steven K. Wojcikiewicz, Western Oregon University

• Alicia Wenzel, Western Oregon University