Human learning has been one of the most mysterious topics bothering scholars across the disciplines of philosophy, psychology and those interested in studying education. Over time, prominent scholars have tried to come up with learning theories that aim at explaining the whole mystery of learning in humans. These theories include the classical theories developed by Plato and Locke, behaviorist theories by John Watson and B.F. Skinner, concepts of conditioning like the classical conditioning by Ivan Pavlov, operant conditioning, and social learning theories, among many others. Out of all these theories, none seems to single handedly and comprehensively provide a conclusive explanation to the matter at hand. For this reason, this paper seeks to give a new perspective to the understanding of human learning by developing a theory that shall borrow bits from previously established theories, blending them into one theory. Significant facets shall be borrowed from the cognitive theory, behavioral theory, and the social learning theory. The paper shall also relate this new theory to Biblical contexts.
Learning Theory and its Importance
The theory under proposal in this text shall bring about the interaction of environmental learning theory, behavioral theory, cognitive theory, and social learning theory. The main idea is that humans learn and acquire a lot of knowledge from the people, substances, and events they interact in their lives across all ages. For them to comprehend and learn from these elements, certain conditions must prevail. First, the environment must provide the individual with the content to learn. Secondly, the learner must possess the ability and potential to notice- through observation, and register this information in their brains before processing them into knowledge. For the individual to process this information into knowledge, he or she may be guided through teaching or may have the information reinforced as being important through other means like being too prevalent and redundant in the environment.
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In light of the argument above, it is upon the educators to realize the most important and common elements in the environment that the learning population needs to be taught about. Moreover, the educators might need to generate their content from what the learners can interact with in the environment to ensure that the education they provide is relevant.
The environmental learning theory has significantly informed this theory as it provides the mainframe. The first demand of the theory is the availability of an environment with people, events, and substances that are observable by the learner (Kay, & Kibble, 2016). Therefore, the learner must be living in a rich environment that provides the content to learn. The concept of observing and imitating is well explainable through Albert Bandura’s social learning theory that suggests that people learn mainly from seeing what others do and imitating them (Akers, & Jennings, 2015). However, it is not a sufficient theory since it does not provide information on how the learner is able to do the observation and the imitation. For that reason, the cognitive theory can be used to provide an answer to that query. The cognitive learning theory looks into the structure and function of the brain in relation to learning (Resnick, 2017). It suggests that the human brain is set to observe things and events and register them as knowledge in its system whether the person is encountering it for the first time or subsequent times. When observing from the environment, an individual can be able to get new information about a person, thing or event or in the event that he or she is encountering it for a subsequent time, be able to retrieve knowledge about it. Noticing a new thing conforms to Locke’s theory that human beings’ brain is not empty since it can be able to recognize something new and still process some information about it (Bassey, Enang, & Mendie, 2018). This is observable with the Biblical case where Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit felt ashamed that he was naked. (Genesis 3:7). The presumption is that he must have noticed some change in his body and that of Eve, who was part of his environment. They had not been told by anyone about the shame in being naked but their minds upon realization of the situation prompted them to react the way they did.
For cases where the learning is about an element in the environment that the learner had interacted with earlier, there could be possibility of reinforcement through teaching or motivation as detailed in the behaviorist theory (Mason, 2017). For instance, a child may be introduced to a person, may be its uncle or anyone else and asked to call out his name. Later on, the parent may be left showing the child pictures of the uncle and the name may be uttered severally for it to grasp. In their subsequent meeting, the child is likely to try uttering the name of the uncle since it was taught and further given reinforcement like a verbal appreciation or clapping for knowing the name.
This new theory is important since it takes into account the ideas of the different non- conclusive theories and incorporates them into one major theory. It takes into consideration the process of gathering information, processing it as knowledge and later retrieving and using it. The theory is important as it gives insight to the human learning phenomenon, that has been subject for guesswork for a long time for educators and it shall add to the volume of knowledge on the topic of human learning theories.
Description of an effective teacher
Learning in this theory may occur either formally or informally since the teaching could be done in school or outside school since the learner is always exposed to some environmental setting. Using this theory, the teacher shall play the role of guiding the learner to have exemplary observational skills so that they can easily identify the various elements and happenings in their environment (Lavy, 2015). The teacher shall increase the awareness of the learner about the environment. In addition to instilling the observation skills, the teacher shall as well instill cognitive skills in the learner so that he or she is able to use their brain to learn from the environment or to even remember elements that he had encountered previously. The teacher shall also employ reinforcement and motivation skills when using this theory to help the student gain, retain, and retrieve knowledge quickly. In a formal set up an effective teacher employing this theory might have to ensure that the learning environment is rich. He or she may also assess the progress of the child as per the concepts and skills he has already taught.
Effective learning environment
The proposed theory emphasizes on an environment that is rich in events, people, and objects that can attract the attention of the learner and even trigger the mind to process knowledge about these elements (Cole, Lemke, Lecusay, & Michalchik, 2015). For example, in the case of two infants where one is brought up among other siblings and people around him or her, there are relatively high chances that there shall be a lot of activities that the child can observe and in their interaction with the other people may be motivated to learn and may even acquire some skills from observing and being reinforced to utilize the brain. This would not be the case for a child that grows in a very dormant environment with very few activities around him or her and without any motivating factors. This scenario can well be exemplified in the language learning of children where children living in an active environment tend to learn a language more quickly compared to those that are raised alone by very busy caregivers and parents.
Those that are raised among many persons may receive direct instructions for example they may have the caregiver telling them the names of certain things and may receive reinforcement about the same through verbal motivation or even rewards. Self-discovery may also be encouraged as seen with children that begin to utter words that they commonly hear from the adults even when no one has told them about it. A good explanation is when a child begins to utter some curse words that they often hear from the adults and the adults have the task of making them cease from using these words through negative reinforcement and punishment.
Technology is applicable to this teaching and learning since the learner could be exposed to the elements of the environment through technology that offer virtual teaching and learning. For example a child may be brought up alone in an environment where there are minimal activities around them. They may be exposed to mobile technology or media that acts acts as the teacher. An example is through the use of language learning software applications and television programs where the child listens to the voice from the devices and tries to imitate it while being recorded and the program is set to reinforce learning like the way a real teacher would do, In a formal classroom setting, even though the theory requires exposure to a rich environment, the teacher must be keen to ensure that he or she does not overprovide for these elements since they would be confusing to the learner. It is advisable that the teacher only provides content that matches the cognitive ability of the learner to avoid any confusion. The environment should however be very free and without any pressures to the learner since the pressure could inhibit the process of learning.
Participation of Special Learners
The theory takes into account the special learners that include those with special physical, psychological, cognitive, and even emotional needs. The basic standard of the theory is that it is learner-centered and any special learner should be put in their respective special environment and consequently treated as special (Carter, Lewis, & Wheeler, 2017). For instance, a hearing impaired learner should be growing among other hearing impaired persons from where s/he can observe how they live and interact with the environment. It is from such a setting that the learner shall acquire sign language skills and shall be able to appreciate their disability, seeing that there are other persons with the same difficulties as his. A learner that is specially gifted with high cognition could be placed in an overly rich environment as s/he has s/he capacity to comprehend and digest a lot of information from the environment even without reinforcement.
Addressing Behavior and Character Development
The theory effectively addresses behavior and character development, clearly detailing the source of behavior and character as being the environment that a person interacts with. According to this blended theory, a learner’s cognitive ability is responsible for the noticing of certain behavior in the environment and the subsequent picking and learning of the behavior, that later builds character. However, the process of picking and practicing a behavior may be regulated through a teacher and the same spills over to the development of character.
Learner Engagement
As mentioned earlier, the theory is mainly learner centered and even in the process of teaching, the teacher has to conform to content that the learner can easily relate with from the environment. This is observable from the teaching method by Jesus in the Bible. He used to tell parables using stories that his crowd could easily relate with. For example, in narrating the parable of the lost coin as detailed in he gave a simple story of a woman who had lost a coin and had to sweep the house clean, looking for it ( Luke 15:8-10). The woman rejoices when she finds it. With this, the learners could easily relate the story to common observable occurrences in the environment. He further engaged their cognitive skills in asking them why the woman was so happy when she found the coin to the point that she even informed her neighbors. While the crowd was still thinking about an answer, Jesus told them of how it bring him joy to find that one lost soul and bring it closer to salvation.
By doing so, anyone in the crowd that had thought of such an answer felt motivated to be at the same reasoning level with Jesus. Self-efficacy for these learners could be achieved if one was able to interpret the parables and live by the inner meaning as proposed by Jesus. Therefore, in this new theory, motivation could come from the teacher through positive reinforcement or may come from within especially for learners that are curious to observe and imitate a lot of information from the environment and process it to retrievable helpful knowledge. Self-efficacy for the learners is achievable with the ability to observe a lot from the environment and the successful conversion of the observation to knowledge.
Conclusion
From the discussion above, this new theory seems to give some conclusion to the matter at hand by incorporating and blending ideas from other theories. As mentioned earlier this theory takes into account the process of acquiring the content of learning by observation from the environment and subjecting this content to cognitive processes that process knowledge that can be stored in the learners brain and later retrieved in case of a similar encounter. Motivation and reinforcement may as well be sourced from the same environment that the elements were observed. The discussion has gone further to show how the theory is applicable in various stages of learning and even included how it was applicable in the Bible. However, more research needs to be done on issues of assessment, evaluation, and motivation.
References
Akers, R. L., & Jennings, W. G. (2015). Social learning theory. The Handbook of Criminological Theory, 4, 230.
Bassey, S., Enang, N. R., & Mendie, J. G. (2018). Innatism in Locke and the Belief in “OBOT”: A Contrastive Study. OmniScience: A Multi-disciplinary Journal, 8(2), 10-17.
Carter, S. L., Lewis, R. B., & Wheeler, J. J., (2017). Teaching students with special needs in general education classrooms. Pearson.
Cole, M., Lemke, J., Lecusay, R., & Michalchik, V. (2015). Documenting and assessing learning in informal and media-rich environments. MIT Press.
Kay, D., & Kibble, J. (2016). Learning theories 101: application to everyday teaching and scholarship. Advances in physiology education, 40(1), 17-25.
Lavy, V. (2015). What makes an effective teacher? Quasi-experimental evidence. CESifo Economic Studies, 62(1), 88-125.
Mason, S. A. (2017). Behaviorist Theory. Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders, 1-3.
Resnick, L. B. (2017). Toward a cognitive theory of instruction. In Learning and motivation in the classroom (pp. 5-38). Routledge.
