Write an evaluation of two recognised learning theories.
GUIDANCE
Your response should be a maximum of 500 words.
The assignment planners within your study materials will provide you with additional guidance for this question.
You must include citations within your work where you refer to theory and provide a references list.
Learning styles
Research into learning styles is mostly linked with Honey and Mumford (1982). They identified four learning styles, each one associated with a preference for a particular stage of Kolb’s Learning Cycle.
Experiential learning
This theory of learning emphasises that learning is achieved through experience, the process of reflection and by taking action. This is best explained through Kolb’s Learning Cycle (1975).
Behaviourist learning
Behaviourism primarily focuses on ‘classical conditioning’ and ‘operant conditioning’ as tools to learn or change behaviour. Two of the most famous theorists in this field of psychology are Pavlov (1927) and Skinner (1948). Both carried out experiments using animals to demonstrate how classical and operant conditioning actually work. As animals were used for the experiments, some of the results were generalised to include humans. This is considered to be a limiting factor, or criticism, of behaviourist learning theory.
