Research Paradigms and Perspectives on Learning

My reading this week focused around the question “What is the most important factor influencing human learning?” In order to seek answers to this question, we need to apply a suitable research paradigm (theory). The article describes eight of these paradigms and how they might be used to investigate the question above.

After describing these paradigms, the authors state their main conclusion:

There are numerous conditions that affect the relationships between methods and outcomes: This ubiquity of interactions leads to a combinatorial explosion of factors influencing learning. 

I understand this to mean that, because learning involves so many different factors (the diversity of learner types and abilities, learning environments, and teacher interactions etc.), it is impossible to choose one particular instructional theory as being “the best”. Each theory tends to approach the research question from its own perspective and so any conclusions reached cannot be considered definitive or conclusive i.e. “paradigms heavily affect [the] research methods and findings”. The authors do, however, refer to work done by Merrill which outlines five principles that are common among the different paradigms, stating that:

learning is promoted when learners (1) work on meaningful problems, (2) activate previous experience, (3) observe what is to be learned, (4) apply what has been learned, 

and (5) integrate what has been learned into their everyday life.

This is a useful framework which seeks to synthesize the strengths of each paradigm and find commonalities which can be generalized.

With regards to the implications of the above regarding research, the authors conclude by saying that

1. educational researchers should be conscious of the paradigm they are working in (including its opportunities and weaknesses) 
2. within their chosen paradigm, they should seek to “contribute to theory development because researchers without a theory are like wanderers in the desert and their research results will be blown away like sand” 
3. they should keep an open mind with regard to the other research paradigms as there are opportunities for new perspectives to gained from keeping them in consideration. 

I found the article interesting because it summarized the main views on “the big question”: What is the most important factor influencing human learning? The line “researchers without a theory are like wanderers in the desert and their research results will be blown away like sand” was a “stop” for me. Though difficult to pin down, a research question can at least be modified (somewhat) in the course of our research. Our chosen paradigm, however, is something to which we are anchored and gives us a solid foundation on which we can build.

I found Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction to be particularly interesting as they seem to provide a really solid general approach to facilitate learning. They made me think of the Instructional Skills Workshop I attended at UBC last August and the BOPPPS model that we used for lesson planning. This model is a great general approach to teaching and learning, and is similar in many ways to Merrill’s First Principles.

My question for about this reading is to ask you what you think the is the most important factor influencing human learning?

➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽➽

(extra bit!)

What is the most important factor influencing human learning?

Here's the "short answer" from the article

According to

1. Gestalt psychology, the most important factor influencing learning is insight and understanding 
2. behaviorism and neo-behaviorism, it is reinforcement 
3. developmental psychology, it is the learner’s stage of cognitive development 
4. cultural-historical theory, it is interaction with the world 
5. information processing theory, it is active and deep processing of new information 
6. cognitive symbolic theory, it is what the learner already knows 
7. cognitive resource models, it is the limited processing capacity of the human mind 
8. social constructivism, it is the social construction of meaning