Lecture
The structure of the learning process has always attracted the attention of psychologists and didactics specialists. Different psychological schools, in line with their own views, have represented the content and essence of learning in different ways. The main psychological theories that have addressed the problem of learning include behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, cognitive psychology, activity theory, and humanistic psychology (we examined them earlier in connection with the psychology of instruction).
Representatives of behaviorism (J. Watson, E. Thorndike) view learning (learning/conditioning) as an organism's acquisition of new forms of behavior. "The formula “situation – response" expresses any process of learning" – this is how the American psychologist and educator Edward Thorndike formulated the starting position of behaviorism . This theory was later developed intensively by the American psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner, who put forward the concept of operant conditioning: an organism acquires new responses because it reinforces them itself, and only after that does an external stimulus evoke the response. The most important tenet of behaviorism in substantiating the theory of learning is the structure "stimulus – response – reinforcement". The individual is a passive element that merely reacts to external influence, to external stimuli. The learner's activity, in this case, is reduced to the mechanical execution of specific operations.
Gestalt psychology takes a different position in interpreting the essence of learning. According to this concept (M. Wertheimer, W. Köhler, K. Koffka, K. Lewin), the student's activity in learning is reduced to the role of a stimulator of internal changes in holistic structures and motivations, based on discernment, comprehension, and insight. Also, in Gestalt psychology, a child's process of learning is viewed as a transformation of personal experience.
Cognitive psychology, represented in particular by the American psychologist Jerome S. Bruner, views learning as the process by which the student creates his or her own "cultural experience", which has a social character and is conditioned by the cultural-historical context. According to another representative of the same school, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, in the course of instruction the student masters structured information and performs formal-logical operations. His or her activity is entirely determined by age-related stages of mental-cognitive development: from the sensory and preoperational stage (preschool age), through the stage of concrete operations (early school age), to the stage of formal-logical operations (age 15).
A special role in substantiating the theory of learning belongs to the general psychological theory of activity, formulated by A. N. Leontiev, S. L. Rubinstein, and others. This theory made it possible to present instruction as the activity of the one who teaches and the one who is taught, and to justify strengthening the role of the latter in the instructional process. According to this theory, in the course of instruction the student performs specific formal-logical and creative operations, prescribed by a programmed and fully socially determined activity, while the student has a high degree of comprehension of the learning.
Against the background of the concepts presented, the ideas of representatives of humanistic psychology (C. R. Rogers, A. Maslow) acquire particular significance in revealing the essence of learning as an activity. In their understanding, learning is a self-directed structuring of personal experience for the purposes of self-development and self-organization of the personality. They perceive and interpret instruction as an independent activity of the learner, recognizing that he or she plays the leading role in the instructional process; they justify the need for the student to use personal experience in solving educational and creative tasks and to retain freedom in choosing forms of activity.
A brief overview of the psychological theories of learning presented shows that their authors proceed from either a mechanistic or an organic model of the world, of the human being and his or her psyche, and the conclusions they draw largely remain merely theoretical premises of instruction, and consequently of learning as the cognitive activity of the student within the holistic process of instruction.
In pedagogical science it is universally recognized that learning – is a specific type of human activity capable of regulating its own actions in accordance with a set goal. The components of learning are motives, learning actions, monitoring, evaluation, and analysis of the results of a learner's level of instruction, upbringing, and personal development. The most important constituents of learning as an activity are its content and form.
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