LEARN · PRACTISE · DISCOVER
How Children Learn: Behaviourism to Experiential Learning
This lesson is for members
Join to unlock this lesson and the full course library, or log in if you are already a member.
Loading your cart…
Manage your orders, downloads and details.
Sign in to view your order history and download files.
LEARN · PRACTISE · DISCOVER
Join to unlock this lesson and the full course library, or log in if you are already a member.
LEARN · PRACTISE · DISCOVER
How do children actually learn? Different schools of psychology give different answers. This lesson covers the learning-process topics in this part of the syllabus: the fundamental concepts of behaviourism and their applications, structuralism, the relationship between thought and learning, building on children’s existing ideas, graphic organisers and concept maps, and experiential learning. Detailed learning theories (Thorndike, Pavlov, Skinner, Köhler, Bandura) are covered fully in the next course, APTET Learning Theories and Inclusive Education.
Behaviourism studies observable behaviour, not inner mental states. It explains learning as the formation of connections between stimuli (S) and responses (R) through experience. Key figures include J. B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, E. L. Thorndike and B. F. Skinner.
| Concept | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Stimulus | something in the environment that triggers a response |
| Response | the behaviour that follows |
| Reinforcement | a consequence that increases the likelihood of a behaviour |
| Punishment | a consequence that decreases the likelihood of a behaviour |
| Shaping | reinforcing small steps towards a target behaviour |
| Extinction | a learned behaviour fades when it is no longer reinforced |
Behaviourism explains habit formation and basic skills well, but it pays little attention to understanding, thinking and children’s own ideas, which cognitive and constructivist theories emphasise.
Structuralism was the first school of psychology, founded by Wilhelm Wundt (who set up the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig in 1879) and developed by his student Edward Titchener. It aimed to analyse the structure of the mind into its basic elements, such as sensations, images and feelings, mainly through introspection.
(In education, Bruner also spoke of teaching the structure of a subject: its fundamental ideas and how they relate. This links well with the “big ideas” approach below.)
Thinking and learning are closely related: thinking organises experience into knowledge, and learning provides material for thinking. Discrimination, noticing differences between similar things, is a basic thinking skill that underlies concept learning, such as distinguishing b from d, or a square from a rectangle.
Children come to school with ideas from everyday life. Some are accurate; others are misconceptions (“Heavier objects always fall faster,” “Plants get food from the soil”).
| Practice | How to do it |
|---|---|
| Start from prior knowledge | ask “What do you already know about…?” |
| Make connections | link new ideas to children’s lives and earlier lessons |
| Meaning-making | let children explain ideas in their own words |
| Relationships of concepts | show how ideas connect, for example evaporation, condensation and rain |
| Big ideas | organise teaching around a few powerful ideas, such as “living things depend on each other” |
David Ausubel argued that the most important factor in learning is what the learner already knows. He proposed meaningful learning (connecting new knowledge to existing knowledge) rather than rote learning, and advance organisers: short introductory overviews that prepare the mind for new material.
Graphic organisers are visual tools that show relationships between ideas, such as Venn diagrams, flow charts, tables and story maps. Concept maps, developed by Joseph Novak, show concepts in boxes connected by labelled lines (“plants → make → food”). They help children organise knowledge, reveal misconceptions and revise.
Experiential learning means learning through direct experience and reflection. John Dewey emphasised learning by doing. David Kolb (1984) described a four-stage cycle:
Class 4 pupils plant seeds in two pots, keeping one in sunlight and one in a dark cupboard (concrete experience). After a week they compare the plants and discuss the differences (reflective observation). They conclude that plants need sunlight to stay healthy (abstract conceptualisation). They then test whether plants grow towards light by placing one near a window (active experimentation). Finally, they make a concept map of “what plants need”.