Presentation to postgraduate students at the Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, UK, 28 Feb 2017. A very brief overview of some of the theories that are often referenced in TEL research.

1. A Whistle-stop Tour of
Theories for TEL Research
Doug Clow, MRes talk, 28 Feb 2018

2. ● Whistle-stop
● Tour
● Theories
● TEL Research
2Photo (CC) BY-NC-ND Ross G. Strachan https://flic.kr/p/2NUYKW

3. ● Routes to generalisability
● Big data or big theory
● Atheoretical approaches aren’t
● Show your workings
3
“All models are wrong,
but some are useful.”
(George Box, 1978)
Photo (CC) BY-NC Chris Jones https://flic.kr/p/dTdpnQ

4. 4
What is
learning?

5. Nuremberg funnel, 1902

6. Origins of
behaviourism &
constructivism
6

7. Behaviourism
● Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
● Classical conditioning (dogs)
● B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
● Free will largely illusory
● Operant conditioning
● Stimulus-response-reinforcer
● Reinforcement learning
● Positive > negative
● Teaching machines
7
Photo: Wikimedia Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B.F._Skinner_at_Harvard_circa_1950.jpg

8. ● Not behaviourism
● Not instructivism
● Learning is an active process
● Importance of learner’s existing ideas
● Discovery learning
● Inquiry-based learning
● Social constructivism
Piaget, Bruner, many many others
Constructivism
8

9. Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
● ‘Genetic epistemology’
● Children
● Stages of development
● Sensorimotor
● Preoperational (symbolic thought)
● Concrete operational
(logical thought)
● Formal operational
(abstract reasoning)
● Learning is active
9
Photo: Public domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_Piaget_in_Ann_Arbor.png

10. Jerome Bruner (1915-2016)
● Cognitive psychology
● Developmental psychology
● Educational psychology
● Spiral curriculum
● Discovery learning
● Environment important
● Scaffolding
10
Photo: © British Psychological Society

11. Other classics
11

12. Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development
in the College Years: A Scheme (1970)
William Perry
● 9 stages of development:
● Received knowledge
● learn the right answers
● Multiplicity
● conflicting answers, sometimes we don’t know
● Relativism
● answers depend on context
● Constructed knowledge
● commitment as ongoing process
12

13. Donald Schön (1983) The Reflective Practitioner
Chris Argyris & Donald Schön (1978) Organizational Learning
Reflection
● Reflection-in-action
● Reflection-on-action
● Single-loop learning
● Improvement within a framework
● Double-loop learning
● Change the goals, processes
13

14. David A. Kolb (1984/2015). Experiential Learning:
experience as the source of learning and development
Kolb’s learning cycle
14

15. 15
LEARNING
STYLES

16. 16
Learning Styles
● Believed by up to 95% of teachers
● Contradicted by empirical research
● Trying different approaches can be good
● Learners do have preferences
● ... they’re not always right
● ... they are not stable
● One ‘style’ often best for
most learners
● Too many versions
● Great idea, ruined by
reality not conforming

17. Journey to
Activity Theory
17

18. 18
Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)
● Cultural-historical context
● Zone of Proximal Development
ZPD dagram: Public domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zone_of_proximal_development.svg
Subject Object
Mediating
artifact

19. 19
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory
Yrjö Engeström (1987)
Diagram: In McAndrew, Taylor & Clow (2010), after Engeström (1987)

20. Political
engagement
20

21. Paulo Freire
● Critical pedagogy
● Learning as an active process
● Education as a political act
● No such thing as neutral
education
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968/1970)
21
Photo: (CC)-BY-SA Slobodan Dmitrov https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paulo_Freire.jpg

22. Actor-Network Theory
● Poststructuralism
● Science & Technology Studies
● Consider human and non-human actors
● Intermediaries vs mediators
Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, & others
22

23. Andragogy, Heutagogy
● Andragogy – Malcolm Knowles (1913-1997)
● Adult learners
● Are different from children
● Bring experience
● Expect influence
● Should be active participants
● Want applications
● Expect action on their feedback
● Heutagogy – Stewart Hase & Chris Kenyon
(2010)
● Self-determined learning
23

24. More recently
24

25. Approaches to Study Inventory
● Deep and surface learning
● Ference Marton, Roger Säljö, Noel Entwistle, Paul
Ramsden, Keith Trigwell, Mike Prosser, John Richardson.
● Context-dependent
● “on this course”
● Strategic, Amotivational
● Approaches to Teaching Inventory
● Conceptual change, information transmission
25

26. 1993/2001 Rethinking University Teaching: A Conversational
Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies
Diana Laurillard
26
Photo © UCL Institute of Education

27. 27
Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger-Trayner
Communities of Practice
● Situated Learning:
Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991)
● Apprenticeship
● “Groups of people who share a concern or a
passion for something they do and learn how to
do it better as they interact regularly.”
Quotes & photo: http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/
● “The online universe is cluttered
with spaces that nobody uses. It’s
also full of sites that are called a
community of practice even if no-one
is there!”

28. 28
Gráinne Conole, 7Cs of Learning Design, 2014
Learning Design
● Conceptualise: Vision, learners, essence, approaches?
● Capture: OER, others to develop
● Create: Learning activities?
● Communicate: Communication types?
● Collaboration: Collaboration types?
● Consider: Reflection and demonstration?
● Consolidate: How effective is it?
Photo: (CC)-BY Terese Bird https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Professor_Grainne_Conole_at_Institute_of_Learning_Innovation_University_of_Leicester.jpg

29. 29
Stephen Downes & George Siemens (2005)
Connectivism
● Learning theory for a digital age
● Learning occurs
through / in networks
● Connections vital
● Chaos, nebulous, rapid change
● Capacity to know more
● More important than current knowledge
Photos: Stephen Downes, George Siemens (via Twitter)

30. Meanwhile,
in the cognitive
world
30

31. Cognitive psychology
Cognitivism, cognitive approaches
● Big Five Personality Traits
● extraversion, agreeableness, openness,
conscientiousness, neuroticism
● Information processing
● Working memory / cognitive load
● Long term memory
● Spaced repetition
● Kahneman (2011) System 1 & System 2
● ‘Elephant and rider’
● … many, many more
31

32. Instructional Design
Robert Gagné (1916-2002)
● Gaining attention (reception)
● Informing learners of the objective (expectancy)
● Stimulating recall of prior learning (retrieval)
● Presenting the stimulus (selective perception)
● Providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
● Eliciting performance (responding)
● Providing feedback (reinforcement)
● Assessing performance (retrieval)
● Enhancing retention and transfer (generalization)
32

33. Intelligent Tutoring Systems
33

34. And finally …
34

35. What to take away
● Constructivism
● Activity Theory
● Communities of Practice
● Cognitive psychology
● Learning styles are a myth
35
Photo (CC) BY-ND Mike Carter https://flic.kr/p/nxxQzp