Learning and Instructional Theories

Abstract

This chapter covers the concepts of learning and instruction as well as the main scientific approaches to these concepts. It will also distinguish the concepts of education and instruction, for these concepts, though related, have different meanings. Education is concerned with the formation of the character and instruction has to do with the acquisition of instrumental and disciplinary knowledge. This chapter deals mostly with theories of instruction because the formation of character, although always present in any educational act, will not be the object of analysis. But a theory of instruction must be closely related to a scientific theory of learning. What gives theoretical and scientific consistency to a theory of instruction is its deep rootedness in a scientific theory that explains how human beings learn and develop. For this reason, this chapter also addresses the main scientific approaches to learning and describes how they support different instructional theories: the behavioral, the cognitive, and the situated learning approaches.