Theories of learning - summary

"How Do People Learn – Research Report, Chapter 2" – CiPD

The following tables look potentially useful for referring to throughout H806, so I've copied them here and added in some brief reflections of my own…

Summary of approaches to learning by cluster

	For work	At work	Through work
Behaviour	Priming	Training	Guiding
Understanding	Engaging	Enriching	Problem-solving
Knowledge construction	Reflection	Enquiring	Immersing
Social practice	Networking	Participating (in communities)	Teamworking

(CiPD, 2007, p.28)

The question that I'm not 100% sure of here is why is it all about work? The typical OU student is anything but typical. They can be teenagers who are yet to imagine which career they'd like to go into, to mature students who are looking to change career or study for fun… or retired people who are looking for a challenge but have no intention of a directly related work application for their new found skills and knowledge. How so to apply the above to them? How does it all fit together in a distance learning environment where courses may be offered from within an institute / employment situation to open content courses where the provider has no idea which approach would be most applicable since the purpose of study is unknown?

How to select an appropriate approach to learning if your students are unknown / anonymous?

 

Summary of approaches to learning by focus, process and outcome

	Focus	Process	Outcome
Behaviour	The expert	Reinforcement	Skills
Understanding	The content	Delivery	Knowledge
Knowledge construction	The learner	Activity	Performance
Social practice	The group	Practice	Change

(CiPD, 2007, p.29)

Have to say, I do like this summary and I can relate to it in my own contexts, but I'm not sure what is meant by 'performance' in the outcome column for knowledge construction. Is performance really the outcome? And performance in what sense? Improvements in performance? By whose standards? Qualitatively? Quantitively?

This seems to me to be pretty ambiguous and although I'd have said my preferred approach to learning belongs in the constructivist camp, I still don't recognise the outcome here. I guess it's 'performance' in the sense of improvement in whatever position it is that you've been performing in to acquire the knowledge in the first place. But… not sure.