HOW

DO STUDENTS LEARN BEST? 1

How Do Students Learn Best?

Alexandra Szucs
Bridgewater College

HOW DO STUDENTS LEARN BEST? 2

Abstract
There is always more than one way to solve a problem. Those methods can be applied to
teaching students. There are many ways to teach students from developmental followers
to cognitivists, and from the behaviorists to the information processing followers. Each
believes that they have found the best way to teach students. But like solving a problem,
there is always more than one way. There is the possibility to combine theories of
learning and create a better way to learn. Knowledge of theorists such as John Piaget and
Lev Vygotsky, developmental theorists; Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, behavior theorists;
Madeline Hunter, lesson planning; Robert Gagne and David Ausubel, Information
processing theorists; and Ulric Neisser and Jerome Bruner, cognitive theorists, can help
develop a sense of how students learn and that a combination of different elements of
these theorists is the way to approach teaching. Technology, society, and the world has
advanced, education needs to advance at the same pace.

Keywords: students, learn, learning methods, developmental, cognitive,

behaviorists, information processing

HOW DO STUDENTS LEARN BEST? 3

There are many ways to teach students and there are many differences in how
students learn best. There are the behavior theorists, the developmental theorists, the
cognitive theorists, and the information processing model theorists. Each believes they
have found the way that students learn best. However, a combination of each area creates
a form of teaching that is the most effective. From John Piaget and Lev Vygotskys
developmental ideas, Ivan Pavlov and B. F. Skinners behaviorist ideas, David Ausubel
and Robert Gagnes information processing ideas, Madeline Hunters lesson plan ideas,
and Ulric Neisser and Jerome Bruners cognitivist ideas, teachers can get a sense of the
different ways to teach students and how different students may learn best.
The developmental theorists believed that cultural and social forces shaped
learning. John Piaget focused on cognitive and linguistic development (Hogan a). His
main idea was that children learned differently from adults and seemed to go through
stages of learning. He developed 4 stages of cognition development for children that
included infancy, pre-school, childhood, and adolescence. In each stage, there were
certain things that children were capable of learning. Infancy dealt with sensorimotor
skills, pre-school acquired motor skills and schemes, childhood is when children begin to
thing logically, and adolescence is where the development of abstract thinking takes
place (Hogan a). Piaget was the first one to use and promote a child centered education
theory (Hogan a). Lev Vygotsky focused on scaffolding and created the zone of proximal
development. Development in children was a two-stage process with a social stage and a
personal stage. In the social stage children formed knowledge in working with others and
in the personal stage the learning took place internally. Vygotskys idea of scaffolding
required teachers to model and aid children in the learning. Through this, children
attained different levels of achievement in the zone of proximal development (Hogan b).
The zone of proximal development was used to determine if children were ready to move
on or needed more help in an area of learning.
The behavior theorists believed that learning was a patterned behavior repeated
over time that becomes a habit. Ivan Pavlov had the idea that you could condition
students to get the desired response through classical conditioning (Rohrer). In his theory,
there was an unconditioned stimulus and response and a conditioned stimulus and
response. Students can be conditioned to get the response by using two stimuli at the
same time, one of which is a reward type stimulus, and eventually taking away the
reward type stimulus. However, there had to be continuation of occasional rewarding so
as to not have the desired response go extinct (Rohrer). An example of Pavlovs theory
being used is when there is a warning bell to go to class, the students have been
conditioned to go to class or there will be a negative consequence. B. F. Skinner used the
idea of operant conditioning in which students have to be active participants to learn.
Learning took place by the ability to change behavior because of the consequence that the
student received after a response (Taldone). There are two types of consequences,

HOW DO STUDENTS LEARN BEST? 4

reinforcement where a behavior is strengthened and likely to happen more often and
punishment where the behavior is weakened and not likely to happen again. Taking it to a
deeper level, reinforcement could be broke down further into positive, providing a
pleasant stimulus, and negative, taking away a negative stimulus. Skinner believed that
punishment was ineffective and teachers should focus on rewarding desirable behaviors
rather than punishing undesirable ones (Taldone).
The information processing theorists believed that learning took place in three
stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. The information processing process involves new
information coming into the brain, going through the sensory register filter, attaching to
schema, and then being transported to short term memory to eventually move into long
term memory. David Ausubel created what he called the subsumption theory and
believed that students learned best in a textual or lecture type setting rather than a
laboratory type setting (Farrington). Students will not learn unless there is schema ready
to be associated or connected with new knowledge. Ausubel had two types of
subsumption, correlative subsumption where new material is an extension or elaboration
of what is already known and derivative subsumption where new material or
relationships can be derived from existing cognitive structures (Farrington). He pushed
for the use of advanced organizers to help students actually learn and retain the
information rather than memorize and forget it. Robert Gagne had a theory of conditions
of learning in which there were five categories of learning including verbal information,
intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills, and attitudes (Carr). Without those
conditions, learning could not take place. Gagne also created a preliminary format for
creating lesson plans that was later expanded upon by Madeline Hunter. He had nine
events of instruction that began with gaining the attention of students and moved to
informing the learner of the objective, stimulating recall of prior learning, presenting
stimulus material, providing learner guidance, eliciting performance, providing feedback,
assessing performance, and ending with enhancing retention transfer (Carr).
Madeline Hunter developed an idea of what every teacher should have general
knowledge so that they can be effective teachers. She created the Instructional Theory
into Practice teaching model that had seven components for teaching. The components
included knowledge of human growth and development, content, classroom management,
materials, planning, human relations, and instructional skills (Szucs). In addition to
needing general knowledge of the seven components, she also created a lesson plan
format and questions to ask oneself before beginning a lesson. Her elements of effective
instruction were ordered starting with the objectives of the lesson, followed by the hook,
standards and expectations, teaching, guided practice, closure, and ended with
independent practice (Szucs). The questions a teacher needed to ask before beginning to
teach were what instructional input is needed, what type of modeling will be most
effective, how will I check for understanding, how will I design guided/monitored

HOW DO STUDENTS LEARN BEST? 5

practice, what independent practice will cement the learning, should the students be made
aware of the lesson objective and its value, what anticipatory set will focus the students
on the objective. By following and answering these questions, Hunter thought students
would be able to follow the lesson and learn the information being presented.
The cognitive theorists believed that learning took place completely inside the
brain. Ulric Neisser focused on selective learning in which people only hear or learn what
they want (Nosal). Students need to be taught how to focus on many things at once and
not just one thing or even nothing. Students should be aware of what is around them and
what is changing. By having students summarize, it creates the ability to pick out
important information but it also requires them to be aware of everything so they dont
miss something (Nosal). Jerome Bruner had a theory of constructivism in which learners
construct new ideas or concepts based upon existing knowledge (Blosser). He also
defined discovery learning to be learning in which students construct their own
knowledge for themselves (Blosser). Bruner had 3 modes of representation, enactive, it
involves active based information, iconic, information in image form, and symbolic,
information is stored as a code of symbols (Blosser). He also had the idea of a spiral
curriculum in which simple ideas increasingly become more complex over time.
Pavlov, Bruner, Neisser, Vygotsky, Piaget, Hunter, Ausubel, Gagne, and Skinner
are not the only theorists in their respective fields but they are some of the more well
known ones. Each of them built off of the people before them, expanded ideas, and took
away some parts. It would be impossible to try and separate them and say that Piagetian
theory is the only way to teach because other theorists took some of his ideas and
incorporated them into their own. At the same time, it would be impossible to only use
Hunters way of lesson planning because she built off of Gagne and has parts that reflect
Piaget and Vygotsky. It is vital that teachers blend together the different theories to
provide the best learning experience and create the best way to teach students. Each
student is different so it may end up that the ideas of three or four theorists show up in
one class in one subject because of the demographics of that class. It would be ridiculous
to think that one way of teaching would be sufficient to encompass any classroom in the
twenty first century. With the increase in English as a Second Language students,
mentally and physically handicapped students, and the emotionally disturbed students,
teaching theory has become more difficult. It needs to continue expanding, as the class
becomes more diversified.

HOW DO STUDENTS LEARN BEST? 6

Works Cited
Blosser, J. J. Bruner [Prezi Presentation]. Retrieved from
http://prezi.com/tvjwbbroyyqe/j-bruner/
Carr, A. Robert Gagne [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from
https://cms.bridgewater.edu/course/view.php?id=6160
Farrington, A. David Ausubel [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from
https://cms.bridgewater.edu/course/view.php?id=6160
Hogan, M. Jean Piaget [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from
https://cms.bridgewater.edu/course/view.php?id=6160 (a)
Hogan, M. Lev Vygotsky [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from
https://cms.bridgewater.edu/course/view.php?id=6160 (b)
Nosal, E. Ulric Neisser [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from
https://cms.bridgewater.edu/course/view.php?id=6160
Rohrer, S. Ivan Pavlov [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from
https://cms.bridgewater.edu/course/view.php?id=6160
Szucs, A. Madeline Hunter [Prezi Presentation]. Retrieved from
http://prezi.com/-gm66stituqc/madeline-hunter/
Taldone, A. B. F. Skinner [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from
https://cms.bridgewater.edu/course/view.php?id=6160