What is Learning Science?
In its simplest terms, Learning Science is a bridge between three distinct and historically separate fields: Education, Psychology - typically Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, and a range of other disciplines. The role of learning science is to explore each field above so that teachers, teacher leaders, and training professionals from all industries better understand how individuals learn at varying life stages, how people learn as groups, and how organizations learn as a collectives. For a more comprehensive overview of the learning sciences, I suggest reading The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Science - R Keith Sawyer.
How does Learning Science help K-12 teachers?
From my perspective, the Learning Sciences reduce teacher workload by helping teachers, parents, school administrators, curriculum specialists, and district-level stakeholders identify and implement scientifically supported learning processes. This means that Learning Science is actively removing neuromyths such as right/left brain learning, and auditory-visual-kinesthetic learning preference inventories from teacher workloads. The result is learning grounded in a few sound, proven learning theories, teaching methods, and study techniques rather than an unending catalog of "new methods."
*Nothing you will read on my site is new. In fact, some of the topics and resources are hundreds of years old.
Learning Science is not relegated K-12 systems. Instead, Learning Scientists commit a great deal of their education and training to understanding Andragogy - how adults learn. Learning Scientists bring their knowledge of adult learning to K-12 professional development sessions, school program evaluations, and organizational learning initiatives. The result of these efforts are professional learning events that are not only timely and relevant to teachers, but delivered in a fashion that respects and invites teacher expertise during training events.
What theories are relevant to K-12 teachers?
I strongly advocate for the incorporation of three and only three learning theories where K-12 is concerned. I'll link videos to the founders of those theories below, but before I do, it's worth mentioning that Constructivism and Instructivism apply to all learners. Andragogy is only applicable to adult learners, and should only be used to develop training programs for adult learners.
Constructivism - Piaget and Vygotsky
Instructivism - Herbart
Instructivism is commonly known as direct instruction or explicit instruction. This theory is largely built on the work of Johann Freidrich Herbart. Herbart's five step lesson planning and delivery guide is what most educators are referencing when they use the term pedagogy - or the leading of children through an educational process. The process is comprised of the following steps:
"(1) preparation, a process of relating new material to be learned to relevant past ideas or memories in order to give the pupil a vital interest in the topic under consideration;
(2) presentation, presenting new material by means of concrete objects or actual experience;
(3) association, thorough assimilation of the new idea through comparison with former ideas and consideration of their similarities and differences in order to implant the new idea in the mind;
(4) generalization, a procedure especially important to the instruction of adolescents and designed to develop the mind beyond the level of perception and the concrete; and
(5) application, using acquired knowledge not in a purely utilitarian way, but so that every learned idea becomes a part of the functional mind and an aid to a clear, vital interpretation of life. This step is presumed possible only if the student immediately applies the new idea, making it his own" (Britannica, 2025).
Constructivism vs. Instructivism (Video)
Andragogy - Malcolm Knowles (Video)
Those are the major theories I tend to advocate for in K-12 settings. I included a great discussion about the debate between Constructivism and Instructivism. There will be resources for educators on this site that will help turn theory into practice in the near future. For now, the Constructivism vs. Instructivism video is a great place to start thinking about the art of teaching.
-Bill
