Is learning product or process?

This section explores different orientations to learning. Exploring these diverse perspectives should help you think differently and more broadly about what learning means and how it happens. Teaching is not just telling, and learning is not just listening.  The chart below provides a good overview of some of the main ideas related to learning theory. Many other theories are based on combinations of these basic theories. For example, the constructivist theory which is very popular now, draws heavily on the cognitive approach, but also combines elements of the theories below. Constructivism looks at learning as an active process in which the learner builds on prior knowledge to select and transform information based on their own cognitive structure (patterns of mental action that form intellectual activity).

For Four orientations to learning (after Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 138) see http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm

For an index of learning theories, see http://www.learning-theories.com/learning-theories/.