New Directions in Learning and Motivation

Half of the mandate for New Directions for Teaching and Learning is to monitor developments in learning theory and research. This chapter discusses the changes in learning and motivation theory that have influenced the field since the beginning of the series. New Directions in Learning and Motivation Marilla D. Svinicki At the time of the inaugural issue of New Directions for Teaching and Learn- ing in 1980, psychological research and theory in the area of learning and motivation were about

to undergo a sea change, one that would have important implications for the design of instruction. The shift was from a behavioral perspective on learning to a cognitive perspective and its successors in constructivist and personal responsibility models of learning. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss each of these models in turn and the instructional paradigms that were based on them. We have not abandoned earlier instructional methods as new theories have come along, but we have realigned some of our interpretations of what is going on when learning takes place. The Behaviorist Model In the 1960s and early 1970s, the behaviorist model had become the dominant model in psychology (Greeno, Collins, and Resnick, 1996). According to that model, learning was the development of associations between stim- uli and responses or stimuli and other stimuli through the act of pairing and the delivery of contingencies based on responses. Behaviorism was a very important movement for psychology at the time, even though it had rejected much of the work that had gone before it as unscientific. The reasoning was that in order for psychology to be a science, it had to focus on repeatable, verifiable,...

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