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Chapter One
Learning: Comparative theoretical models
7
content must take into account the need to ensure that transfer in
the most efficient way possible. When such a transfer does not take
place immediately, the information is lost. The quantity of informa-
tion that can be stored in the memory depends on two factors:
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The attention devoted to the information by the learner;
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The presence, in the learner, of cognitive structures suitable for
receiving information.
The most important authors of the cognitivist approach are C. Hull,
E. Tolman, W. Kohler, K.J.W. Craick, G.A. Miller, E. Galanter, K.
Pribram, U. Neisser.
The constructivists believe that in the process of learning, the student
plays a central role while the designer/teacher takes on a marginal
role, aimed at facilitating the completion of that process. On the ba-
sis of this approach the teacher will have to produce a teaching pro-
gramme based on the learner, where the latter is an active part of the
knowledge process: thus it is essential to insert considerable practical
activities, structured and de-structured simulations that stimulate cre-
ativity and the formation of one’s own knowledge about the subject
matter of the course. The learner will acquire the information even
from sharing with his colleagues involved in the formative process, le-
veraging the observations and knowledge of the classmates; this may
contribute to the formation (construction) of a collective knowledge.
The authors of reference of the constructivist approach are L.S. Vy-
gotskij, J. Piaget, J. Bruner, D. Merrill.
1.2
Social interaction in the learning process
The dynamic character that underlies the learning process causes
social interaction to play a vital role in the process of the cognitive
development.
We showed above how the concept of learning has been developing
over the past twenty years, along the line of cognitive and construc-
tivist thinking.
In the cognitive perspective, during the learning process, all the pro-
cessing and reprocessing made by the subject on the acquired infor-
mation are relevant. Constructivism can be considered a particular
aspect of cognitivism: Jean Piaget, with his studies on the stages of
cognitive development and on the importance of cognitive conflicts