Open and honest debate is essential to scholarly inquiry. Though at times I wonder how some theories have become so widespread, I realize that knowledge acquisition is viewed differently based on historical context and the value placed on the individual. While Kerr and Kapp’s views most closely match my own it does not make them any more or less correct than the views of Downes. Behaviorism is not dead; in fact many components are integrated into educational technology and serve as a valuable method of instruction for all levels of student ability. Cognitivism provides a different and divergent way of explaining how we learn, but does not completely account for more complex processes like language acquisition and biology. In isolation, theory no matter how comprehensive, only serves to exclude other empirically-based points of view and stalls open dialogue that is crucial for deepening our understanding.
Perspective is a funny thing. The value we place on the individual in a learning context influences how we view education. Behaviorism was an important first step in developing our understanding and we do not want to abandon parts of the theories, nor do we want to blindly adopt theories of cognition without the understanding that certain tasks are best accomplished through rote learning and reinforcement. As our knowledge base increases and technology improves to a degree that we can develop our understanding of the multifaceted and complex relationship of the learner to the environment, we can better explain certain aspects of learning; however, a unified theory of learning would have to be comprised of parts of all schools of thought.
Regardless of the theory each has a place in the classroom; tools in your arsenal.
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