Seventy years of theory, waiting for the tools

Icebreaker

Learning Theory Timeline Match-Up

Every idea about how people learn arrived in answer to the one before it.

1. 1Lay out two sets of cards: the theories, and the names and ideas that belong to them.
2. 2In small groups, match them up and place them along a timeline you can all defend.
3. 3Argue the order. Where a card could sit in two places, work out why.
4. 4Each person introduces themselves and names the theory or thinker they connect with most.

Working on your own? Lay the timeline out, then mark which theory the last training you ran was built on. Most sessions quietly belong to one of them.

Icebreaker

The Human Learning Line

Five ways into the same task, experienced before any of them gets a name.

1. 1Set up five stations along a line: repeat it, organise it, figure it out together, try and adjust, follow the plan.
2. 2Same challenge at each. Build the tallest free- standing structure from ten cups and five cards.
3. 3Rotate through at least three. After each, leave a note: this helped me because, or this frustrated me because.
4. 4Debrief, then reveal what each station was. Behaviourism, cognitive, constructivism, experiential, instructional design.

Working on your own? Run the build five ways yourself. The station you reached for first is the theory your sessions are quietly built on.

Icebreaker

Human Corners: Choose Your Lens

Each theory explains part of what happens. None of them explains all of it.

1. 1Label four corners: behaviourism, cognitive theory, constructivism, experiential learning.
2. 2Put a real problem to the room. You have to teach a new skill quickly. Where do you start?
3. 3Go to that corner, introduce yourselves, and build one short case for your choice.
4. 4Hear all four, then run a second prompt and let people move if their thinking has shifted.

Working on your own? Pick your corner, then argue the case for the corner you find least convincing. Doing it properly is harder, and more useful, than defending your own.

Journaling

Tracing the Meaning of Learning

Five theories, each correcting the one before it, none of them finished.

1. 1Take each theory in turn: behaviourism, cognitive, constructivism, experiential, instructional design. Three sentences each on what it says, one strength and one limit.
2. 2Name the theory closest to how you learn, and the one that covers something you need more of.
3. 3Say why it is risky for a trainer to lean on a single theory, and who gets overlooked when they do.
4. 4Finish with three things you would change in your next session because of this chapter.

Working with a group? Split the five theories across the room, one each, then teach them to each other in three minutes. Having to explain one properly is how the set gets learned.

Problem solving

Why Didn’t the Training Work

An hour of slides, one task under time pressure, and almost nothing transferred.

1. 1List four things wrong with the session design, in the order you would fix them.
2. 2Against each one, name the theory from the chapter that explains why it fails.
3. 3Redesign the hour: how it opens, where learners do something, where support is added, where reflection goes.
4. 4Say which single change would make the biggest difference, and why that one comes first.

Working with a group? Have everyone pick their single biggest change alone, then defend it. The theories people reach for say as much as the fixes they choose.

Worksheet

Shaping Behaviour or Building Meaning

Five theories, each right about something. None of them right about everything.

1. 1Read Approach A. Behaviourism and instructional design work from the outside in. Learning shows as observable behaviour, shaped by reinforcement and practice, with objectives and sequence planned in advance. Structure is the strength. The plan cannot see what happens inside the learner.
2. 2Read Approach B. Cognitive theory, constructivism and experiential learning work from the inside out. Learning depends on attention, prior knowledge and meaning the learner builds through doing and reflecting. Without scaffolding, that same freedom leaves some learners stranded.
3. 3Compare them: what each treats as evidence that learning happened; where the trainer’s effort goes: planning or responding; how each explains two people getting different results; what each one cannot account for on its own.
4. 4Critique both. Why does reinforcement still earn its place? Where does a fixed plan fall short in the room? What does building meaning give that drilling cannot? What goes wrong without scaffolding?
5. 5Make a judgement. No single learning theory is enough for effective training design. Agree or disagree, drawing on at least three of the five, and say what that means for a trainer on Monday morning. Finish the sentence: Effective training should…