ABSTRACT
In order to develop presentation and communication techniques that facilitate effective learning, a teacher must have some understanding of how pupils learn. Research reveals information about human behaviour, motivation, achievement, personality and self-esteem, all of which impact on the activity of learning. Jerome Bruner also placed an emphasis on structured intervention within communicative learning models. He formulated a theory of instruction, central to which is the notion of systematic, structured pupil experience via a spiral curriculum where the pupil returns to address increasingly complex components of a topic. Current and past knowledge is deployed as the pupil constructs new ideas or concepts. Learning strategy describes the ways in which learners cope with tasks or situations. These strategies develop and change as the pupil becomes more experienced. D. A. Kolb envisaged a cyclical sequence through four ‘stages’ of learning (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, active experimentation) arising from the interaction of two dimensions.
