Models of Student Learning

Part II has looked mainly at recent educational research on how students learn. The studies have remained close to the real experiences of students in higher education. Part III provides an outline of mainstream and educational psychology within a conventional framework of topics — memory, intellectual abilities, development, motivation, personality and cognitive styles. But these topics can also be understood, at least in part, within models of learning which summarize the work on students. This bridge passage thus looks at three models of student learning which have developed out of this research. These models then provide ways of re-examining the traditional topics in educational psychology to give greater overall coherence to this subject area.