ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief overview of some general learning theories and discuss how learning in educational institutions, such as schools making use of humanist learning theory. Learning theories are not made by a coherent group of scholars. Learning theory is a field with many large and small rivers running in different directions, then bending and sometimes crossing or blending in a complex network. Ivan Pavlov’s experiments led to the theory of conditional reflexes, which describes the mechanisms of the acquired reactions, which became a way to understand learning in behavioural science. The cognitive approach was taken up by the technical sciences, and in many ways seemed to evolve with the computer sciences. The cultural paradigm in learning theory focuses, broadly speaking, on social, cultural, situated-embodied and contextual processes. The young field of posthumanist learning theory wants to abandon humanist learning theory as relevant for how to approach education pedagogically.
