Great Minds on Learning

    During the Covid lockdowns of recent years, online technology became practically the only way of delivering learning. But a long road has brought us to such a place. This episode covers the theorists, inventors and entrepreneurs who pioneered technology delivery of learning, beginning in the early years of the 20th century with the mechanical teaching devices of Sidney Pressey and B. F. Skinne...

  Social constructivism had its origins in the thought of Karl Marx. However, it became a strong influence on educationalists in the capitalist West during the latter half of the 20th Century, and thinkers such as Piaget and Vygotsky are popular on teacher training courses to this day. But does its central tenet, that learning is socially constructed rather than individually discovered, hold up un...

    This episode focuses on happiness. Utilitarianism is a strand in philosophy that says the greatest happiness of the greatest number should guide our judgment in all things – including education. But does its modern descendant, positive psychology, place too much trust in looking on the bright side?   0:00 - Intro 1:20 - Introducing Utilitarians/Happiness 5:37 - Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) 17:06...

      This episode covers a sizeable sweep of history, from the perhaps misnamed Dark Ages and the Islamic Golden Age, on through the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. As the Christian and Islamic faiths spread, learning became a powerful tool of religion – and Religious Educators, in their turn, changed the shape of learning.   Introducing Religious Educators – 1:18 Augustine of Hippo (...

  Once the stuff of science fiction, Artificial Intelligence is now a part of everyday life. But the story of how it came into being is not often told. This episode reveals its roots in neuropsychology and observations of the physical processes in the brain that lead to learning. The theorists who Donald and John discuss began their work at a time when behaviorism, which by and large disouraged at...

  This episode was recorded live at the Online Educa Conference in Berlin and explores ideas of The Extended Mind. Where do our thoughts live? And if, as some theorists contend, they do not observe physical limitations, but extends to our technology tools and physical surroundings, what are the implications for learning?   1:22 - Introducing The Extended Mind 5:43 - Robert Stickgold (1945–) & Matt...

  This episode features a group of people who were not writers, philosophers, psychologists or learning theorists in any usual sense of the term. Nevertheless, their influence on learning has been profound and long-lasting. They were the religious leaders who founded four of the world's greatest faith traditions. 00:00 - Intro 01:20 - Introducing Religious Leaders 05:06 - Confucius (551 – 479 BCE)...

  All humans play games of one type and another. Philosophers and psychologists have seen play as an integral to our nature as human animals. Harnessing the power of this instinctual drive for the purposes of learning has been a perennial theme over the last three decades, givven greater impetus by the dramatic rise of computer games as a new and dynamic form of media. But can game-based experienc...

  GMoL is on a mid-season break, but in this bonus episode without Donald Clark, John discusses the series so far with Carl Chrisostomo. Under his social media alias of Carllearns, Carl has been 'learning out loud' on his journey of discovery in learning science. He reflects on the part GMoL has played as guide and wayfinder in that journey. In a sense, it's a learner takeover: both Carl and John...

This episode explores the impact of what has been called the most important idea in human history, Darwin's Theory of Evolution. A powerful idea, still to this day controversial in some quarters, its impact was felt far beyond the natural sciences where it was first formulated. But what does it mean for learning?   0:00 - Intro 1:19 - Introducing the Evolutionists 9:41 - Charles Darwin (1809 – 188...

  When Mark Zuckerberg announced the renaming of his company from Facebook to Meta in 2021, he provoked a surge of interest in this new thing, the Metaverse. But virtual worlds are nothing new, and people have been learning in virtual worlds for over a decade. This episode explores the thought of those who have tackled the practical and philosophical questions that learning in virtual worlds raise...

  This group of theorists focused on the easily observable fact that all learners are not the same, and attempted to systematise those differences according to learner preferences. With the best of intentions (in most cases) they divided learners into discrete groups (e.g Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic) and made recommendations for how educators should treat each group. This approach has since bee...

  At the very origin of our ideas of about learning, as well so much else that defines our culture, lies the extraordinary flowering of thought and discovery centred on Athens from the fifth to the second century BC. This episode takes us back to the very earliest group of thinkers this series will cover, the ancient Greeks. 1:02 - Introducing the Greeks 11:36 - Socrates  (c. 470–399 BC) 23:34 -Pl...

  This episode's thinkers were driven by a common belief that while practically all the attention and money in training and education is lavished on formal interventions, informal means of learning account for a much larger proportion of what actually happens. How should this insight change our view of learning, and what role does technology play?   Donald and John discuss a movement that has come...

  Workflow learning, or 'learning in the flow of work' as it is often called, is a hot topic these days. In a world where technology delivers fast, personalized information at the point of need, does it really make sense any longer to think of a course as the default unit of learning?   This episode explores theorists and practitioners who strove to take learning out of the classroom and the train...

  The issue of emotion is something often downplayed or even omitted altogether in accounts of how people learn and how they can best be supported in learning. And yet it turns out to be critically important. At a fundamental level, it is involved in how we encode, retain and access memories. It is also vital to engagement with learning. This episode focuses on theorists from Krathwohl to Shacklet...

  In the late twentieth century organizations embraced the information age and team-working became a more important aspect of workplaces. Along with this change went a shift in learning theory away from an exclusive focus on the individual. This episode looks at a group of theorists who explored learning within the context of teams, families, social networks and society as a whole.   ---------- 0:...

  Darwin's discoveries and the growth of mass education in the 19th Century set the stage for a quest to measure and assess human intelligence. But that quest has often seemed quixotic: marred by poor or non-existent science, skewed by commercial and political agendas, and marred, time and again, in Donald's view, by essentialism.   From eugenicist Sir Francis Galton to Daniel Goleman, who popular...

The Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its thinkers believed in individual liberty, religious tolerance, opposition to absolute monarchy and the dogmas of the Church, and an emphasis on the scientific method and the primacy of reason.   The Enlightenment overturned many then traditional ideas abou...

  From blackboards to interactive whiteboards, learning has always made use of technology. But with the advent of computers and then the internet, learning theory entered a new phase from the late 20th Century onwards – as thinkers grappled with the challenges of designing systems and content that could help people learn online. How could making programmable robots stimulate children to learn? Wha...

Learning has always had a moral dimension. In pre-enlightenment times religion played a big role in deciding what and how people should learn, but by the 20th Century much of that influence had waned, and thinkers began to explore the ethical bases of learning in different ways. This episode covers a group of thinkers who explored the moral dimension of learning within different cultural contexts,...

'We're now beginning to unpack what is really good for learners and teaching' says Donald Clark, 'and it's not what we thought it was.'   Learning Theory over the ages has concentrated largely on the 'front end' of the process: learning as an event and an experience. Less attention has been given to the back end, how one makes it stick. This episode concentrates on the people who explored these qu...

In this episode, Donald and John discuss a group of theorists who mostly focused directly on instructional design, and who between them created a body of work which is canonical to the practice of learning design.   Although their most famous maxims feature prominently on PowerPoints and blogs about learning design to this day, their ideas are often cherry-picked and misrepresented – as in the str...

  In this first episode of the first season of Great Minds on Learning, Donald Clark discusses the Behaviorists, a group of theorists who, starting with Pavlov in the early part of the 20th Century, did much to put psychology and the psychology of learning on an experimental, empirical basis.   He argues that the Behaviorists have been much misunderstood. In particular, the myths surrounding B.F....

  Another chance to hear the inaugural episode of Great Minds on Learning, which was originally aired back in March 2021 to considerable acclaim.   In this series, Donald Clark – the internationally famous author, blogger and entrepreneur, joins John Helmer to discuss the history of thought and theorising about learning.   This particular episode is about The Cognitivists, a group of theorists who...