Teachers' theories about children's learning: an explorative research

Abstract. Teachers' theories about children's learning have an influence on the perception of their own educative role and on the teaching which takes place in the classroom. This research analyses the spontaneous responses from teachers on the subject of learning, comparing them to the principle theories found in educational psychology. The spontaneous responses of 100 teachers are analysed. They were undertaking a training course as part of their teacher training requirement for infant and primary education. The replies to the question: “What is learning to you?” were evaluated by two independent raters and assigned a specific category using the calculation of the Cohen k co-efficient. The differences between the categories are analysed using the test of χ2 (α.<.05). The results underline that the teachers interviewed mostly emphasise aspects of knowledge and cognition. Only 3% of the responses focused on emotions. In fact cognitive theories (learning as transfer of information) featured predominantly as the type of underlying concept when teachers in training were interviewed. Only a very reduced percentage of responses reported mixed concepts or current theories.