Pedagogy and learning theories

Pedagogy is an art. It is a science or it may even be craft of teaching children. The term “Pedagogy” came from a Greek word “Paidagōgeō” that has the literal meaning tend the child or lead the child (Smith, 2012). Similarly (Pedagogy, 2013) defines pedagogy as study of teaching methods together with the educational aims and how they may be achieved. Therefore in overall we could understand that pedagogy is the teaching methods, techniques and strategies; all together more specifically concerned with teaching children.

It is very clear that in order to develop Pedagogy, we should understand how children learn. The various learning theories that explain children learning is very important. Knowledge of all the main theories is important as no one theory is perfect in explaining children’s learning. Further knowing about different learning styles and being able to identify different children’s learning styles is important too.

Some key learning theories that explain a child’s learning are Behaviorism Information Processing and Social cognition. Behaviorism focuses on systematic analysis of antecedence and consequence of behavior in changing behavior. This is based on the behaviorist definition of learning. They define learning as a change in behavior Likewise Information processing theory, focus on how attention, perception, representation and knowledge affect problem solving and memory. On the other hand social cognitive theory of learning concerned about the interactive effects of behavior environment and personal in learning (Woolfolk, 2010).