"Teaching strategies should help students to acquire new elements in their…
2022
"Teaching strategies should help students to acquire new elements in their cognitive structure." This is a learning view of -
- A.
Behaviourists
- B.
Objectivists
- C.
Cognitivists
- D.
Constructivists
Attempted by 2 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept: Cognitivism explains learning as a change in the learner's internal mental (cognitive) structure -- the network of concepts, schemas, and information the mind holds. On this view, learning happens when new information is encoded, organised, and integrated ("acquired") into that existing mental structure, rather than through external stimulus-response conditioning or the learner independently constructing knowledge from raw experience.
Application: The statement in the question places the emphasis squarely on teaching strategies helping students "acquire new elements in their cognitive structure" -- i.e., the goal of teaching is to add to and reorganise the learner's internal mental framework. This is precisely the cognitivist description of learning: information-processing and mental-schema building, not observable behaviour change and not learner-driven construction of meaning from experience.
Contrast: Comparing how each view in the options would describe learning:
Behaviourists define learning as an observable change in behaviour produced by stimulus-response conditioning and reinforcement, with no reference to any internal cognitive structure -- this framework does not describe a change in the learner's mental organisation at all.
Objectivists hold that knowledge is objective, external, and fixed, and treat teaching as transmitting that fixed truth to the learner -- this is a stance about the nature of knowledge itself, not the cognitivist mechanism of actively encoding and integrating new elements into the learner's own cognitive structure.
Cognitivists define learning as the encoding and integration of new information into the learner's existing mental schema -- the statement's description of teaching strategies helping students acquire new elements into their cognitive structure matches this mechanism directly.
Constructivists define learning as the learner actively building their own knowledge through direct experience, exploration, and social interaction, with the teacher facilitating discovery rather than delivering elements to be absorbed -- this active-construction emphasis differs from the statement's framing of strategies helping students acquire elements into an existing structure.
Result: The statement matches the Cognitivist view of learning.