Purposes and principles of assessment

Abstract

There are many different theories of how people learn. What follows is a variety of them, and it is useful to consider their application to how your students learn and also how you teach in educational programmes. It is interesting to think about your own particular way of learning and to recognise that everyone does not learn the way you do. Burns (1995, p 99) ‘conceives of learning as a relatively permanent change in behaviour with behaviour including both observable activity and internal processes such as thinking, attitudes and emotions.’ It is clear that Burns includes motivation in this definition of learning. Burns considers that learning might not manifest itself in observable behaviour until some time after the educational program has taken place.