The cognitive school is probably best defined by exclusion:
if it ain't biological, behaviourist or humanist, it's cognitive
(I'm including information-processing models here).
It all starts with
Gestalt
theories [Köhler and Koffka, and with only the vaguest
connection with Gestalt therapy (Perls)]: originally theories
of perception, interested in the way the brain imposes pattern
on the perceived world, Gestalt moved into problem-solving
learning.
It is also much influenced by the developmental psychology
of Piaget (but also read
Donaldson
(1984) if reading Piaget), focusing on the maturational
factors affecting understanding. The
accommodation/assimilation
dialectic is the part most useful for understanding grown
learners.
Broadly, cognitive theory is interested in how people
understand material, and thus in;
It is also the basis of the educational approach known
as constructivism, which
emphasises the role of the learner in constructing his own
view or model of the material, and what helps with that.
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