Chapter 2 established the importance of drawing on what has gone on before when theorising. The following four chapters help us do this by delving into the debates around the use of technology in the past and how these debates are being framed in the present. The examples I give are not, of course, comprehensive but they set out ways in which arguments have developed. An obvious place to start is looking at theories of learning themselves. So much discussion of digital technology is about its contribution to learning, so how, if at all, do researchers use learning theory? In this chapter, then, we look at:

• • Behaviourist theories (the mind as a closed box)

• • Cognitivism (and the learner as meaning maker)

• • Social constructivism (and the inheritance of tools)

• • Community of practice and related theories

• • Do we need learning theories?

• • Theories specific to technology mediation

• • Do we need theory in an age of Big Data?

Behaviourist theories (the mind as a closed box)

When computers were being introduced into education, back in the 1980s, there were, among all the excitement about modelling and exploratory programmes, repeated worries that digital technology, far from heralding a move towards more learner-centred approaches, would presage a return to drill and practice programmes, and ‘a giant step backwards into the nineteenth century’ (Chandler, 1983: 1). This raises the question as to what is so wrong with drill and practice?

The theoretical justification for drill and practice is based on behaviourist principles: desirable behaviour (such as learning a new topic) is the result of positive reinforcement of correct responses (at its simplest automatically generated feedback of well done, congratulations, now let's go for another one) and negative feedback or correction of errors and mistakes (Skinner, 1953). While behaviourist learning principles have been largely seen as suspect by educationalists (more on this in Johannesen and Habib, 2010, in Chapter 4), they have never gone completely out of favour. In fact, they are revisited in more recent times in popular software. For example, online behaviour reinforcement programmes such as ClassDojo reward young children with points for being on task, being helpful, completing assignments and so on; these points are stored and students are given rewards.