Building my Theory of Learning

I've been working on my Theory of Learning this term, and it has been interesting to explore my beliefs on learning. What follows is my current Theory of Learning, what learning is and how it happens. Like most things, I hope this will grow and develop further over time.

My Theory of Learning

Across different educational contexts, it becomes evident that while the content and settings of learning may vary, the underlying processes through which learners make sense of the world remain consistent. What differs is how learning connects to learners’ experiences, how it is shaped through interaction, and how it extends beyond formal environments.

Learning is often treated as the acquisition of knowledge or the development of discrete skills. However, this view does not fully account for the ways in which learners engage with ideas, revise their thinking, and connect their understanding across contexts. Learning is not a linear progression, but unfolds through moments of curiosity, challenge, interaction, and reflection, shaped by both individual and social experiences.

Learning is a recursive process of making sense of the world. Experience challenges existing understandings which prompts learners to reflect, interact, and revise their thinking.  This allows learners to make connections across contexts, deepening their meaning-making and  to becoming  more self-directed over time.

This paper  explores this model of my learning, tracing how learning develops through interconnected recursive layers, unfolding in five stages: Curiosity and Experience, Cognitive Structuring, Social Meaning Making, Cultural Context and Critical Awareness, Participation and Action (see Figure 1) below. Each layer builds on the previous one while also looping back. Learning is not linear.

Figure 1: Recursive Spiral Model of Learning (AI-generated using ChatGPT/DALL·E)

Curiosity & Relevance

Learning begins with curiosity, often sparked when an experience feels relevant to a learner’s existing knowledge or lived context. Relevance emerges when learners encounter something that connects to what they already know or challenges what they expect, creating a tension between prior understanding and new observation. These moments, sometimes referred to in science as discrepant events, prompt learners to notice gaps in their understanding.

For example, learners may encounter short “life hack” style videos demonstrating scientific phenomena (e.g., Charging a Phone with a Lemon Battery; Wilderness Water Filter). These experiences may be intentionally introduced within a learning environment or encountered independently outside of it. In both cases, they draw attention because they appear to contradict expectations or address real-world problems while remaining grounded in familiar contexts. The perceived relevance of the experience, either through surprise or real-world application, acts as the catalyst for curiosity, prompting learners to question and explore what they observe.

These types of experiences are often encountered through informal learning contexts, where learning is embedded in everyday environments and driven by personal interest and engagement (Resnick, 1987; Vadeboncoeur, 2006). Because these experiences are situated within learners’ lived realities, they are often inherently relevant, providing powerful entry points into the learning process.

This tension between expectation and observation becomes the starting point for deeper exploration. Rather than receiving information, learners are positioned to investigate the gap they have identified. In this way, curiosity signals the entry into a recursive process, where each new experience creates opportunities to revisit and refine understanding. Whether encountered inside or outside of formal learning environments, these moments of curiosity serve as the entry point into the same recursive process of learning.

Cognitive Structuring

When a tension emerges between expectation and observation, it gives rise to curiosity and engagement. In response, learners begin to make sense of what they are encountering by connecting new information to what they already know. This process draws on schema theory (Piaget, 1970), where learners use existing frameworks to interpret new experiences. When new ideas align with prior knowledge, they may be assimilated into existing schemas. When they do not, learners must accommodate, restructuring their thinking to account for new evidence.

When learners grapple with complex ideas, their explanations often shift, stall, and evolve as they attempt to align new observations with what they already know. For example, when exploring atomic theory, learners may use a scattering marble experiment (e.g. Flinn Scientific Rutherford Scattering) to observe how marbles move through a hidden structure, using these patterns to infer what might exist inside. As their initial explanations fail to fully account for their observations, learners revise and refine their models of the atom, testing and adjusting their ideas in response to new evidence. Ideas are reworded, and emerging explanations are tested as models continue to evolve. In these moments, learners are actively “debugging” their own reasoning.

What is often dismissed as a misconception is, in fact, a vital part of learning, where existing schemas no longer fit the evidence. Rather than being treated as errors, these moments can be understood as opportunities for conceptual restructuring, as learners actively construct, test, model, and revise their understanding (Piaget, 1970; Papert, 1980). These representations function as evolving drafts of understanding, refined through cycles of prediction, observation, and revision.

Social Meaning-Making

Cognitive restructuring, which begins as an individual, internal process, can be enhanced through social interaction. As learners engage with others, their ideas are shared, challenged, and refined, allowing understanding to become deeper and richer in ways that are difficult to achieve alone (Vygotsky, 1978).

Intellectual disagreements can act as a powerful catalyst in this process. When learners challenge each other's interpretations, they are forced to justify their reasoning and look at the evidence from a new angle (Vygotsky, 1978). For example, when exploring atomic theory, learners may compare their models and notice differences in how they represent the structure of the atom. These differences prompt learners to question assumptions, clarify their reasoning, and revise their explanations in response to new perspectives.

Learning in this sense is not confined to the individual but reflects shared cognition, where understanding is developed through interaction across the group (Lave & Wenger, 1991). As learners engage in dialogue, they co-construct understanding, drawing on shared language, tools, and experiences (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In this way, meaning is not only developed internally but negotiated within a social context. 

Cultural Context and Critical Awareness

Because this meaning-making is inherently social, it is also inseparable from the cultural and contextual frameworks that define what a community values as knowledge. Learning is not neutral, but shaped by the perspectives, experiences, and norms that exist within a given context (Freire, 1970).

This becomes particularly visible in multilingual contexts, where learners draw on multiple languages to make sense of ideas. As learners negotiate meaning across languages, they are not only translating words, but also navigating different ways of understanding and representing knowledge. In these moments, understanding is not an individual cognitive act but is constructed in the collective space between participants, reflecting shared cognition shaped by both interaction and cultural context.

As learners engage with different perspectives, they begin to recognize that knowledge is not fixed, but shaped by cultural, social, and historical influences. This can lead to the development of critical awareness, where learners begin to question whose knowledge is represented, whose perspectives are prioritized, and why (Freire, 1970). Learning does not occur in a vacuum, and what learners come to understand is influenced by the contexts in which they are learning. Learning, in this sense, moves beyond understanding ideas to examining how those ideas are constructed and communicated.

For example, in some contexts, efforts to use locally relevant examples to support understanding can surface tensions around which perspectives are considered acceptable within formal learning environments. In these moments, learners encounter competing expectations about what knowledge can be explored, revealing that understanding is shaped not only by evidence but by cultural norms and values. As this awareness develops, learners may begin to connect what they are learning to their own experiences outside of formal learning contexts, allowing them to bring new perspectives into the learning process and further shape their understanding.

Personal Relevance and Lived Experience

When learning connects to learners’ lived experiences, it moves beyond the textbook and begins to feel more meaningful (Ladson-Billings, 1995). As learners begin to see how ideas relate to their own lives, learning becomes something that matters to them, not just something to understand, but something to respond to.

This reflects learning in everyday contexts, where knowledge is situated, social, and connected to real activity (Resnick, 1987). As learners engage with ideas in authentic contexts, they begin to apply their understanding in ways that are meaningful and relevant to their own lives. These experiences do not simply extend understanding, but support learners in making sense of new information in the world around them and responding to it in informed and meaningful ways.

As learners draw on experiences from outside of formal learning environments, they bring new perspectives, questions, and insights into the learning process. In this way, learning moves across contexts, shaped by the interaction between experience and understanding.

Learning Environment

Learning is supported when the environment provides a sense of stability, trust, and clarity. Engaging in curiosity, questioning assumptions, and revising ideas requires learners to take intellectual risks, and these risks are more likely to occur in environments where expectations are predictable and interactions feel supportive.

Predictable routines and clear expectations contribute to this sense of stability (Skinner, 1953), allowing learners to focus on the cognitive and social demands of learning rather than uncertainty about what is expected of them. In this way, structure creates the conditions that allow learners to engage more fully in the work of making sense of ideas.

At the same time, learning environments must support openness to different perspectives. When learners experience a sense of trust and respect, they are more likely to engage in the kind of messy exploration that deepens understanding. This includes the willingness to test ideas, rethink assumptions, and be “wrong” as part of the learning process. These conditions matter across all stages of learning, but become especially important during social meaning-making and within cultural contexts, particularly when learners bring their own ideas and lived experiences into the process.

These conditions do not determine learning, but they shape how learners engage with it. When stability, trust, and support are present, learners are more likely to take the intellectual risks required to question, revise, and extend their thinking across contexts.

Learning as a Recursive Process

This model reflects a synthesis of experience and theoretical inquiry. When learning is understood as a lived process, it becomes evident that experiences across contexts create moments of curiosity and challenge, reflection and interaction with others, and the conditions for cognitive restructuring.

Learning can be understood as a recursive process that moves from curiosity and experience through cognitive structuring and social meaning-making toward cultural awareness and critical engagement. Each layer builds on the previous one while also looping back, allowing understanding to continue evolving as learners encounter new experiences and perspectives.

Over time, this recursive process begins to shift. In earlier stages, many of the experiences that prompt curiosity and challenge are encountered within structured learning environments. As learners develop, they increasingly draw on their own experiences, bringing ideas, questions, and perspectives from outside of formal learning into the process. In this way, learning becomes less dependent on externally provided experiences and more driven by the learner’s own engagement with the world.

This shift reflects key ideas in adult learning theory, where experience becomes a central driver of learning. As learners engage with new situations, they reflect on their experiences, revise their understanding, and apply their thinking in new contexts (Mezirow, 1981). Through this process, learners develop the capacity to direct their own learning, using experience to guide inquiry and shape what is meaningful to explore.

A central tension within this process is the balance between structure and curiosity. While structured experiences can support the development of foundational understanding, they should also leave space for curiosity to emerge and be sustained. When this balance is maintained, learning does not become fixed or procedural, but remains dynamic and responsive to new experiences.

Ultimately, learning is not a linear progression, but an ongoing process of engagement with the world. As learners move across contexts, their experiences continue to generate curiosity, prompting further cycles of reflection, interaction, and restructuring. In this way, learning becomes increasingly self-directed, shaped by the learner’s ability to interpret, connect, and respond to the experiences they encounter.

References

Flinn Scientific. (n.d.). Rutherford marble experiment [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RszS2WlKscE

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.

Google Gemini. (2026). Gemini 3 Flash (Free Tier) [Large language model].

https://gemini.google.com/

¹The AI ( Gemini 3 Flash) was utilized as a writing coach to identify potential contradictions in the recursive model, audit the text for prescriptive versus descriptive language, and suggest re-phrasing for teacher-centered anecdotes into learner-centered theoretical descriptions. All conceptual frameworks, the "Recursive Spiral Model of Learning," and the synthesis of cultural contexts (e.g., the Kazakhstan context) are the original work of myself.

Hamza Funny. (n.d.). Water filtration [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IUsUvTlxTAY

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491.  https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.

Mezirow, J. (1981). A critical theory of adult learning and education. Adult Education Quarterly, 32(1), 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/074171368103200101

OpenAI. (2026). Infographic illustrating a recursive spiral model of learning with embedded feedback loops and psychological safety as a surrounding condition [AI-generated image]. ChatGPT (DALL·E). https://chatgpt.com/share/69ee3188-43d4-83ea-b9ec-26c1c3948022

²This figure was generated using ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2026) with DALL·E image generation. I developed the underlying theory, structure, and design specifications; the AI tool was used to produce a visual representation through iterative prompting and refinement with the addition of the Bricolage model from my previous work.

Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. Basic Books.

Piaget, J. (1970). Science of education and the psychology of the child. Viking Press.

Resnick, L. B. (1987). Learning in school and out. Educational Researcher, 16(9), 13–20. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X016009013

Sergio Outdoors. (n.d.). Water filtration [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IUsUvTlxTAY

Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. Macmillan.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.