Overview of learning theories and its applications in medical education

Introduction: The purpose of teaching is learning, and learning is related to learning theories. These theories describe and explain how people learn. According to various experts' opinion about learning, many theories emerged. The paper reviewed three major approaches include behaviorism, cognitive and constructive learning and its educational applications in medical science. Methods: this paper review English articles selected from Medline and Eric databases and Persian articles from Medlib, Magiran databases between 1990 and 2011. Results: The major applications of each of these learning theories in medical education can be mentioned as following. (a) Behaviorism: determining behavioral goals, computer based training, competency-based education, mastery learning, computer based simulation, (b) cognitive learning theories: advanced organization, concept maps, a community oriented medicine, learning from observation, and (c) constructivism: student-centered learning, problem-based learning, cognitive training, and reflective writing. In addition, basic features in each of these theories are described in a table. Conclusion: learning theories are not complete. Each emphasize on specific type of learning, so it is best for teachers to be familiar with all of them. Behaviorism in general is suitable for teaching new skills, cognitivism is appropriate for teaching critical thinking, clinical thinking, self - centered learning and productive life, and finally constructivism is proper for teaching problem solving skills, clinical decision making and communication skills .