ASSOCIATIONISM

1. Associationism

Associationism was one of the first attempts to define how people learn. As early as the 3rd century B.C., Aristotle theorized that learning takes place when we associate new information with information we already have or know. Aristotle was convinced that the body and the mind were inseparable and the mind was a product of the workings of the body. He argued that all that we learned we learned through experience and relating new experiences to old ones.

The major premise of Associationism deals with memory and recall. “The recall of an object or idea triggers recall of other objects or ideas similar to, different from, or experienced close in time or space to the original object or idea. The more often objects or ideas are associated, the more likely recall of one will trigger recall of the other” (Schunk, 2000, p. 17).

This premise was used in many subsequent theories, and in the 17th and 18th centuries Locke, Hobbes, and others worked on the further development of the rules of association. Locke developed the idea that “all knowledge derives from two types of experience: sensory impressions of the external world and personal awareness” (Schunk, 2002, p. 17). He believed that the mind was a tabula rasa, or blank slate at birth and all ideas come through the senses.

This was a significant explanation of the way we think about thinking and human nature in general. The concept of a blank slate leads us to believe that it is possible to develop good or bad learning habits in students through association. Armed with this belief, teachers became “architects and builders of minds of children and youth; they were to develop a systematic instructional program centered in procedures designed to form habits in students. Teaching, then became a matter of stimulating the sense as opposed to training the mental facilities”. (Bigge & Shermis, 1998, p. 35).

In the seventeenth century in England , Associationism became more formulized in the empiricist movement. Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, George Berkley and others modified Locke's ideas in their development of the doctrine of empiricism, but it was James Mills who brought Locke's simpler ideas and brought them into popularity in the 19 th century (Malone, 1991). Mill “distinguished between what he called synchronous associations and successive associations” (Malone, 1991, p. 8). He theorized that experience is a series of sensations and ideas that call up other sensations and ideas. These sensations and ideas become associated according to the occurrence in space and time.

It was the German philosopher-psychologist, Johann Herbart, who developed the first modern systematic psychology of learning in the early 19 th century. Herbart's apperception theory of learning is a more sophisticated than his predecessors and although his teaching style was based upon that of Pestalozzi, his pedagogical thinking is rooted in Associationism. “Herbart's reforming pedagogies revolutionized the relationship between education and teaching.” In his theory of educational teaching, “the pupil's own experience enjoyed a central function in educational teaching and that interest, which implied independent mental activity on the part of the pupil, had not only been the end, but also the principal means, of educational teaching” (Watson, 1978, p. 12). Herbart took British Associationism a step further by conceiving of ideas to be forces .

Although Herbart's theories had great influence in American education reform in the earl part of the 20 th century, his pedagogies eventually gave way other schools of thought, especially behaviorism.

Associationism is the oldest learning theory and has had a great influence on the way we think about teaching and learning. Although teaching and learning theories are much more complex in the modern age, all learning theories contain some principles of Associationism and the developments made in this theory by the early modern educational philosophers.