Donald Clark is perhaps unusual amongst edtech entrepreneurs in that he knows his education theory very well. He has distilled this knowledge into a highly readable series of short articles about 100* key educational thinkers, ranging from ancient philosophers to modern-day pedagogists and innovators. Clark outlines their main contributions to education and assesses their legacy.
It’s a hugely valuable resource and a great way for history of education newbies to dip their toes into two-and-a-half thousand years of human thought about how we learn.
*Actually 107 at last count.
Greeks
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Greek mathematicians; (Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes)
Religious leaders
Religious educators
St Augustine
Ignatius
Luther
Calvin
Enlightenment
Locke
Rousseau
Smith
Wollstonecraft
Edgeworths
Marxists
Marx
Gramsci
Althusser
Habermas
Freire
Chomsky
Social constructivists
Piaget
Vygotsky
Bruner
Margaret Donaldson
Psycholanalysts
Schools
Humboldt
Montessori
Steiner
Neill
Colbert
Burt
Behaviourists
Cognitivists
Miller
Atkinson & Shiffrin
Baddeley
Tulving
Sweller
Practice
James
Dewey
Ebbinghaus
Ericsson
Bjork
Instructionalists
Learning styles
Holists
Geary
Cross
Seligman
Csikszentmihalyi
Moralists
Maslow
Kohlberg
Martin
McLuhan
Postman
Assessors
Eysenck
Gardner
Goleman
Schleicher
Myers-Briggs
Kirkpatrick
Educationalists
White
Knowles
Eisner
Robinson
Hirsche
Teaching
Engelmann
Rosenshine
Hattie
Willingham
Black & Wiliam
Dweck
Social/team learning
Online technologists
Berners-Lee
Gates
Page & Brin
Jobs
Chen & Hurley
Online delivery
Wales
Dougiamas
Khan
Mitra
Ng & Koller
Norman
Nielsen
Luis Font
Thanks and great articule
100 Learning theorists | Andi Roberts
[…] historyofeducation.net/2020/05/06/100-learning-theorists/ […]
John McNamee
“Cognitists”; a misspelling, perhaps? Is it not “cognitivists”?
Harley Richardson
You’re right, John, thanks for pointing that out. Corrected.
And Donald’s list now covers 200 learning theorists, including several more ‘cognitivists’: https://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2021/09/these-were-written-as-quick-readable.html