Learning theory attempts to describe how students receive, process, and
retain knowledge during learning. Cognitive, emotional, and environmental
influences, as well as prior experience, all play a part in how understanding,
or a worldview, is acquired or changed and knowledge and skills retained.
Behaviorists look at learning as an aspect of conditioning and advocating a
system of rewards and targets in education. Educators who embrace cognitive
theory believe that the definition of learning as a change in behaviour is too
narrow, and study the learner rather than their environment—and in particular
the complexities of human memory.