Encyclopedia of the sciences of learning Over the past century educational psychologists and researchers have posited many theories to explain how individuals learn i.e. how they acquire organize and deploy knowledge and skills. The 20th century can be considered the century of psychology on learning and related fields of interest (such as motivation cognition metacognition etc.) and it is fascinating to see the various mainstreams of learning remembered and forgotten over the 20th century and note that basic assumptions of early theories survived several paradigm shifts of psychology and epistemology. Beyond folk psychology and its naïve theories of learning psychological learning theories can be grouped into some basic categories such as behaviorist learning theories connectionist learning theories cognitive learning theories constructivist learning theories and social learning theories. Learning theories are not limited to psychology and related fields of interest but rather we can find the topic of learning in various disciplines such as philosophy and epistemology education information science biology and as a result of the emergence of computer technologies especially also in the field of computer sciences and artificial intelligence. As a consequence machine learning struck a chord in the 1980s and became an important field of the learning sciences in general. As the learning sciences became more specialized and complex the various fields of interest were widely spread and separated from each other; as a consequence even presently there is no comprehensive overview of the sciences of learning or the central theoretical concepts and vocabulary on which researchers rely. The Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning provides an up to date broad and authoritative coverage of the specific terms mostly used in the sciences of learning and its related fields including relevant areas of instruction pedagogy cognitive sciences and especially machine learning and knowledge engineering. This modern compendium will be an indispensable source of information for scientists educators engineers and technical staff active in all fields of learning. More specifically the Encyclopedia provides fast access to the most relevant theoretical terms provides up to date broad and authoritative coverage of the most important theories within the various fields of the learning sciences and adjacent sciences and communication technologies; supplies clear and precise exp ...