What is "Learning Science"?

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When I talk about being an evidence-informed practitioner, one question comes up more than most: what fields should I be drawing from?

The term “learning science” can feel a bit nebulous, so here’s a practical breakdown of the scientific disciplines worth paying attention to. This isn’t about becoming an expert in each; it’s about knowing where useful ideas come from and being able to evaluate claims when they land on your desk.

Note: This is not an all-encompassing list. This is just where I suggest you get started, and the fields that have a well-established and well-grounded body of research to back them up. There is also a certain level of interconnectivity between all of these fields, many of them drawing upon the other’s understanding to support their own findings.

Cognitive Psychology

This is likely where you’ll spend the most time. Cognitive psychology covers how we attend to information, how we encode it into memory, how we retrieve it, and why we forget. It’s the home of concepts like cognitive load theory, retrieval practice, spacing effects, and the testing effect. If you want to understand why some learning sticks and some doesn’t, or why that hour-long e-learning module isn’t producing results, start here. Key names include John Sweller, Robert Bjork, and Richard Mayer.

Behavioural Economics

Drawing from psychology and economics, behavioural economics helps us understand decision-making, habit formation, and the persistent gap between what people intend to do and what they do. This is critical when you’re trying to change behaviour rather than transfer knowledge, which is most of what we should be doing. Concepts like nudges, friction, defaults, and commitment devices come from this field. If you’ve ever wondered why people complete training and then carry on exactly as before, behavioural economics has answers. Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler are foundational here.

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As a reader of the Instructional Design Tips Substack, you can get 25% off a ticket to the very first IDTX Evidence-Informed Practice Conference.

This one-day event is set for the 29th of May 2026 and will be held in Birmingham city centre, UK. The day will see us bring together researchers, scientists, and practitioners to discuss how we utilise the wealth of scientific understanding, research, and evidence to improve workplace training.

To claim your discounted ticket, head over to the IDTX website and use code CPDW25 at checkout.

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Organisational Psychology

Sometimes called industrial-organisational psychology, this field examines how people behave in workplace contexts. It covers motivation, job design, leadership, team dynamics, performance management, and organisational change. Since L&D operates within organisations rather than classrooms, understanding this context is essential. This is where you’ll find research on goal-setting theory, psychological safety, job characteristics, and what makes feedback effective. Edwin Locke, Gary Latham, and Adam Grant are names worth knowing.

Social Psychology

Much of what we learn, we learn from and with others. Social psychology helps us understand how group dynamics, social norms, identity, and influence shape behaviour and learning. Concepts like social proof, conformity, in-group bias, and observational learning sit here. If you’re designing peer learning, mentoring programmes, or trying to shift team behaviours, this field offers essential grounding. Albert Bandura’s work on social learning theory is particularly relevant for L&D practitioners.

Educational Psychology

Educational psychology sits at the intersection of several disciplines, focusing specifically on how people learn in formal and informal settings and how instruction can be designed to support that. It examines questions of motivation, individual differences, assessment, and the conditions under which teaching leads to learning. This field provides much of the research base for instructional design decisions, even if the application of that research is a separate craft.

Neuroscience

Neuroscience provides the biological underpinning for much of cognitive psychology, examining how the brain physically changes during learning, how sleep and stress affect memory consolidation, and what conditions support or hinder neural plasticity. Its greatest value for L&D practitioners may be defensive: it helps you spot neuro-nonsense when vendors dress up weak ideas in brain-shaped packaging. Understanding the basics also helps you appreciate why rest, sleep, and spaced practice matter at a biological level. Rather than theorists and researchers, I recommend communicators here. People like Lauren Waldman (The Learning Pirate) and Amy Brann set the gold standard.

Developmental Psychology

This field examines how learning capacity, motivation, and cognitive function shift across the lifespan. It’s relevant if you’re designing for mixed-age workforces, thinking about career-long development, or trying to understand how experienced workers learn differently from early-career employees. While often associated with child development, developmental psychology includes research on adult cognitive changes, expertise development, and how learning needs evolve with experience.

Sociology

Sociology examines how social structures, institutions, and cultural norms shape behaviour and opportunity. For L&D, this matters when we consider how organisational hierarchies, professional cultures, and systemic inequalities affect who gets access to development opportunities and whose knowledge is valued. It also helps us understand how workplace communities form, how knowledge flows through social networks, and why some change initiatives succeed while others meet resistance. Pierre Bourdieu’s work on cultural capital and Etienne Wenger’s research on communities of practice have direct applications to workplace learning.

A Note on Research Literacy

This isn’t a science in itself, but without basic research literacy, you can’t evaluate the evidence you encounter. Understanding concepts like sample size, effect size, correlation versus causation, and the difference between statistical significance and practical significance helps you distinguish robust findings from oversold studies. You don’t need to run experiments yourself, but you do need to read them critically.

Staying Current

You don’t need a degree in each of these fields, but you do need a way to stay informed.

One approach I find useful is to look at what students on relevant Bachelor’s or Master’s programmes are given as core reading. These textbooks tend to offer well-evidenced, accessible introductions without requiring you to wade through years of journal articles. A good undergraduate textbook in cognitive psychology or organisational behaviour will give you a solid foundation faster than trying to piece it together from blog posts.

For ongoing updates, platforms like Google Scholar allow you to set up alerts based on keywords. Terms like “workplace learning,” “training transfer,” “cognitive load,” and “performance improvement” will surface new research as it’s published. It takes five minutes to set up and keeps you connected to the literature without needing to actively search.

Being evidence-informed isn’t about mastering every discipline; it’s about knowing where your ideas come from, being able to trace claims back to their source, and being willing to update your thinking when better evidence arrives.

informal learning opportunities.

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As a reader of the Instructional Design Tips Substack, you can get 25% off a ticket to the very first IDTX Evidence-Informed Practice Conference.

This one-day event is set for the 29th of May 2026 and will be held in Birmingham city centre, UK. The day will see us bring together researchers, scientists, and practitioners to discuss how we utilise the wealth of scientific understanding, research, and evidence to improve workplace training.

To claim your discounted ticket, head over to the IDTX website and use code CPDW25 at checkout.

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