The process of learning is the process of crossing the gap between Current State and Desired State. The successful process of learning is contigent upon the fundamental Principles of Learning. The Principles of Learning are manifest through practice/exercise/experience/experimentation (hereafter referred to as simply Practice). Practice does not happen unless there is sufficient motivation and confidence. Practice is most meaningful in the proper context or environment. The context is created through physical surroundings, other people, multi-media resources, projects, on-the-job integration, etc... Learners or Instructors, or both, can drive practice. Practice can also be driven from instruction that is captured and presented in media resources (videos, audio, textbooks, etc...).
"A useful distinction in the discussion of student characteristics is trait versus state. Traits are student characteristics that are relatively constant over time...whereas states are student characteristics that tend to vary during individual learning experiences, such as level of content-specific knowledge." (Reigeluth, 1983, p. 32) Reigeluth also states that "many strategy components have been shown to help students with all kinds of traits to learn" [p. 32]. My position is that we do not know a priori which aspects of our instructional strategies, learning environment, motivator, etc... will generalize across many or all students. However, with a localized learning theory we can learn over time which do and which do not. At the same time, we will likely find ways of grouping students that we never would have before imagined.
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