Aprender es reconstruir: Aportes de Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Ausubel y Bandura para una pedagogía de la comprensión y la transferencia

This essay analyzes the main cognitive learning theories and their bearing on teaching practice, based on a central thesis: learning does not consist of receiving or reproducing content, but of actively reconstructing, through mediation, the conceptual schemes with which individuals interpret and act upon reality. To support this thesis, an integrative conceptual analysis was carried out, drawing on Jean Piaget's genetic epistemology, Lev Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology, Jerome Bruner's discovery learning, David Ausubel's meaningful learning, and Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory. The cognitive processes that make the appropriation of knowledge possible were also examined, such as selective attention, working memory, reconstructive memory, understanding, transfer, and self-determined motivation. The analysis supports the claim that these theories, far from being mutually exclusive, converge on a view of learning as an active, social, and transferable construction, which calls for intentional teacher mediation that activates prior knowledge, manages cognitive load, strengthens students' self-efficacy, and gradually withdraws support. Accordingly, backward design is proposed as a planning tool for translating these principles into scaffolded instructional sequences aimed at enduring understanding and student autonomy. The essay offers input for designing institutional planning and teacher-education strategies, and proposes avenues for future research on the relevance of these frameworks in the face of generative artificial intelligence.