The paper explores the teacher-learner relationship and the perceived role of communication by comparing the five dominant learning theories: behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism, humanism, and social constructionism. Prior studies argue that learning is a matter of conditioning, occurs through transmission, is brain-governed and is separable from communication. In contrast to past research, we adopt a social constructionist perspective to argue that communicating and knowing are interdependent activities. The paper offers a novel communication-centred narrative to highlight the relationship between communicating and learning. The study proposes a new model representing the teaching-learning dynamic and offers direct implications on the teacher-learner relationship, calling for a new taxonomy of learning.