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The conditions of learning
1970: by Robert M. Gagne. Learning must be linked to the design of instruction.
- GenresEducation
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 2, 2023
Boken är gammal,vilket märks kring ordval och exempel, men den är väldigt saklig och väldigt praktisk. Den ger typologier och bryter ned sekvenser på ett sätt som möjliggör fokuserad förbättring på delområden.
December 21, 2016
One of the important books in the development of Concept Based learning, Gagne's book is remarkably ahead of its time, although a little dry and academic.
The major part of the text is a description of eight types of learning:
1. Signal learning
2. Stimulus response learning
3. Chaining
4. Verbal association
5. Discrimination learning
6. Concept Learning
7. Rule learning
8. Problem Solving
Which Gagne suggests are sequentially reliant upon each other, and that for any successful learning event, a 'condition for learning' is that the preceding steps have been adequately learned.
Stimulus learning is basically the idea of a conditioned response which is learned rather than a reflex; so for example Pavlov's slavering dogs. Stimulus response learning is similar, but one step removed - a voluntary response to a particular stimulus. The example Gagne gives is simply learning to pronounce a foreign word correctly upon demand. Chaining is a series of stimulus responses in a row; so Gagne gives the example of a child who when put to bed, upon lying down then wants the doll she or he normally has to go to sleep. Verbal associations would be learning to connect related words to each other, or chains of information, such as the alphabet. Discrimination learning is learning to identify potentially confusing or similar events or objects, from car types to birds, or similar sounding words. The learning is the ability to find distinguishing features and recall and identify them for individual cases. Interestingly up to this point there is considerable evidence of 'interference' playing a strong role in learning. So for example if you ask someone to remember two similar chains of letters, the learning of the second chain will cause the learner to forget parts of the first, and this is also true for sequences of actions. Fascinatingly this is absolutely not true for the next type of learning which is concept learning; Gagne defines this as learning to distinguish the attributes of a class of objects of events, in order to be able to respond to an individual object or event as a member of that class. The other interesting thing about concept learning is that unlike all the previous stages of learning, there is no particular need for repetition in order to fix learning, whereas all previous kinds of learning need repetition to ‘make them stick’. In modern terms, this suggests that neurologically the mechanism for laying down learning is fundamentally different to the preceding kinds of learning. Rule learning Gagne defines in a way that is similar to Lynn Erickson’s idea of ‘generalisations’ - meaning a relationship between two concepts, which at its simplest could be just ‘mammals sleep’, at its most complex, an abstract economic theory. And finally problem based learning is just the ability to apply one or more generalisation to solve a problem towards a defined end.
Subsequent to these definitions, Gagne works through some implications - which essentially come down to the importance of pre-assessment, a description of standards based education and standards based learning goals decades before they existed, the importance of questioning and innumerable other insights. The parts of instructional design were probably radical in 1970, but obviously feel pretty limited now, but for its time it is an impressive book.
The overall feel was that the book is slightly overly academic and dry - and the concept based learning strand is nascent, but not fully developed in the text. However, it is obvious why this book is widely cited in the literature on concept based learning.
The major part of the text is a description of eight types of learning:
1. Signal learning
2. Stimulus response learning
3. Chaining
4. Verbal association
5. Discrimination learning
6. Concept Learning
7. Rule learning
8. Problem Solving
Which Gagne suggests are sequentially reliant upon each other, and that for any successful learning event, a 'condition for learning' is that the preceding steps have been adequately learned.
Stimulus learning is basically the idea of a conditioned response which is learned rather than a reflex; so for example Pavlov's slavering dogs. Stimulus response learning is similar, but one step removed - a voluntary response to a particular stimulus. The example Gagne gives is simply learning to pronounce a foreign word correctly upon demand. Chaining is a series of stimulus responses in a row; so Gagne gives the example of a child who when put to bed, upon lying down then wants the doll she or he normally has to go to sleep. Verbal associations would be learning to connect related words to each other, or chains of information, such as the alphabet. Discrimination learning is learning to identify potentially confusing or similar events or objects, from car types to birds, or similar sounding words. The learning is the ability to find distinguishing features and recall and identify them for individual cases. Interestingly up to this point there is considerable evidence of 'interference' playing a strong role in learning. So for example if you ask someone to remember two similar chains of letters, the learning of the second chain will cause the learner to forget parts of the first, and this is also true for sequences of actions. Fascinatingly this is absolutely not true for the next type of learning which is concept learning; Gagne defines this as learning to distinguish the attributes of a class of objects of events, in order to be able to respond to an individual object or event as a member of that class. The other interesting thing about concept learning is that unlike all the previous stages of learning, there is no particular need for repetition in order to fix learning, whereas all previous kinds of learning need repetition to ‘make them stick’. In modern terms, this suggests that neurologically the mechanism for laying down learning is fundamentally different to the preceding kinds of learning. Rule learning Gagne defines in a way that is similar to Lynn Erickson’s idea of ‘generalisations’ - meaning a relationship between two concepts, which at its simplest could be just ‘mammals sleep’, at its most complex, an abstract economic theory. And finally problem based learning is just the ability to apply one or more generalisation to solve a problem towards a defined end.
Subsequent to these definitions, Gagne works through some implications - which essentially come down to the importance of pre-assessment, a description of standards based education and standards based learning goals decades before they existed, the importance of questioning and innumerable other insights. The parts of instructional design were probably radical in 1970, but obviously feel pretty limited now, but for its time it is an impressive book.
The overall feel was that the book is slightly overly academic and dry - and the concept based learning strand is nascent, but not fully developed in the text. However, it is obvious why this book is widely cited in the literature on concept based learning.
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