Learning Theories for Teachers

1
Learning Theories for Teachers

• Morris L. Bigge S. Samuel Shermin
• Chapter 10
• How Does Learning Transfer to New Situations?

2
Introduction

• Transfer of learning occurs when a persons
  learning in one situation influences that
  persons learning and performance in other
  situations.
• Transfer of learning is basic to the whole notion
  of schooling.

3
How is Transfer a Problem?

• Basic Problem In what way and to what extent
  will acquisition of skills, knowledge,
  understanding, behaviors, and attitudes in one
  subject or learning situation influence
  performance or learning in other subjects and
  situations?

4
How is Transfer a problem?

• Other related Problems
• How does a persons current learning assist him
  in meeting future learning situations?
• How does what students learn in school affect
  what they learn and do outside school?
• Does school learning have as much effect as it
  should and how can it be made more effectual?

5
How Did Generalizations Become the Key Idea in
Transfer?

• A generalization is a statement or understanding
  of relationships
• Generalization is another name for the relating
  of experiences in such a way that what is gained
  at one point will rebound to the advantage of the
  individual in many spheres of thought and action.
• For transfer to occur, a student must desire to
  use the understandings or insights that one has
  acquired.

6
What Questions Are Basic to a Study of Transfer?

• How is learning best defined?
• What exactly does transfer of learning mean?
• How is transfer promoted most effectively?

7
How does Mental Discipline Imply General Transfer?

• American formal education was dominated by the
  doctrine of mental discipline.
• The two most influential groups in the United
  states who continue to favor a disciplinary
  approach to education are some leaders in
  parochial education and liberal arts professors.

8
How do Mental Disciplinarians Define Learning?

• The central idea in mental discipline is that
  ones mind, envisioned as a nonphysical
  substance, or its constituent faculties, lies
  dormant until it is exercised.
• Learning is a matter of strengthening, or
  disciplining, the faculties of the mind whose
  functions combine to produce intelligent behavior.

9
How do Mental Disciplinarians Define Transfer?

• Within the mental discipline theory, transfer is
  assumed to be automatic, once a faculty has
  developed it naturally goes into operation
  whenever its use is appropriate.
• Within the mental discipline theory,
  psychological processes such as thinking,
  attending, remembering, and persevering become
  mental faculties such as thought attention,
  memory, and perseverance.

10
How do Mental Disciplinarians Promote Transfer?

• Educational practice based upon mental discipline
  stresses the necessity for developing themuscles
  of the mind by rigorous exercise.
• There is transfer of learning, but not the
  general transfer implied in mental discipline.
• Transfer is not automatic and it is not a matter
  of disciplining minds.

11
How is Apperception Related to Transfer of
Learning?

• Two broad types of associatinims
• Early mentalistic associationisms, which focus
  upon the association of ideas in a mind
• More modern physicalistic S-R associationisms,
  which are concerned with formation of connections
  either between cells in a brain and peripheral
  nervous system or between organic responses and
  environmental stimuli.

12
How do Apperceptionists Define Learning?

• Apperception is a process of relating new ideas
  or mental states to a store of old ones.
• Learning, then, is not a matter of developing or
  training a mind but, rather, one of formation of
  an appreceptive mass.

13
How do Apperceptionists Explicitly Define
Transfer?

• According to Apperception theory, a students
  subconscious mind contains a quantity of mental
  states that have been accumulated during previous
  experiences.

14
How do Apperceptionists Promoter Transfer?

• Apperceptionist promote transfer by building up
  the apperceptive masses of their students.
• The Herbartian principles of association and
  frequency are the heart of apperception theory.
• The association principle is that when a number
  of ideas form a mass, the combined powers of the
  mass determine the new ideas that will enter
  consciousness this is the basis of interest.

15
How do Apperceptionists Promote Transfer? Cont.,

• The coordinate principle of frequency is that the
  more often an idea has been brought into
  consciousness, the easier it is for it to return.
• Apperceptive teaching, in order to maximize
  transfer, continues to follow the Herbartian five
  steps- preparation, presentation, comparison,
  generalization, and application.

16
How have Connectionists Defined Learning?

• Three major connectionistic laws of learning-
  readiness, exercise, and effect- five minor
  ones-multiple response, set, prepotency of
  elements, response by analogy, and associative
  shifting- operate whenever acquired connections
  occur.
• In addition to the eight lows of learning,
  belongingness, impressiveness, polarity,
  indentifiability, availability, and mental system
  also have appeared as special learning concepts.

17
How Did Connectionism Emphasize Identical
Elements?

• The identical elements theory of transfer means
  that learning is facilitated in a new situation
  to the extent that it contains identical factors
  or elements that occurred in an earlier learning
  situation.
• Identical elements may take the form of like
  contents, procedures and facts.

18
How have Connectionists Defined Transfer of
Learning?

• Connectionists regard human activities of all
  sorts as responses made by human organisms to
  stimuli or stimulus situations.
• When identical elements occur in two learning
  situation, transfer from the first to the second
  is taken to be automatics.
• What one learns basically is a group of reactive
  responses to a complex stimulus situation,
  responses are the elements tat are transferred to
  new situations.

19
How have Connectionists Promoted Transfer of
Learning

• According to Connectionism, each person is
  limited by his inborn neural structure.
• A persons capacity for intelligent behavior
  depends upon how many links can be formed and
  retained.
• Schools are encouraged to decide exactly what
  students should be taught and to teach these
  directly, no through some roundabout means.

20
How Did Skinners Operant Conditioning Define
Learning?

• Operant conditioning is the learning process
  within which a response, or operant, is both
  shaped and brought to be more probable or
  frequent through its being reinforced by a change
  in an organisms environment after the operant or
  response occurs.

21
What is Transfer in Operant Conditioning?

• Within operant conditioning learning is simply a
  change in the form and probability of a response,
  transfer likewise is an increase probability of
  responses of a certain class occurring in the
  future.
• There are three key concepts in understanding the
  meaning of transfer within operant conditioning
  conditioned reinforcement, stimulus and response
  induction, and conditioned generalized
  reinforcement.

22
Conditioned Reinforcement

• In conditioned reinforcement a new stimulus
  becomes a conditioned reinforcer.
• In education, techniques are deliberately
  designed to create appropriate conditioned
  reinforcers and thereby transfer is promoted.

23
Stimulus and Response Induction

• Stimulus induction is a process through which a
  stimulus either acquires or loses its capacity to
  elicit a response, control a discriminative
  response, or set up an emotional state.
• Response induction is a process through which a
  response changes its probability or rate because
  it shares properties with another response that
  has changed its probability or rate through
  reinforcement.

24
Conditioned Generalized Reinforcement?

• Conditioned reinforcement and induction or
  generalization combine to give conditioned
  generalized reinforcement.
• A stimulus that is a conditioned reinforcer is
  generalized when, in the process of its becoming
  a conditioned reinforcer, it is paired with more
  than one primary reinforcer.

25
How is Transfer Promoted in Operant Conditioning?

• The teacher is the architect and builder of
  behaviors.
• In the education of a child for future
  constructive behavior, four basic questions must
  be faced
• What behavior is to be set up?
• What reinforcers are at hand?
• What responses are available in embarking upon a
  program of progressive approximation that will
  lead to the final form of the behavior?
• How can reinforcement be most efficiently
  scheduled to maintain the behavior in strength?

26
How do Cognitive Interactionists View Transfer of
Learning?

• Cognitive interactionists represent either a
  linear or a cognitive-field oriented
  psychological position.
• For cognitive interactionists, thought is an
  insightful or foresightful process.
• People interpret, not merely respond to, stimuli
• The consequences of intelligent behavior create
  insights or expectations concerning the
  likelihood of similar outcomes in the future.

27
How do Cognitive Interactionists Define Learning?

• Learning consists of the developing of
  self-activated, cognitive-mediated insightful
  expectations called cognitive structures,
  understandings or insights.
• Learning, then is insightful change in knowledge,
  skills, attitudes, values, and expectations
  acquired through self-activated interactions.

28
How do Cognitive Interactionists Treat Transfer
of Learning?

• Learning that is transferred consists of existing
  cognitive structures being extended to future
  life spaces of an individual.

29
For Cognitive Interactionists, How is transfer
Promoted Most Effectively?

• Transfer of a generalization will not always
  occur, even when a person understands a principle
  thoroughly and has applied it often.
• Ernest E. Bayes has stated that transfer will
  occur if and when
• Opportunity offers
• A trained individual sees or senses it as an
  opportunity
• He is disposed to take advantage of the
  opportunity.

30
For Cognitive Interactionists, How is Transfer
promoted Most Effectively? Cont.,

• Gertrude Hendrixs Methods
• Method I. , a generalization was first stated,
  then illustrated, then applied to new problems.
• Method II., the generalization was not stated,
  but drawn out of the learners by asking
  questions.
• Method III., students were taught as in method II
  except that subjects were asked to state the rule
  they had discovered.

31
For Cognitive Interactionists, How is Transfer
promoted Most Effectively? Cont.,

• Hypotheses from Gertrude Hendrixs Methods
• For generation of transfer power, the
  unverbalized awareness method of learning a
  generalization is better than a method in which
  an authoritative statement of the generalization
  comes first
• Verbalizing a generalization immediately after
  discovery does not increase transfer power.
• Verbalizing a generalization immediately after
  discovery may actually decrease transfer power.

32
For Cognitive Interactionists, How is Transfer
promoted Most Effectively? Cont.,

• Crucial Points of Cognitive-Interactionism in
  regard to transfer
• Opportunity for transfer may occur in many
  situations.
• Transfer is not dependent upon mental exercise
  with disciplinary school subjects.
• Transfer is dependent upon methods of teaching
  and learning that use lifelike situations.
• Transfer is not automatic
• Insights need not be put into words for their
  transfer to occur
• The amount of intraproblem insightful learning,
  not the number or trials as such, determines the
  amount of interproblem transfer.