1.4 Conclusion

General Principles of Learning

The diagram below is a more detailed version of Figure 1.1 from the beginning of this Unit, and has been inserted here to enable you to use it to organize your learning.

Through studying each of the approaches shown in the diagram, we can see that there are differences in the focus and emphasis of each of the theories. However, there are general principles of learning that can be identified from all the theories. The following are key principles:

• People’s specific experiences influence the knowledge they gain and the skills they develop.
• How people interpret their experiences influences the specific things they learn from those experiences.
• New learning builds upon prior learning.
• Motivation affects what people learn and how much they learn.
• The consequences that follow people’s behaviour influence their future learning and behaviour.
• Different factors influence people’s learning differently. There is diversity in what different people learn from a single experience.

Each of these principles is expanded on in the following text.

Learning due to experience

If you go back to the earlier definition of learning, you will see that learning is due to experience. Learners will have varied school experiences; studying from a text book, observing a science experiment, receiving praise and encouragement for the effort put into solving a problem, witnessing the differential treatment of a female learner by a teacher and being bullied by a senior learner in the school. Your responsibility as an educator is to maximize the experiences that will lead to the acquisition of productive information, skills and attitudes; and minimize the experiences that produce behaviour that is counterproductive or result in inaccurate knowledge being learned.

Interpretations of experience

Different learners may interpret the same experience or information differently. As educators, we must remember that, in certain situations, learners may interpret their experiences in ways we do not expect. A learner may interpret an experience in a way that is counterproductive for their learning and development. For example, in a sex education class with adolescents, a teacher’s description of the use of condoms may be interpreted by one learner as a caution against engaging in unsafe or premarital sex; while another learner may see this as approval to engage in sexual behaviour.

Prior learning

What one learns from an experience and the way in which one interprets that experience, depends to some extent on the things one has already learned. As educators, we must ensure that learners have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills for the new things we want to teach them. We can do this by periodically checking learners’ understanding by asking questions or initiating a class discussion before we teach something new.

Motivation

Different theorists have different views on what motivation is. For example, behavioural theorists talk about reinforcement in learning. The common view on this is that a learner is more likely to learn something new if rewarded for doing so. Cognitive and social cognitive psychologists, on the other hand, will describe motivation in terms of internal mental phenomena. For example, they talk about an individual having an interest in a topic and setting goals for him/herself. What is common among these theorists is that they agree that motivation affects what we learn and how much we learn. The lesson, for us as educators, is to give our learners a reason for learning what it is we want them to learn.

Consequences

There is agreement that the consequences of an individual’s behaviour will have an influence on his/her future learning. For this reason, we should ensure that the consequences of learners’ behaviour are ones that will lead to increased academic success. A simple example is that of a learner producing an assignment on a topic which lacks coherence and clarity and contains many errors. The feedback we provide should be about how the learner can improve future efforts.

Diversity in the learner population

Learners learn in different ways, they behave differently in any given situation and what they learn from a single experience may be different. If we presented a lesson on a recent historical event in your country to a class, we can be sure that different members of the class will remember different things from what was presented. A learner may remember the facts that relate to a specific event because it has significance for him/her. He/She may relate what he/she learns to what he has heard about his family’s experiences of that event.