Gagne

Gagne’s conditions of Learning

Alexander Burt

Lisa Corrado

Anila Raxhimi

Schedule:

• Opening Activity: 10 minutes

• Background on Gagne and theories: 20 minutes

• Heirarchy activity: 45 minutes

• Break: 5 minutes

• Procedure activity: 40 minutes

Think – Pair - Share

Talk to your neighbor about parallel parking:

1. How do you do it? (pretend you’re teaching driver’s ed)

2. Is there anything you should know before you start?

3. How do you feel about parallel parking? Do you avoid it?

Biography and Background

• Born 1916 in North Andover, Massachusetts• After high school, Gagné received a scholarship

to attend Yale University• Gagné received a B.A. from Yale in 1937• After completing his undergraduate degree,

Gagné went on to Brown University to begin his graduate study

• Gagné receive his Ph.D. in Psychology from Brown University in 1940


• Taught at Connecticut College for Women from 1940-1949 and Penn State University from 1945 to 1946

• During this time he made initial preparations to study the learning of humans instead of rats

• Gagné drafted into the United States Army during WWII


• Gagné was ordered to report for duty to the Psychological Research Unit No. 1 at Maxwell Field, Alabama.

• Administered and scored aptitude tests to assist with selection and classification of aviation cadets for the crews of combat aircrafts

• Following this duty station, Gagné attended Officer Candidate School at Miami Beach.

• Gagné received a commission as a second lieutenant


• Gagné assigned to School of Aviation Medicine where he participated in the development, inspection, and technical description of psychomotor tests

• Later assigned to the Perceptual Film Research Unit and engaged in developing film tests of perceptual abilities

• Last assignment was to the Psychology Branch of the Aero Medical Laboratory where the study of human engineering was initiated


• Gagné returned to Connecticut College and began studies of learning and transfer of training in multi-discrimination motor tasks with grant from the Navy Special Devices Center

• In 1949, Gagné joined the Human Resources Research Center of the U.S. Air Force in the position of research director of the Perceptual and Motor Skills Laboratory

• Later became technical director of the Maintenance Laboratory at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado


• 1958 Gagné becomes a professor of psychology at Princeton University

• Research included studies of problem solving and the learning of mathematics skills then shifted toward the learning of school subjects

• Participated in the development of the elementary science program “Science-A Process Approach”

• Gagné conducted studies of intellectual skills and their prerequisites which led to the notion of “Learning Hierarchy”


• 1962, Gagné joined the American Institutes for Research

• Engaged in research on training, assessment of human performance, education program evaluation, and other related questions

• The Conditions of Learning was written during this time

• Gagné accepted an appointment in educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley where duties included educational research and studies of learning hierarchies and rule learning


• 1969, joined the Department of Education Research at Florida State University

• Collaborated with L.J. Briggs in writing the Principles of Instructional Design as well as seeing two additional editions of The Conditions of Learning

• Participated in a visiting professorship at the Faculty of Education at Monash University where he collaborated in studies of rule learning and memory

Life Influences

• Gagné served as director of the Air Force perceptual and motor skills laboratory. – This position helped Gagné study and

understand motor skills through pilot testing.– This led to advances in American education,

military training, and industrial training.• Gagné was also influenced by positions he

held such as consultant to the Department of Defense and to The United States Office of Education.

Impact on the study of human learning

• Major Contributions to Instructional Development– co-developer of "Instructional Systems

Design" – wrote The Conditions of Learning, 1965 – co-wrote Principles of Instructional Design,

1992– Co-wrote The conditions of learning: Training

applications, 1996

Summary of Gagne’s Motivation

• World War II required the rapid training of a large number of people, and the instructional theories of the day – Pavlov, Skinner, etc. – proved inadequate.

• Gagne developed the field we now call “instructional design” (currently used in business / industry) in response.

Gagne’s definition of learning

• Capabilities – “retained dispositions” that are reflected in different kinds of behaviors.– Mental component – “retained disposition”– Behavioral component – the performance

• Capabilities come from environment plus cognitive processing.

Gagne’s Information Processing Theory

RESPONSE

GENERATOR

EXPECTANCIESEXECUTIVE CONTROL

SENSO RR EY G I S T E R

SHORT-TERM

MEMORY

LONG-TERM

MEMORY

EFFECTORS

RECEPTORS

ENVIRONMENT

(Gagné, 1974, p.16) & (Gagné, Briggs, & Wager, (Gagné, Briggs, & Wager,

1992, p. 9)1992, p. 9)

Categories of learning:

• Verbal: Declarative knowledge

• Intellectual skills: patterns and rules

• Cognitive strategies: metacognition

• Motor Skills: “muscle memory”

• Attitudes: feelings

Verbal Information

• Declarative: labels, facts, bodies of text.– What is the capital of Peru?– A rectangle has four sides

• Other categories of learning may have verbal “product” but are not principally verbal.– If a > b > c, is a > c?– Incontrovertible is to specious as true is to

____.

Intellectual Skills

• Recognizing patterns, applying rules– Subject – verb agreement– Task analysis – breaking down into steps.– Rule hierarchies, problem solving.

• Responding to conceptualizations of the environment.– “if the building is square it will have four sides”– “if I step on the brake firmly, the car will skid”

Cognitive Strategies

• Now called “metacognition” – thinking about thinking, learning, strategies.– Picking out key information– Checking understanding through self

questioning– Mental map of the elements of the problem

• See Glaser and Basok

Motor Skills

• Physical Movement– Repetition, automatization– Hierarchy of skills, just as in other areas

• Examples– Sports– Typing– Musical instruments

Attitudes

• Cognitive: “recycling is good”• Affective: “I have never been good at…” or “I’m

a dumb kid” of “I’m good at science”• Behavioral: since I’m bad at science, I’ll do my

English homework instead.– The behavior is the outcome of the attitude.– Note also that – according to Gagne – attitudes are

learned. Consider the implications.

Nine phases of learning in 3 groups

Preparation

Acquisition

Transfer

Preparation for Learning

• Attending– Being ready for learning– In the classroom, this can be as simple as “get out

your notebooks”

• Expectancy– Sets up learning goals and schema– Also called an “advance organizer”

• Retrieval– Calling to mind relevant background– Preparing “hooks” to hang new knowledge on.

Acquisition and Performance

• Perception– What’s relevant, what’s background?

• Encoding– Transferring to memory

• Retrieval– Recalling current and prior knowledge in order to

respong

• Reinforcement– In the classroom may be as simple as doing an

example problem and getting the correct answer.

Transfer of Learning

• Cueing retrieval– Additional cues for later retrieval of

knowledge.• For example, recognize triangles on paper, then

learn to recognize a triangular window.

• Generalization– How does this apply in other situations?

• Example: learning quadratic equations in math class, then learning projectile motion in physics class.

Complex learning

• Procedures

• Hierarchies

Procedures

• Complex task broken into smaller steps

• Examples:– Laundry – sort clothes, treat stains, select

temperature, dry some things, not others– Morning routine– Other examples?

• Many procedures involve conditional steps – look for “if”

Hierarchies

• For an advanced skill, consider all the component skills

• How do the component skills fit together?– Which ones are sequential– Which ones are parallel?

• Examples:– Adding fractions– Reading – phonics, then vocabulary