Teaching and Learning in Nursing
.... Knowles emphasizes that adults are self-directed and expect to take responsibility for decisions. Adult learning programs must accommodate this fundamental aspect. Andragogy makes the following assumptions about the design of learning: • Adults need to know why they need to learn something • Adults need to learn experientially, • Adults approach learning as problem-solving, and • Adults learn best when the topic is of immediate value. In practical terms, andragogy means that instruction for adults needs to focus more on the process and less on the content being taught. Strategies such as case studies, role playing, simulations, and self-evaluation are most useful. Instructors adopt a role of facilitator or resource rather than lecturer or grader. The conditions of learning theory stipulates that there are several different types or levels of learning. The significance of these classifications is that each different type requires different types of instruction. Gagne identifies five major categories of learning: • verbal information, • intellectual skills, • cognitive strategies, • motor skills • and attitudes. Different internal and external conditions are necessary for each type of learning. For example, for cognitive strategies to be learned, there must be a chance to practice developing new solutions to problems; to learn attitudes, the learner must be exposed to a credible role model or persuasive arguments. Gagne suggests that learning tasks for intellectual skills can be organized in a hierarchy according to complexity: stimulus recognition, response generation, procedure following, use of terminology, discriminations, concept formation, rule application, and problem solving. The primary significance of the hierarchy is to identify prerequisites that should be completed to facilitate learning at each level. Prerequisites are identified by doing a task analysis of a learning/training task. Learning hierarchies provide a basis for the sequencing of instruction. In addition, the theory outlines nine instructional events and corresponding cognitive processes: • gaining attention (reception) • informing learners of the objective (expectancy) • stimulating recall of prior learning (retrieval) • presenting the stimulus (selective perception) • providing learning guidance (semantic encoding) • eliciting performance (responding) • providing feedback (reinforcement) • assessing performance (retrieval) • enhancing retention and transfer (generalization). Motivation is a pivotal concept in most theories of learning. It is closely related to arousal, attention, anxiety, and feedback/reinforcement. For example, a person needs to be motivated enough to pay attention while learning; anxiety can decrease our motivation to learn. Receiving a reward or feedback for an action usually increases the likelihood that the action will be repeated. Weiner (1990) points out that behavioral theories tended to focus on extrinsic motivation (i.e., rewards) while cognitive theories deal with intrinsic motivation (i.e., goals) . Memory is one of the most important concepts in learning; if things are not remembered, no learning can take place. Some of the major issues include recall versus recognition, the nature of forgetting (i.e., interference versus decay), the structure of memory, and intentional versus incidental learning. Some theories of memory have concerned themselves with the nature of the processing. Paivio suggests a dual coding scheme for verbal and visual information. Other ...