Unit 06 learning Course code 0840 Educational psychology from ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD. prepared by Ms. SAMAN BIBI & Mariam Rafique

1. COURSE CODE:840
Educational Psychology
UNIT-6
Learning

2. LEARNING
 “Learning is the relatively permanent change in a
person’s knowledge or behavior due to experience.
 This definition has three components:
 1) the duration of the change is long-term rather than
short-term;
 2) the locus of the change is the content and structure of
knowledge in memory or the behavior of the learner;
 3) the cause of the change is the learner’s experience in the
environment rather than fatigue, motivation, physical
condition or physiologic intervention.”

3. CONT…
 “A process that leads to change, which occurs as a result
of experience and increases the potential of improved
performance and future learning.”
 “Learning involves strengthening correct responses and
weakening incorrect responses. Learning involves adding
new information to your memory. Learning involves
making sense of the presented material by attending to
relevant information, mentally reorganizing it, and
connecting it with what you already know.”

4. MEANING OF LEARNING
 Learning is the process by which an individual acquires knowledge,
attitudes and skills that are necessary to meet the demands of life.
 While touching a burning candle, a child gets burnt and he withdraws the
fingers.
 When he faces a similar situation again he withdraws his fingers faster.
 Learning can result from both vicarious and direct experiences.
 Vicarious means observing someone and learning from that observation
and not being directly involved in the experience.
 For example, a child learns how to clap hands by seeing someone else do
it.
 Learning also takes place through direct experiences.
 For example, a child learns to write by practicing writing. A child normally
learns from his parents, teachers and the environment.

6.  Learning is Universal.
 Every creature that lives learns.
 Man learns most.
 The human nervous system is very complex, so are human
reactions and so are human acquisition.
 Positive learning vital for children’s growth and development.
 Learning is through Experience.
 Learning always involves some kind of experience, direct or
indirect (vicarious).
 Learning is from all Sides:
 Today learning is from all sides. Children learn from parents,
teachers, environment, nature, media etc.
NATURE OF LEARNING

7. Cont…
5. Learning is Continuous.
 It denotes the lifelong nature of learning. Every day new
situations are faced and the individual has to bring essential
changes in his style of behaviour adopted to tackle them.
Learning is birth to death.
6. It results in Change in Behaviour.
 It is a change of behaviour influenced by previous behaviour.
It is any activity that leaves a more or less permanent effect on
later activity.
7. Learning is an Adjustment.
 Learning helps the individual to adjust himself adequately to
the new situations. Most learning in children consists in
modifying, adapting, and developing their original nature. In
later life the individuals acquire new forms of behaviour.

8. Cont…
7. It comes about as a result of practice.
 It is the basis of drill and practice. It has been proven that
students learn best and retain information longer when
they have meaningful practice and repetition. Every time
practice occurs, learning continues.
8. Learning is a relatively Permanent Change.
 After a rat wake up from his nap he still remembers the
path to the food. Even if you have been on a bicycle for
years, in just a few minutes practice you can be quite
proficient again.

9. Cont…
9. Learning as Growth and Development.
 It is never ending growth and development. At reach
stage the learner acquires new visions of his future
growth and news ideals of achievement in the direction
of his effort. According to Woodworth, “All activity can
be called learning so far as it develops the individual.”
10. Learning is not directly observable.
 The only way to study learning is through some
observable behaviour. Actually, we cannot observe
learning; we see only what precedes performance, the
performance itself, and the consequences of
performance.

11. 1. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
 Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian
conditioning) is learning through association.
 In his famous experiment, Ivan Pavlov noticed dogs began
to salivate in response to a tone after the sound had
repeatedly been paired with presenting food.
 Pavlov quickly realized that this was a learned response and
set out to further investigate the conditioning process.
 Classical conditioning is a process that involves creating an
association between a naturally existing stimulus and a
previously neutral one.

12. Cont…
 The classical conditioning process involves pairing a previously neutral
stimulus (such as the sound of a bell) with an unconditioned stimulus
(the taste of food).
 Imagine a dog that salivates when it sees food.
 The animal does this automatically.
 He does not need to be trained to perform this behavior; it simply
occurs naturally.
 The food is the naturally occurring stimulus.
 If you started to ring a bell every time you presented the dog with food,
an association would be formed between the food and the bell.
 Eventually the bell alone, a.k.a. the conditioned stimulus would come to
evoke the salivation response.

14. 2. OPERANT CONDITIONING
(SKINNER)
 Operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning)
focuses on using either reinforcement or punishment
to increase or decrease a behavior.
 Through this process, an association is formed
between the behavior and the consequences of that
behavior.

15. Cont…
 For example, imagine that a school teacher punishes
a student for talking out of turn by not letting the
student go outside for recess.
 As a result, the student forms an association between
the behavior (talking out of turn) and the
consequence (not being able to go outside for recess).
 As a result, the problematic behavior decreases.

16. Cont…
 In addition to being used to train people and animals
to engage in new behaviors, operant conditioning
can also be used to help people eliminate unwanted
ones.
 Using a system of rewards and punishments, people
can learn to overcome bad habits that might have a
negative impact on their health such as smoking or
overeating.

17. Cont…
 In a classroom setting, a teacher might utilize
operant conditioning by offering tokens as rewards
for good behavior.
 
Students can then turn in these tokens to receive
some type of reward, such as a treat or extra
playtime.
 In each of these instances, the goal of conditioning is
to produce some sort of change in behavior.

25. According to the Gestalt psychologists “The Whole is
more than the sum of its parts”

26. Educational Implications
• Emphasis on situation as whole
• Problem solving
• Stop the process of unintelligent memorization
• Understanding of ideas and concepts
• Productive thinking not rote learning
• Organization of curriculum and learning
activities
• Goal oriented learning
• Instructional design should be based on Laws of
Organization

27. 4. LEWIN’S FIELD THEORY
 Lewin’s theory is called field theory as to a psychologist
field means the total psychological world in which a
person lives at a certain time.
 It includes matters and events of past, present and
future, concrete and abstract, actual and imaginary – all
interpreted as simultaneous aspects of a situation.
 Lewin states that each person exists within a field of
forces.
 The field of forces to which the individual is responding
or reacting is called his life-space.

29. Classroom Implications of Field Theory
 Taking into consideration, the field theory as a whole, the
classroom teaching-learning implications include the
significance of seeing the total situation at the beginning of
the lesson or an activity.
 The teacher should preview the activities involved and the
problem to be encountered.
 Moreover, from the point of view of a field theorist, the
teacher should keep in mind that the student, the teacher
himself, other teachers, the school and the peer group- are
all parts of the total situation.

30. CONT…
 The need for seeing the whole and details of the
situation is very necessary.
 The teacher must assist the students to perceive the
goal and the barrier.
 The goal must be presented in an easier and
simplified way.
 Sometimes partial insight of a situation may provide
partial relief from tension.

31. 5. TOLMAN’S THEORY OF LEARNING
 Tolman coined the term cognitive map, which is an internal
representation (or image) of external environmental feature or
landmark.
 He thought that individuals acquire large numbers of cues (i.e. signals)
from the environment and could use these to build a mental image of
an environment (i.e. a cognitive map).
 Tolman believed individuals do more than merely respond to stimuli;
they act on beliefs, attitudes, changing conditions, and they strive
toward goals.
 Tolman is virtually the only behaviorists who found the stimulus-
response theory unacceptable, because reinforcement was not
necessary for learning to occur.
 He felt behavior was mainly cognitive.

33. 6. PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
 Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests
that children move through four different stages of
mental development.
 His theory focuses not only on understanding how
children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding
the nature of intelligence.
Piaget's stages are:
 Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years
 Preoperational stage: ages 2 to 7
 Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11
 Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up

34. CONT…
 Piaget believed that children take an active role in
the learning process, acting much like little
scientists as they perform experiments, make
observations, and learn about the world.
 As kids interact with the world around them, they
continually add new knowledge, build upon
existing knowledge, and adapt previously held
ideas to accommodate new information.

38. CONDITIONS OF LEARNING
1. Signal Learning
 This is the simplest form of learning, and consists essentially
of the classical conditioning first described by the behavioural
psychologist Pavlov.
 In this, the subject is 'conditioned' to emit a desired response
as a result of a stimulus that would not normally produce that
response.
 This is done by first exposing the subject to the chosen
stimulus (known as the conditioned stimulus) along with
another stimulus (known as the unconditioned stimulus)
which produces the desired response naturally; after a certain
number of repetitions of the double stimulus, it is found that
the subject emits the desired response when exposed to the
conditioned stimulus on its own.

39. CONT…
2. Stimulus-response learning
 It involves developing desired stimulus-response bonds in the
subject through a carefully-planned reinforcement schedule
based on the use of 'rewards' and 'punishments'.
3. Chaining
 This is a more advanced form of learning in which the subject
develops the ability to connect two or more previously-
learned stimulus-response bonds into a linked sequence.
 It is the process whereby most complex psychomotor skills
(e.g riding a bicycle or playing the piano) are learned.

40. CONT…
4. Verbal association
 This is a form of chaining in which the links between the items
being connected are verbal in nature.
 Verbal association is one of the key processes in the
development of language skills.
5. Discrimination learning
 This involves developing the ability to make appropriate
(different) responses to a series of similar stimuli that differ in
a systematic way.
 The process is made more complex (and hence more difficult)
by the phenomenon of interference, whereby one piece of
learning inhibits another.
 Interference is thought to be one of the main causes of
forgetting.

41. CONT…
6. Concept learning
 This involves developing the ability to make a consistent
response to different stimuli that form a common class or
category of some sort.
 It forms the basis of the ability to generalize, classify etc.
7. Rule learning
 This is a very-high-level cognitive process that involves being
able to learn relationships between concepts and apply these
relationships in different situations, including situations not
previously encountered.
 It forms the basis of the learning of general rules, procedures,
etc.

42. CONT…
8. Problem solving
 This is the highest level of cognitive process according to
Gagné.
 It involves developing the ability to invent a complex rule,
algorithm or procedure for the purpose of solving one
particular problem, and then using the method to solve
other problems of a similar nature.