Principles of Learning

"What are instructional events? These are the classes of events that occur in a learning situation. Each event functions to provide the external conditions of learning." (Aronson and Briggs 1983, p. 89) pg. 90 1. Gaining attention 2. Informing the learner of the objective 3. Stimulating recall of prerequisite learnings 4. Presenting the stimulus material 5. Providing learning guidance 6. Eliciting performance 7. Providing feedback about performance correctness 8. Assessing the performance 9. Enhancing retention and transfer

From Landa (1983): "in order to teach effectively (and to teach at all), a teacher should be provided either ith a set of programs for solving particular instructional problems or with a method as to how to independently develop an instructional program (algorithmic or nonalgorithmic) on the basis of known descriptive and prescriptive instructional theories" [p. 61] "A necessity to pass from a theory (even prescriptive) to a program for solving individual problems explains why the knowledge of an instructional theory in itself (even if it were comprehensive and coherent) does not provide a teacher with an ability to teacher. The latter ability is based on a knowledge of programs for solving particular problems (or classes of problems) or the ability to pass from theoretical propositions to programs and be guided by them." [p. 61, footnote]

"Because our methods of instruction are generally ineffective, educators have not been able to devote much time and effort to the whole child. If we can develop highly effective instructional resources (whether in books or in computers), then we can free some (more) of the teacher's time to work on the social, psychological, emotional, and moral development of our children." "Rather than having primary responsibility for a subject, the future teacher will have primary responsibility for a number of children. The teacher will become an advisor, a motivator, and someone whose major interest is the child---the whole child. The teacher will be liberated from the more routine, boring aspects of his or her profession by well-designed instructional resoureces...by better testing methods, and by better record-keeping systems. But such improvements in education cannot occur before we improve our knowledge about how to design more effective, efficient, and appealing methods of...

If we return to our observation of the child, I think we will find that imagination is the prevailing organization, and in the man of genius also, whether poet or scientist, there is just this ability to make new, free associations. The wise teacher, then, will be a person who, instead of doling out objective truths with one hand and with the other receiving back from the pupil the same idea stamped with the pupil's brain trade mark, shall rather be an interesting personality, a psychical and moral object in the pupil's environment from which the pupil can enlarge his own subjective experience. He is not to dictate the conditions of learning, but be on hand to supply the ideas which will be food for the already interesting ideas of the child, or even to help the child find his own interesting ideas. He must serve as the model for the 'trying on,' as Dickens's dolls' dressmaker, Jenny Wren, would say, of halfsubjective, half-objective ideas; and he must be on han...