Learning Principles

Module 5

Types (Domains) of Learning 

• As noted in the previous slide, Gagne identified 5 domains of learning.  These domains were determined by studying what actually occurs in classroom settings, rather than by theorizing about what might happen.  The five types are:
      a) verbal learning
      b) intellectual skills
      c) motor skills
      d) attitudes
      e) cognitive strategies

  

  Verbal Learning:  Acquiring labels and facts, meaningfully connected selections of prose or poetry and organized bodies of knowledge.  Also may be the restatement in speech or writing of a word or series of words in the order presented.  The reconstruction of the organized representation of a verbal passage.  This type of learning required the internalized conditions of pre-existing knowledge and strategies for processing (ability to encode).

  

  Intellectual Skills:  Involve interacting with the environment using symbols.  Intellectual skills make individuals competent members of the society.  This is seen as knowing how as opposed to verbal skills which are "knowing that."  The subpieces are discrimination learning, concrete and defined concepts, rule learning, and higher order rule learning (problem solving).  Internal conditions include recalling prerequisite skills, interacting in a variety of ways with new learning, applying new skills to a range of situations and contexts.

  

  Motor skills: involves the development of an executive routine.  Practice of the skills  allows parts to be put together to construct a whole.  Continued practice perfects performance.

  

  Attitudes:  Internal states that modulate behavior.  There is a cognitive aspect (an idea or proposition), an affective aspect (feelings that accompany the idea), and a behavioral aspect (readiness or predisposition for action).  While attitudes are hard to develop and change systematically, social-learning theory is one method that has been developed and appears to be successful.

  

  Cognitive Strategies:  Capabilities that control management of learning, remembering and thinking.  The object of cognitive strategies is the learner’s own thought processes.  They are related to the learner attending to stimuli, methods of encoding, size of chunks, search and retrieval, and application of other skills.  Cognitive strategies may be task specific, general, or executive.

  

  Before continuing, take a minute to identify examples for each of the five domains.  Do you believe that the same approach can be used to teach in each of these domains?

  
   

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