LEARNING AND THEIR TYPES

                          

LEARNING AND THEIR TYPES

Learning is acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing, existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves. Learning is not compulsory; it is contextual. It does not happen all at once, but builds upon and is shaped by what we already know. To that end, learning may be viewed as a process, rather than a collection of factual and procedural knowledge. Learning produces changes in the organism and the changes produced are relatively permanent.

Human learning may occur as part of education, personal development, schooling, or training. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy. Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness.

“ Learning that an aversive event can't be avoided

nor escaped is called learned helplessness.There is

evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally,

 in which habituation has been observed as early as 32

 weeks gestation, indicating that the central nervous

system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning

 and memory to occur very early on in development.”

TYPES OF LEARNING

Non-associative learning

  "A relatively permanent change in the strength of response to a single stimulus due to repeated exposure to that stimulus. Changes due to such factors as sensory adaptation, fatigue, or injury do not qualify as non-associative learning."

Non-associative learning can be divided into habituation and sensitization.

Habituation

 Is a progressive diminution of behavioral response probability with repetition stimulus. An animal first responds to a stimulus, but if it is neither rewarding nor harmful the animal reduces subsequent responses. One example of this can be seen in small song birds if a stuffed owl (or similar predator) is put into the cage, the birds initially react to it as though it were a real predator.

Sensitization

 Is an example of non-associative learning in which the progressive amplification of a response follows repeated administrations of a stimulus (Bell et al., 1995) proposed that, “An everyday example of this mechanism is the repeated tonic stimulation of peripheral nerves that will occur if a person rubs his arm continuously”.

Associative learning

Associative learning is the process by which an association between two stimuli or a behavior and a stimulus is learned. The two forms of associative learning are classical and operant conditioning. In the former a previously neutral stimulus is repeatedly presented together with a reflex eliciting stimuli until eventually the neutral stimulus will elicit a response on its own.

Operant conditioning is the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of behavior. Operant conditioning is distinguished from Pavlovian conditioning in that operant conditioning uses reinforcement/punishment to alter an action-outcome association. In contrast Pavlovian conditioning involves strengthening of the stimulus-outcome association.

Classical conditioning

The typical paradigm for classical conditioning involves repeatedly pairing an unconditioned stimulus (which unfailingly evokes a reflexive response) with another previously neutral stimulus (which does not normally evoke the response). Following conditioning, the response occurs both to the unconditioned stimulus and to the other, unrelated stimulus (now referred to as the "conditioned stimulus"). The response to the conditioned stimulus is termed a conditioned response. The classic example is Pavlov and his dogs. Meat powder naturally will make a dog salivate when it is put into a dog's mouth; salivating is a reflexive response to the meat powder. Meat powder is the unconditioned stimulus (US) and the salivation is the unconditioned response (UR). Then Pavlov rang a bell before presenting the meat powder. The first time Pavlov rang the bell, the neutral stimulus, the dogs did not salivate, but once he put the meat powder in their mouths they began to salivate. After numerous pairings of the bell and the food the dogs learned that the bell was a signal that the food was about to come and began to salivate when the bell was rung. Once this occurred, the bell became the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the salivation to the bell became the conditioned response (CR).

Observational learning

The learning process most characteristic of humans is imitation; one's personal repetition of an observed behavior, such as a dance. For instance  children has shown that observational learning is well suited to seeding behaviors that can spread widely across a culture through a process called a diffusion hain, where individuals initially learn a behavior by observing another individual perform that behavior, and then serve as a model from which other individuals learn the behavior.Observational learning involves a neural component as well.

Episodic learning

            Episodic learning is a change in behavior that occurs as a result of an event. For example, a fear of dogs that follows being bitten by a dog is episodic learning. Episodic learning is so named because events are recorded into episodic memory, which is one of the three forms of explicit learning and retrieval, along with perceptual memory and semantic memory.

Multimedia learning

Multimedia learning is where a person uses both auditory and visual stimuli to learn information (Mayer 2001).

E-learning and augmented learning

Electronic learning or e-learning is a general term used to refer to computer enhanced learning. A specific and always more diffused e-learning is mobile learning, which uses different mobile telecommunication equipment, such as cellular phones.

 Rote learning

Rote learning is memorizing information so that it can be recalled by the learner exactly the way it was read or heard. The major technique used for rote learning is learning by repetition, based on the idea that a learner can recall the material exactly, if the information is repeatedly.

Meaningful learning

Meaningful learning is the concept that learned knowledge is fully understood to the extent that it relates to other knowledge. Meaningful contrasts with rote learning in which information is acquired without regard to understanding. Meaningful learning, on the other hand, implies there is a comprehensive knowledge of the context of the facts learned.

Informal learning

Informal learning occurs through the experience of day-to-day situations (for example, one would learn to look ahead while walking because of the danger inherent in not paying attention to where one is going). It is learning from life, during a meal at table with parents, play, exploring.

Formal learning

Formal learning is learning that takes place within a teacher-student relationship, such as in a school system. The term formal learning has nothing to do with the formality of the learning, but rather the way it is directed and organized.

 Non-formal learning

Non-formal learning is organized learning outside the formal learning system. For example: learning by coming together with people with similar interests and exchanging viewpoints, in clubs or in (international) youth organizations, workshops.

Tangential learning

Tangential learning is the process by which people will self-educate if a topic is exposed to them in a context that they already enjoy. For example, after playing a music-based video game, some people may be motivated to learn how to play a real instrument, or after watching a TV show that references Faust and Lovecraft, some people may be inspired to read the original work

Dialogic learning

Dialogic learning is a type of learning based on dialogue.

IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING

Increase competence to the current work.

Increase the career prospect.

Improve personal satisfaction

A less immediate wish to gain the rewards associate with financial, psychological and social.

           LEARNING AS ITS OWN REWARD

A person enjoy learning will be probably be able to give serious reason why learning is a good thing and has an instrumental value, but fundamentally, learning is its own reward.

          A person who value learning for its own sake possesses the virtual inquisitiveness. Psychologists have studied the drive to know – the curiosity of exploratory motive and they have found that there seems to be in animals and human a motive to learn that is independent of satisfying any other primary biological drive. This natural drive or tendency needs to be nurtured and reinforced it should not be allowed to wither on the vine. Studies in critical thinking reviles that the ideal critical thinker possesses a strong trait of inquisitiveness ( an active desire to learn about things) that is essential for good critical thinking skills

                The love of learning is connected with what psychologists and educators refers to as deep learning. Without a positive experience of learning the result is frequently on surface learning. Love of learning provokes deep learning .deep learning involves getting the big picture, a synthesized and comprehensive understand of a domain of a study where surface learning never penetrates the core ideas of a learners , deep learning penetrates and affects the learners fundamental values and beliefs. Deep learning is usually associated by an intrinsic motion to learn and the associated emotional affect is positive.

                All these qualities of deep learning apply to the type of knowledge associated with wisdom and motivational towards learning.( Bransford and Cocking 2000)

Perhaps all real learning, all meaningful understanding begins with a state of wonder and thinking begin with a  question, the love of learning begins in inquisitiveness until we wonder and basically become un conscious

                 Dialogue open the mind to other point of view and empowers critical thinking and reward the learners to learn more deeply.

“ fair- minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligently in seeking relevant information , reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry , and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permits.”( Facione:1990).

        According to Peter Facione (1990), education is nothing more no less than, learning to think. Thinking improves the quality of learning and facilitates deep learning .Quality learning is an active process and the mind becomes active  in thinking . Example when a person begins to think about some topic the person becomes  mentally active  and alive. Since thinking is active use of one’s mind and empowerment. The virtual pertaining to good thinking include being rational reflective and thoughtful all of which refers to specific intellectual virtual associated with critical thinking

PROCESS OF LEARNING

             The process of learning includes searching, screening, digestion, synthesizing, use, assimilation of feedback, and regulation. This translates them into motivation, immersion, integration, use, and refinement.These aren’t strictly steps, since they overlap each other in time, but they are the basic components of healthy whole brain learning. They are familiar elements to those who have studied creativity, but the recent brain research gives them a new depth of meaning. Let’s now explore each in more detail.

            Motivation Eachlevel in the brain has its own goals and motivation – the reptile wants order and physical security, the old mammal wants belongingness and sensual pleasure, the neocortex is curious, and the prefrontal cortex wants wholeness and integration. Each level can aid or impede your ability to learn depending on its motivational state.

Immersion By an immersion approach I mean exposure to a wide variety of information and experience related to what you are trying to learn, preferably involving many different senses. For example, if you want to learn vegetable gardening, you would do well to:

• spend some time with a successful gardener just watching what s/he does and working with him/her (modeling);
• carefully examine some of the plants you want to grow (and maybe some you’ve never heard of), looking, smelling, feeling, tasting;
• skim a number of books on gardening, pausing on those subjects that catch your eye, but moving on as soon as your interest wanes;
• Visit a garden store (or a catalog) to see what equipment and supplies are available.
• Spend time digging, weeding.

Thus the general rule for this part of the learning process is enter a new subject through the right brain with an unpressured multi-sensory immersion

Integration, encompasses both digestion and synthesis. It begins as a largely subconscious process, with the mind exploring a great many possible associations between the new pieces you have gained through immersion and the knowledge you had before.

Refinement Use leads to feedback – more information to be integrated and put again to use. The cycle goes around and will do so as long as the motivation continues, indeed this is often the longest stage. In some situations it may be appropriate to track your level of performance and progressively demand more of yourself. The main danger here is getting into ruts. The antidote? Keep the refinement process fresh through right brain activities.

DOMAINS OF LEARNING

Benjamin Bloom has suggested three domains of learning:

Cognitive – To recall, calculate, discuss, analyze, problem solve.

Psychomotor – To dance, swim, ski, dive, drive a car, ride a bike.

Affective – To like something or someone, love, appreciate, fear, hate, worship, etc.

Active learning

Active learning occurs when a person takes control of their learning experience. Since understanding information is the key aspect of learning, it is important for learners to recognize what they understand and what they do not. By doing so, they can monitor their own mastery of subjects. Active learning encourages learners to have an internal dialogue in which they are verbalizing their understandings.

Machine learning

Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, concerns the construction and study of systems that can learn from data. For example, a machine learning system could be trained on email messages to learn to distinguish between spam and non-spam messages.

LEARNING THEORY

Learning theory may be described as a body of principles advocated by psychologists and educators to explain how people acquire skills, knowledge, and attitudes.

According to Hill, ( 2002 ). Learning theory is an attempt to describe how people and animals learn thereby helping us understand the inherently complex process of learning. Various branches of learning theory are used in formal training programs to improve and accelerate the learning process. When properly integrated, learning principles, derived from theories, can be useful to aviation instructors and developers of instructional programs.  Most psychologists agree that learning may be explained by a combination of two basic approaches: behaviorism and the cognitive theories.

BEHAVIORISM THEORY

Behaviorists believe that animals, including humans, learn in about the same way. Behaviorism stresses the importance of having a particular form of behavior reinforced by someone, other than the student, to shape or control what is learned.  This theory provides the instructor with ways to manipulate students with stimuli, induce the desired behavior or response, and reinforce the behavior with appropriate rewards. In general, the behaviorist theory emphasizes positive reinforcement rather than no reinforcement or punishment.  As an instructor, it is important to keep in mind that behaviorism is still widely used today, because controlling learning experiences helps direct students toward specific learning outcomes.

COGNITIVE THEORY

Psychological thinking and experimentation in education includes some facts of the cognitive theory. This is true in basic as well as more advanced training programs. Unlike behaviorism, the cognitive theory focuses on what is going on inside the student's mind. Learning is not just a change in behavior; it is a change in the way a student thinks, understands, or feels. There are two  major theories   used to classify  as the information processing model and the social interaction model. The first says that the student's brain has internal structures which select and process incoming material, store and retrieve it, use it to produce behavior, and receive and process feedback on the results.

This involves a number of cognitive processes, including executive functions of recognizing expectancies, planning and monitoring performance, encoding and chunking information, and producing internal and external responses. The social interaction theories gained prominence in the 1980s. They stress that learning and subsequent changes in behavior take place as a result of interaction between the student and the environment. Behavior is modeled either by people or symbolically. Cultural influences, peer pressure, group dynamics, and film and television are some of the significant factors.

CHARACTERISTICS OF LEARNING

Learning is purposeful

 Each student is a unique individual whose past experiences affect readiness to learn and understanding of the requirements involved. For example, an instructor may give two aviation maintenance students the assignment of learning certain inspection procedures. One student may learn quickly and be able to competently present the assigned material. The combination of an aviation background and future goals may enable that student to realize the need and value of learning the procedures. A second student's goal may only be to comply with the instructor's assignment, and may result in only minimum preparation. The responses differ because each student acts in accordance with what he or she sees in the situation.

Learning is a result of experience

Since learning is an individual process, the instructor cannot do it for the student. The student can learn only from personal experiences; therefore, learning and knowledge cannot exist apart from a person. A person's knowledge is a result of experience, and no two people have had identical experiences. Even when observing the same event, two people react differently; they learn different things from it, according to the manner in which the situation affects their individual needs. Previous experience conditions a person to respond to some things and to ignore others.

All learning is by experience, but learning takes place in different forms and in varying degrees of richness and depth. For instance, some experiences involve the whole person while others may be based only on hearing and memory

Learning is multifaceted

If instructors see their objective as being only to train their students' memory and muscles, they are underestimating the potential of the teaching situation. Students may learn much more than expected if they fully exercise their minds and feelings. The fact that these items were not included in the instructor's plan does not prevent them from influencing the learning situation.

Psychologists sometimes classify learning by types, such as verbal, conceptual, perceptual, motor, problem solving, and emotional. Other classifications refer to intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, and attitudinal changes, along with descriptive terms like surface or deep learning.

Learning is an active process

Students do not soak up knowledge like a sponge absorbs water. The instructor cannot assume that students remember something just because they were in the classroom, shop, or airplane when the instructor presented the material. Neither can the instructor assume that the students can apply what they know because they can quote the correct answer verbatim. For students to learn, they need to react and respond, perhaps outwardly, only inwardly, emotionally, or intellectually. But if learning is a process of changing behavior, clearly that process must be an active one.

PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING

According to Hill (2002) Educational psychologists have identified several principles which seem generally applicable to the learning process. They provide additional insight into what makes people learn most effectively.

Readiness.

 Readiness implies a degree of single-mindedness and eagerness Individuals learn best when they are ready to learn, and they do not learn well if they see no reason for learning. Getting students ready to learn is usually the instructor's responsibility. If students have a strong purpose, a clear objective, and a definite reason for learning something, they make more progress than if they lack motivation.  When students are ready to learn, they meet the instructor at least halfway, and this simplifies the instructor's job.

Exercise

The principle of exercise states that those things most often repeated are best remembered. It is the basis of drill and practice. The human memory is fallible. The mind can rarely retain, evaluate, and apply new concepts or practices after a single exposure. They learn by applying what they have been told and shown. Every time practice occurs, learning continues. The instructor must provide opportunities for students to practice and, at the same time, make sure that this process is directed toward a goal.

Effect

The principle of effect is based on the emotional reaction of the student. It states that learning is strengthened when accompanied by a pleasant or satisfying feeling, and that learning is weakened when associated with an unpleasant feeling. Experiences that produce feelings of defeat, frustration, anger, confusion, or futility are unpleasant for the student. Usually it is better to tell students that a problem or maneuver, although difficult, is within their capability to understand or perform. Whatever the learning situation, it should contain elements that affect the students positively and give them a feeling of satisfaction.

Primacy

Primacy, the state of being first, often creates a strong, almost unshakable, impression. For the instructor, this means that what is taught must be right the first time. For the student, it means that learning must be right.  If, for example, a maintenance student learns a faulty riveting technique, the instructor will have a difficult task correcting bad habits and reteach correct ones. Every student should be started right. The first experience should be positive, functional, and lay the foundation for all that is to follow.

Intensity

 The principle of intensity implies that a student will learn more from the real thing than from a substitute. In contrast to flight instruction and shop instruction, the classroom imposes limitations on the amount of realism that can be brought into teaching. The aviation instructor should use imagination in approaching reality as closely as possible. Today, classroom instruction can benefit from a wide variety of instructional aids to improve realism, motivate learning, and challenge students.

Recency

The principle of recency states that things most recently learned are best remembered. Conversely, the further a student is removed time-wise from a new fact or understanding, the more difficult it is to remember. It is easy, for example, for a student to recall a torque value used a few minutes earlier, but it is usually impossible to remember an unfamiliar one used a week earlier. Instructors recognize the principle of recency when they carefully plan a summary for a ground school lesson. The principle of recency often determines the sequence of lectures within a course of instruction.

LEVELS OF LEARNING

Levels of learning may be classified in any number of ways. Four basic levels have traditionally been included in aviation instructor training. The lowest level is the ability to repeat something which one has been taught, without understanding or being able to apply what has been learned. This is referred to as rote learning. Progressively higher levels of learning are understanding what has been taught, achieving the skill for application of what has been learned, and correlation of what has been learned with other things previously learned or subsequently encountered.

For example, a flight instructor may explain to a beginning student the procedure for entering a level, left turn. The procedure may include several steps such as: (1) visually clear the area, (2) add a slight amount of power to maintain airspeed, (3) apply aileron control pressure to the left, (4) add sufficient rudder pressure in the direction of the turn to avoid slipping and skidding, and (5) increase back pressure to maintain altitude. A student who can verbally repeat this instruction has learned the procedure by rote. This will not be very useful to the student if there is never an opportunity to make a turn in flight, or if the student has no knowledge of the function of airplane controls.

With proper instruction on the effect and use of the flight controls, and experience in controlling the airplane during straight-and-level flight, the student can consolidate these old and new perceptions into an insight on how to make a turn. At this point, the student has developed an understanding of the procedure for turning the airplane in flight. This understanding is basic to effective learning, but may not necessarily enable the student to make a correct turn on the first attempt.

When the student understands the procedure for entering a turn, has had turns demonstrated, and has practiced turn entries until consistency has been achieved, the student has developed the skill to apply what has been learned. This is a major level of learning, and one at which the instructor is too often willing to stop. Discontinuing instruction on turn entries at this point and directing subsequent instruction exclusively to other elements of piloting performance is characteristic of piecemeal instruction, which is usually inefficient. It violates the building block concept of instruction by failing to apply what has been learned to future learning tasks. The building block concept will be covered later in more detail.

The correlation level of learning, which should be the objective of aviation instruction, is that level at which the student becomes able to associate an element which has been learned with other segments or blocks of learning. The other segments may be items or skills previously learned, or new learning tasks to be undertaken in the future. The student who has achieved this level of learning in turn entries, for example, has developed the ability to correlate the elements of turn entries with the performance of chandelier and lazy eights.

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