Robert Gagné’s learning theory

How did this American psychologist conceptualize the stages of learning?

Learning is the basic process by which we acquire information from the external or internal world in order to work with it.. The result of this process is knowledge, which allows us to perform a wide variety of behaviors, make predictions and even acquire new knowledge and cognitive schemas.

Learning is therefore a fundamental phenomenon that allows us to survive and adapt to the environment, being studied by many different disciplines and theoretical currents. One of the many theories that have arisen regarding the learning process is Robert Gagné's learning theory. Jean Piaget was not the only one to talk about learning in psychological terms.

Learning for Robert Gagné

As we have said, there are very different ways of understanding what learning is.

In the case of Robert Gagné's learning theory, learning is considered to be the result of the interrelation between person and environment. the interrelation between person and environmentIt is a change of behavioral type, behavioral and even of disposition or attitude with respect to a part or the totality of reality.

This change is maintained over time as a consequence of the interaction between the person and the environment, and is not only due to maturational changes but also to the experience and repetition of these.

For Gagné, information reaches the nervous system through the sensory receptors and is subsequently processed and stored in the memory. and stored in the memory until it is necessary to retrieve it.. If this information corresponds to a previous one, it can be easily stored, but if not, practice and repetition of learning will be necessary.

Intense emotions and motivations facilitate (or hinder, as the case may be) such storage and subsequent retrieval.

The role of motivation in learning

When information is retrieved, a situation or stimulus must occur that requires the use of stored learning, which, in the face of this stimulus, passes to a hypothetical internal response generator. After passing through this generator, the behavior is produced.After passing through this generator, the behavior is produced, taking into account the level of control and one's own and others' expectations regarding the behavior and the goal or objective to be achieved with it.

Thus, motivation acts as an engine of learning and, at the same time, it creates more situations to put into practice what has been learned, since it creates more opportunities in which a situation is detected in which the new skills acquired can be useful.

Motivation is essential for learningThe information, whatever its type, must be attended to and processed. Otherwise, the information would not be recorded and knowledge would not be generated. But what exactly do we learn?

What do we learn?

We do not always learn the same type of things. In fact, there is a wide variety of stimuli, situations, skills and procedures of different types that we can acquire throughout our lives.

For Gagné, the wide variety of possible learning can be grouped into eight different types. can be grouped into eight different types of learninglearning of reaction to signals or reflexes, conditioned stimulus-response learning, chaining of motor action sequences, verbal association, discrimination, learning and understanding of concepts, learning of principles with which to structure the assessments made by the learner. the structure of the evaluations made by the subject, and problem solving..

The products of such learning are also classified into five main categories.

1. Motor skills

Motor skills are fundamental to being able to act.

Training is required to make movement to make the movement automated and to be able to and can be performed with precision, especially in the case of behaviors that require the following of a sequence of actions.

2. Verbal information

This type of ability or learning refers to the process of transmitting information and the process of transmitting information and retaining concrete data such as names or memories. such as names or memories.

3. Intellectual skills

These are the abilities that allow to grasp, interpret and use cognitive elements in order to interpret reality, including the ability to symbolize.including the capacity for symbolization. This type of skills are very useful for discriminating stimuli and associating symbolism and reality.

4. Cognitive skills and strategies

These skills refer to the cognitive processes we use to capture, analyze, work with and retrieve information. Likewise is linked to the choice of adaptive behaviors to the environment and its specific demands.. Attention, response style or planning are several examples of this type of skills, and according to Gagné's theory they work together.

5. Attitudes

Attitudes are considered to be the internal states that influence the choice of behaviors and behaviors towards choosing behaviors and behaviors towards specific situations, persons or objects.. They are, in short, predispositions that incline us more towards one option or another and that shape the way we behave.

Learning can cause personal attitudes to changeHowever, such change is gradual and progressive, and learning is complex and needs to be reinforced for there to be real and permanent change.

Stages of learning

Regardless of the type of knowledge, skill or disposition that is acquired, Gagné's learning theory considers learning as a process that can be divided into different stages before the acquisition of knowledge. can be divided into different stages before the acquisition of knowledge. These stages or phases are as follows.

First phase: Motivation

The first phase in the learning process is the motivation phase. In this phase, basically an objective is established, directing attention towards it.. In this way we know what we should direct our actions towards.

Second phase: Apprehension

In this second phase, attention and selective perception processes are used when a change in some stimulus attracts our attention and makes us focus on it. when a change in some stimulus attracts our attention and makes us focus physically and cognitively on it..

Third phase: Acquisition

While the previous phases are mainly based on the fixation of attention and the intention to attend, during the third phase the acquisition and encoding of information takes place, gathering the stimuli and working with them. This third phase is the main one in the learning process since it is the moment when knowledge is acquired..

Fourth phase: Retention

After acquiring the information it is stored in the memoryThe possible interference with other knowledge must be monitored, and retention is favored by this knowledge.

Fifth phase: Retrieval

Once the information is retained, learning remains in the memory until some type of stimulus triggers it. some kind of stimulus triggers the need to retrieve it.. In this situation the memory of the stored information is born after processing the needs arising from the stimulus or demand.

Sixth phase: Generalization

A very important part of learning is the ability to ability to generalize informationn. In this phase of the learning process an association is built between the knowledge acquired and retrieved and the different situations in which such knowledge could be demanded.

This generalization allows us to establish adaptive behaviors in the face of novel stimuli for which we have no information. It can be understood as one of the main goals of the learning process, since it is here where the usefulness of what has been learned is noticed by taking it beyond the initial context.

Seventh phase: Performance

The seventh phase of the learning process is the performance phase. In this phase the individual transforms the knowledge learned into actionIn this phase the individual transforms the learned knowledge into action, performing a behavior in response to external or internal stimulation.

Eighth phase: Feedback

The comparison between the performance results derived from the use of learning and the expectations regarding those results. are the last phase of the process. If the results are as expected or better, the learning will be strengthened, while if not, it will be modified or discarded in that situation in favor of other alternatives.

Bibliographical references:

• Gagné, R. (1970). Las condiciones del aprendizaje. Aguilar. Madrid.

• Meza, A. (1979). Psychology of cognitive learning. Hallazgos empíricos en los enfoques de Piaget y Gagné. Lima: NUCICC.