Learning Theories

Learning is an important psychological process determining human behavior. It is a continuous process and it occurs all the time. Learning may be defined as the sum total of behavioral changes resulting from experience at training. The newly acquired knowledge and experience serve as feedback to the individual and provide the basis for future behavior in similar situations.

According to E.R.Hilgard,”Any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of prior experience is known as learning.”

According to Sanford,” learning as a relatively enduring change in behavior bought about as a consequence of experience.”

According to McGhee, “learning has taken place if an individual behavior reacts, responds as a result of experience in a manner different from thee way, he formerly behaved.”

“Learning is the process by which new behaviors are acquired. It is generally agreed that learning involves changes in behavior, practicing new behaviors and establishing permanency in the change.”

According to the Dictionary of psychology, “Learning means the process of acquiring the ability to respond adequately to a situation which may or may not have been previously encountered the favorable modification of response tendencies consequent upon previous experience, particularly the building of a new series of complex coordinated motor response: the fixation of items in memory so that they can be recalled or organized; the process of acquiring insight into a situation.”

Nature/Characteristics of Learning

Characteristics of Learning

1. Learning is purposeful: Each student sees a learning situation from a different viewpoint. 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 result in only minimum preparation. The response differ because each student acts in accordance with what he or she sees in the situation.
2. 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 personnel experiences; therefore, learning and knowledge cannot exit 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.
3. Learning is Multi-faceted: 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 situations. Learning is multi-faceted in still another way. While learning the subject at hand, students may be learning other things as well. They may be developing attitudes about aviation –good or bad – depending on what they experience. Under a skillful instructor, they may learn self-reliance. The list is seemingly endless. This type of learning is sometimes referred to as incidental, but it may have a great impact on the total development of the student.
4. 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, perhaps only inwardly, emotionally or intellectually. But if learning is a process of changing behavior, clearly that process must be an active one.
5. Other characteristics: Learning involves a change in behavior. This may be good or bad from an organizational point of view. People may learn favorable behaviors as well as unfavorable behavior. The behavioral change must be relatively permanent. Temporary changes may be reflexive and fall to represent any learning. Learning is reflected in behavior. A change in human’s thought, process, attitudes not accompanied by behavior is not learning. The practice or experience must be reinforced in order for learning to occur, It reinforcement does not accompany the practice or experience, the behavior will disappear.

Principal of Learning
Over the years, educational psychologists have identified several principals which seem generally applicable to the learning process. They provide additional insight into what makes people learn most effectively.

1. Readiness: 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.
2. 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. Students do not learn to weld during one shop period or to perform crosswise landings during one instructional flight. 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 this process is directed towards a goal.
3. 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. If, e.g., an instructor attempts to teach landing during the first flight, the student is likely to feel inferior and be frustrated.
4. 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. Unteaching is more difficult than teaching.
5. Intensity: A vivid, dramatic or exciting learning experience teaches more than a routine or boring experience. A student is likely to gain greater understanding of slow flight and stalls by performing them rather than merely reading about them. The principle of intensity implies that a student will learn more from the real thing than from a substitute.
6. 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, e.g., 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.
7. Employee Motivation: Motivation to learn is the basic requisite to make training and development programme effective.
8. Recognition of individual Differences: Regardless of individual differences and whether a trainee is learning a new skill or acquiring knowledge of a given topic, the trainee should b given the opportunity to practice what is being taught.
9. Practice Opportunities: Practice is also essential after the individual has been successfully trained.
10. Reinforcement: It may be understood as anything that both increases the strength of response and tends to induce repetitions of thee behavior that preceded the enforcement. Distinction may be made between positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement strengthens and increases behavior by the presentation of desirable consequences. In negative reinforcement, the individual exhibits the desired behavior to avoid something unpleasant.
11. Knowledge of results (feedback): Knowledge of results is a necessary condition for learning.
12. Goal: goal setting can also accelerate learning, particularly when it is accompanied by knowledge of results.
13. Schedules of Learning:
• Duration of practice sessions.
• Duration of rest sessions and.
• Positioning of rest pauses.
  All the three must be carefully planned and executed.
14. Meaningfulness of Material: A definite relationship has been established between learning and meaningfulness of the subject learnt. The more meaningful the material, the better the learning process.
15. Transfer of Learning: What is learnt in training must be transferred to the job.

Learning Through Training

Training is essentially a learning process, and studies show there are several things you can do to improve learning.

Make Learning Meaningful: It is usually easier for trainees to understand and remember material that is meaningful, Therefore:

1. At the start of training, provide a bird’s- eye view of the material to be presented. Knowing the overall picture facilitates learning.
2. Use a variety of familiar examples.
3. Organize the information so you can present it logically, and in meaningful units.
4. Use terms and concepts that are already familiar to trainees.
5. Use as many visual aids as possible.

Make skills Transfer Easy: Make it easy to transfer new skills and behaviors from the training site to the job site.

1. Maximize the similarity between the training situation and the work situation.
2. Provide adequate practice.
3. Label or identify each feature of the machine and/or step in the process.
4. Direct the trainees’ attention to important aspects of the job. For example, if you’re training customer service representatives how to handle incoming calls, first explain the different types of calls they will encounter and how to recognize such calls.
5. Provide “heads- up.” Preparatory information. For example, trainees learning to become first-line supervisors often face stressful conditions, high workload, and difficult subordinates back on the job. Studies suggest you can reduce the negative impact of such events by letting trainees know they might happen.

Motivate the Learner: Here are some ways to motivate the trainee:

1. People learn best by doing. Try to provide as much realistic practice as possible.
2. Trainees learn best when the trainers immediately reinforce correct responses, perhaps with a quick “well done”.
3. Trainees learn best at their own pace. If possible, let them pace themselves.
4. Create a perceived training need in the trainees’ minds. In one study, pilots who had experienced pretraining accident- related events subsequently learned more from an accident-reduction training program than did those experiencing fewer such events. You could illustrate the need for the training by showing videos of simulated accidents. Similarly, “before the training, managers need to sit down and talk with the trainee about why they are enrolled in the class, what they are expected to learn and how they can use it on the job.”
5. The schedule is important too: The learning curve goes down late in the day. So that “full day training is not as effective as half the day or three-fourths of the day.”