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Concepts of Learning
BS Education (BSE 101)
Tarlac State University
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- Learning Outcome:
After completing this module the students will be able to:
Understand the concept and nature of learning.
Comprehend various theories of learning.
- Introduction
Learning is one of the important psychological processes that determine the human behaviour.
All human behaviours either directly or indirectly are affected by learning process. Learning can be conceptualised as acquiring new behaviour in an interactional environment. It is the process of acquiring, assimilating and internalizing cognitive, motor or behavioural inputs for their varied uses as and when required.
- Definitions of Learning
With every new experience and every new event or situation, we learn something new. But, this concept of learning is purely theoretical. In real terms, learning can be described as the modification of one’s behaviour through practice, training and experience. A few definitions of learning are given below to understand the nature of learning.
“Learning is a relatively permanent change in behaviour that occurs as a result of prior experience.”
“Learning has taken place if an individual behaves, reacts, and responds as a result of experience in a manner different from the way he formerly behaved.”
“Learning can be defined as relatively permanent change in behaviour potentiality that results from reinforced practice or experience.”
From the definitions of learning given above, following generalisations can be drawn about the nature of learning:
Learning involves change, although the change can be favourable or unfavourable from organisations’ point of view.
Not at all changes can be referred to learning. Learning is the relatively permanent change in the behaviour of an individual. Any temporary change cannot be regarded as learning.
Learning should be reflected in the individual’s behaviour. Any change in the beliefs, attitudes or perception of an individual which is not accompanied by the appropriate behaviour is not learning.
Change should occur as the result of some experience, practice or training. This also means that any biological change in the human behaviour due to some disease or physical damage is not learning.
Practice or experience must be reinforced for the learning to take place. If the desired behaviour is not reinforced, it will not be repeated and eventually disappear.
- Theories of Learning
Different approaches to learning in the form of theories or models have been established to explain the phenomenon of learning. These theories can be classified as:
Stimulus-Response theories
Cognitive theories
Social learning theories
The theories and their implications for improving the learning and behaviours of the individuals are discussed as follows:
4 Stimulus-Response Theories
The important stimulus-response theories are:
(a) classical conditioning theory
(b) operant conditioning theory
(c) Thorndike’s law of effect.
4.1 Classical conditioning theory of learning
Classical conditioning is defined as association of one event with another desired event resulting in a behaviour. The most popular experiment on the classical conditioning was conducted by a famous Russian psychologist Ivan Pavolv. Pavolv conducted an experiment on dogs and tried to establish a stimulus-response connection amongst them. Pavolv was honoured with a Nobel Prize for his experiment on this subject. In his experiment on dogs, Pavolv made an attempt to relate salivation of dogs with ringing of bell. The amount of saliva secretions were measured with the help of a surgical procedure.
In the first stage of experiment, Pavlov presented a piece of meat in front of the dog. The dog secreted increased amount of saliva in response to the meat. This response was unconditional.
Then, he withheld the presentation of meat and rang a bell in front of dog at the same time when meat was presented to him. The dog did not exhibit any salivation or we can say that there was no response.
In the next stage of the experiment, he started ringing the bell at the same time when meat was presented to him. By doing so he linked meat with ringing of the bell. Thus an association between two stimuli viz. the bell and meat was established. He continued with this process for some time.
After some time, he found that the ringing of bell alone elicited the saliva of dog even without presentation of meat. Hence, the bell became conditioned stimulus resulting into conditioned or learned response. The experiment is shown in the following exhibit:
favourable. Therefore, the essence of operant conditioning is the relationship between behaviour and its consequences. The word ‘operant’ explains that relationship between behaviour and consequences is a learning process which is developed over a period of time, in which a person changes his behaviour based on his favourable or unfavourable past experiences.
Based on this theory, management can identify this relationship and control the behaviour of employees. Certain consequences can be increased and certain consequences can be decreased to increase the occurrence of the desired behaviour. Various examples of operant conditioning can be seen in the organisations. For example, a boss assures his subordinate that he would be
Compensated for his overtime in the next appraisal but, he fails to fulfil his assurance during the next evaluation. Consequently, the subordinate will never agree to work overtime whenever the boss will request him to do so. Thus it can be concluded that rewarding consequences increase the response and aversive consequences decrease the same.
4 Cognitive Theory of learning
Cognitive theory of learning refers to an individual’s knowledge, thoughts and understandings about himself and his environment. This theory assumes that individuals learn the meaning of various objects and events and also the learned responses on the basis of meaning assigned to the stimuli. A cognitive structure is formed in the memory of an individual which preserves and organises the information about various events that occurred in a learning process. Whenever the individual faces some situation or an event, he scans it against his memory to determine appropriate action. Therefore, the action taken by the individual depends upon the cognitive structure retrieved from the memory. Finally, it can be said that an individual’s response is a decision process that varies from situation to situation and the individual’s memory for prior such events.
The pioneer of cognitive theory of learning is Edward Tolman who developed this theory through controlled experiments. He conducted a laboratory experiment using rats. He showed that rats learned to run through a complicated maze to reach to their goal of obtaining the food. Rats developed expectations at every choice point in the maze. Thus they learnt to expect that certain
cognitive cues related to the choice point ultimately lead to the food.
Finally, when the relationship between cues and expectancy was strengthened, learning took place because cues led to expected goals.
Cognitive theory is different from stimulus-response theories. Stimulus-response theories assume that learning is the function of stimulus-response relationship and ignored the role of individual himself in the learning process. On the other hand, cognitive theory recognises the role of an individual in receiving, memorising, retrieving and interpreting the stimulus and reacting to it. Today, the cognitive approach of learning is very much relevant and in OB this approach is mainly applied to the theories of motivation.
4 Social Learning theory
The most popular social learning theory is Bandura’s Modelling theory. This theory emphasises on the importance of observing and modelling the attitudes, behaviours and emotional reactions of others. The theory explains that much of what we learn is the result of observing and imitating our role models such as parents, teachers, peers or celebrities. The theory assumes that learning is not
only the result of environmental determinism (classical and operant conditioning view) or individualism determinism (cognitive theory) but, it is combination of both. In
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observational learning, the influence of the role model is the centre of learning. According to this theory, the influence of role model on the individual is determined by four processes:
Attention process: This process explains that people learn from the role model when they pay attention to their critical behaviours. Therefore, individuals tend to be influenced by the models that are more attractive and appear similar to them.
Retention process: This process explains that learning from the model will depend upon how well the individual retains model’s actions and behaviours even after the model is not available to the individual.
Production process: This process involves recalling model’s behaviour and performing own actions by matching them with the actions performed by the role model.
Reinforcement process: This process explains that individuals will repeat the modelled behaviour if it is rewarding. Behaviours that are reinforced receive more attention and are performed more often. The four processes are given in the following exhibit:
The principles of Bandura’s theory can be summarized as follows:
Organising and rehearsing the modelled behaviour symbolically and then performing it clearly facilitate the process of observational learning.
Individuals are more likely to adopt the modelled behaviour if the consequences are favourable.
Individuals are more likely to adopt the modelled behaviour if the model is similar to the learner.
- Learning and OB
Learning is regarded as the fundamental variable influencing human behaviour. It affects almost all aspects of organisational behaviour too. An understanding of the concept of learning helps the managers to increase the occurrence of desirable behaviours and decrease the occurrence of undesirable behaviours of employees. Apart from this, learning also explains certain attitudes and
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Concepts of Learning
Course: BS Education (BSE 101)
University: Tarlac State University
