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Chapter 4. Education

Education can be defined as any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character, or physical ability of an individual.

Learning refers to the ways people acquire, process, store, and apply new information. Learning is most effective when an individual is ready to learn, that is, when one wants to know something.

Motivation plays a critical role in the learning process and success motivates more than failure (Table 4-1). Basic principles of motivation exist that are applicable to learning in any situation.

  • The environment can be used to focus the patient's attention on what needs to be learned. For example, interesting visual aids, such as booklets, posters, or practice equipment, motivate learners by capturing their attention and curiosity.
  • Incentives, including privileges and receiving praise from the educator, motivate learning. Both affiliation and approval are strong motivators.
  • Internal motivation is longer lasting and more self-directive than is external motivation, which must be repeatedly reinforced by praise or concrete rewards.

Table 4-1. Learning Theories
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Table 4-1. Learning Theories

THEORY

PRINCIPLE ELEMENTS

STRATEGIES

PROMINENT THEORISTS

CLINICAL APPLICATION

Algo-Heuristic

Identifying the mental processes (conscious and subconscious) that underlie expert learning, thinking and performance in any area.

All cognitive activities can be analyzed into operations of an algorithmic, semi-algorithmic, heuristic, or semi-heuristic nature.

Teaching students how to discover processes is more valuable than providing them with already formulated processes.

Once discovered, the operations and their systems can serve as the basis for instructional strategies and methods.

L. Landa

Performing a task or solving a problem always requires a certain system of elementary knowledge units and operations.

Androgyny

Adults need to know why they need to learn something, and need to learn experientially as they approach learning as problem solving.

Adults learn best when the topic is of immediate value.

There is a need to explain why specific things are being taught (eg, certain commands, functions, operations, etc).

Learning activities should be in the context of common tasks to be performed instead of memorization.

Instruction should take into account the wide range of different backgrounds of learners; learning materials and activities should allow for different levels/types of previous experience with computers.

Since adults are self-directed, instruction should allow learners to discover things for themselves, providing guidance and help when mistakes are made.

M. Knowles

Can be applied to any form of adult learning.

Has been used extensively in the design of organizational training programs.

Adult learning

Integrates other theoretical frameworks for adult learning such as andragogy (Knowles), experiential learning (Rogers), and lifespan psychology.

Consists of two classes of variables: personal characteristics (aging, life phases, and developmental stages) and situational characteristics (part-time vs full-time learning, and voluntary vs compulsory learning).

The three personal characteristics must be taken into consideration.

Aging results in the deterioration of certain sensory-motor abilities (eg, eyesight, hearing, reaction time) while intelligence abilities (eg, ...

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