Chapter 04: DETERMINANTS OF LEARNING

THE EDUCATOR’S ROLE IN LEARNING

 The role of educating others is one of the most essential interventions that a nurse performs.
 The LEARNER—not the teacher—is the single most important person in education process.
 Educators can greatly enhance learning when they serve as facilitators helping the learner
become aware of what needs to be known, why knowing is valuable, and how to be
actively involved in acquiring information.
 The educator is vital in giving support, encouragement, and direction during the process of
learning.
 The educator assists in identifying optimal learning approaches and activities that can both
support and challenge the learner based on their individual learning needs, readiness to learn,
and individual style.

The Educator plays a crucial role in the learning process by doing the following:

 Assessing the learner’s problems, supports, deficits, and abilities.

 Providing important best evidence information and presenting it in unique and appropriate
ways.
 Identifying progress being made
 Giving feedback and follow-up
 Reinforcing learning in the acquisition of new knowledge, skills, and attitudes
 Determining the effectiveness of education provided
Assessment of the learner includes attending to the three determinants of learning:
1. Learning Needs (What the learner needs and wants to learn)
 Learning needs are defined as gaps in knowledge that exist between desired level of
performance and the actual level of performance.
 Of the three determinants of learning, nurse educators must identify learning needs first
so that they can design an instructional plan to address any deficits in the cognitive,
affective, or psychomotor domains.
 The following are important steps in the assessment of learning needs:
 Identify the learner.
 Choose the right setting.
 Collect data about the learner.
 Collect data from the learner.
 Involve members of the healthcare team.
 Prioritize needs.
 Provide only need-or want-to-know information.
 Determine availability of educational resources.
 Assess the demands of the organization.
 Take time-management issues into account.
Needs are prioritized based on the following criteria:
 Mandatory- Needs that must be learned for survival or situation in which the learner’s life,
safety, or ability, to function at an expected level is threatened. Learning needs in this category
must be met immediately.
  Desirable- Needs that are useful and worthwhile but not essential but that are related to
learner satisfaction or further growth and development for personal or professional
advancement.
 Possible- Needs for information that is nice to know but not required or not directly related to
being able to function in daily activities.
General methods to assess learning needs:
 Informal Conversation
 Structured Interviews
 Focus Groups
 Questionnaires
 Tests
 Observations
 Documentation
Specific Methods to assess learning needs of nursing staff:
 Written job descriptions.
 Formal and Informal requests.
 Quality assurance reports.
 Chart audits.
 Rules and regulations.
 Self-assessment.
 Gap analysis and Delphi technique.

2. Readiness to Learn (When the learner is receptive to learning)

 Components of Each type of Readiness to Learn includes PEEK:
 Physical Readiness
 Measures of ability, Complexity of task, Environmental effects, Health status,
Gender
 Emotional Readiness
 Anxiety Level, Support system, Motivation, Risk-taking behavior, Frame of
mind, Developmental stage.
 Experiential Readiness
 Level of aspiration, Past coping mechanism, Cultural background, Locus of
control.
 Knowledge Readiness
 Present knowledge base, Cognitive ability, learning disabilities, Learning styles.

3. Learning Style (How the learner best learns or prefers to learn)

 Refers to the ways in which and conditions under which learners most efficiently and most
effectively perceive, process, store, and recall what they are attempting to learn and their
preferred approached to different learning tasks.
 Learning styles considers the COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE, and PHYSIOLOGICAL factors
affecting how the learners perceive, interact, with and respond to the learning
environment.
 Learning style models are based on the premise that certain characteristics of learning are
biological in origin, whereas others are sociologically developed resulting from
environmental influences.
SIX LEARNING STYLE PRINCIPLES
1. Both the style by which the teacher prefers to teach and the style by which the learner prefers
to learn can be identified.
2. Educators need to guard against relying on teaching methods and tools which match their own
preferred learning styles.
3. Educators are most helpful when they assist the learners in identifying the learning through
their own style preferences.
4. Learners should have the opportunity to learn through their preferred style.
5. Learners should be encouraged to diversity their style preferences.
6. Educators can develop specific learning activities that reinforce each modality or style.
LEARNING STYLE MODELS AND INSTRUMENTS
LEFT-BRAIN/RIGHT BRAIN AND WHOLE BRAIN THINKING
 There are two instruments are used to measure right—and left-brain dominance. The first
instrument is the Brain Preference Indicator (BPI) that reveals a general style of thought that
results in a consistent pattern of behavior in all areas of the individual’s life. The other
instrument available for widespread commercial use is the Herrmann Brain Dominance
Instrument (HBDI); this model incorporates theories on growth and development and
considers learning styles as learned patterns of behavior.

 Left Hemisphere- focuses on vocal and analytical side.

-Thinking process using the left brain are reality-based and logical thinking with
verbalization
 Right Hemisphere- Focuses on emotional, visual-spatial nonverbal hemisphere.
-Thinking processes using the right brain are intuitive, subjective, relational, holistic,
and time free
 There are no correct or wrong side of the brain.
 Each hemisphere gathers in the same sensory information but handles the information in
different ways.
 Knowledge of one’s own brain hemispherical performances can help educators identify the
strengths and weaknesses of various teaching methods.
FIELD-INDEPENDENT/FIELD-DEPENDENT PERCEPTION
 Witkin and colleagues devised a tool called the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) to
measure field independence/dependence—that is, how a person’s perception of an item is
influenced by the context in which it appears.
 Learners have preferences styles for certain environmental cues.
 Helps the educator structure the learning task and environment.
 Helps assess the extent to which learners are able to ignore distractions from other persons.
 Assess whether learners see the whole first or the individual parts of a task when learning.
 Field-Independent learner:
 Are not affected by criticism.
 Will not conform to peer pressure.
 Are less influenced by external feedback.
 Learn best by organizing their own material.
 Have an impersonal orientation to the world.
 Place emphasis on applying principles.
 Are interested in new ideas or concepts for own sake.
 Provide self-directed goals, objectives, and reinforcement.
  Prefer lecture method.
 Field-Dependent learner:
 Are easily affected by criticism.
 Will conform to peer pressure.
 Are influenced by feedback (grades and evaluation).
 Learn best when material is organized.
 Have a social orientation to the world.
 Place emphasis on facts.
 Prefer learning to be relevant to own experience.
 Need external goals, objectives, and reinforcement.
 Prefer discussion method.

DUNN AND DUNN LEARNING STYLES

 Rita Dunn and Kenneth Dunn set out to develop a user-friendly model that would assist
educators in identifying characteristics that allow individuals to learn in different ways
 There are five basic stimuli that affect a person’s ability to learn.
 Environmental elements
 Emotional elements
 Sociological patterns
 Physical elements
 Psychological elements
 The Dunn and Dunn learning style inventory is widely used in the identification of how
individuals prefer to function, learn, concentrate, and perform in their educational activities
 Productivity Environmental Preference Survey (PEPS) is an adult version of the
instrument.
JUNG AND MYERS-BRIGGS TYPOLOGY
 The MBTI is based on the influential theory of psychological types which speculated that
people experience the world using four principal psychological functions- sensation, intuition,
feeling, and thinking- and that one of these four functions is dominant for a person most of the
time.
 The four categories are:
 introversion/extraversion
 sensing/intuition
 thinking/feeling
 judging/perceiving.
 Emphasizes the value of naturally occurring differences.
 The underlying assumption of the MBTI is that we all have specific preferences in the way we
construct our experiences, and these preferences underpin our interests, needs, values, and
motivation.
KOLB’S EXPERIENTIAL
 Developed by David Kolb in the early 1970s.
 In this model, the learners not have a blank slate but rather approaches a topic to learned with
preconceived ideas.
 Knowledge is acquired through a transformational process which is continuously created and
recreated.
  Known as the Cycle of Learning includes four models of learning that reflect two major
dimensions: perception and processing.
 CE MODE (concrete experience)
 AC MODE (abstract conceptualization)
 RO MODE (reflective observation)
 AE MODE (active experimentation)
 Learning results from the way learners perceive as well as how they process what they
perceive.
 Learning Style Inventory (LSI) is a 20-item, self-report questionnaire that requires
respondents to rank four sentence endings corresponding to each of the four learning modes.
GARDENER’S EIGHT TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE
 Developed by Howard Garner; identified an eight intelligence located in different parts of the
brain
- LINGUISTIC (left side of the brain)
- LOGICAL- MATHEMATICAL (both sides of the brain)
- SPATIAL (right side of the brain)
- MUSICAL (right side of the brain)
- BODILY- KINESTHETIC (basal ganglia and cerebellum)
- INTERPERSONAL (pre-frontal lobes of the brain)
- INTRAPERSONAL (pre-frontal lobes of the brain)
- NATURALISTIC INTELLIGENCE
 Educators should always approach children from the perspective of these different
intelligences.
 The Educator can assess each child’s style of learning and tailor teaching accordingly.
 Howard Gardner refers to an instrument called MIDAS or Multiple Intelligence
Developmental Assessment Scales.
VARK LEARNING STYLES

 Fleming and Mills (1992) developed and identified four categories or preferences that seem to
reflect the learning style experiences of their students.
- VISUAL
- AURAL
- READING/WRITING
- KINESTHETIC
 Technically focuses on a person’s preference for taking in and putting out information.
AN INDIVIDUAL LEARNS MOST EFFECTIVELY AND COMFORTABLY IN ONE OF THE
FOLLOWING WAYS:
 Visual learners like graphical representations such as flowcharts with step-by-step
directions
 Aural learners enjoy listening to lectures, often need directions read aloud, and prefer to
discuss topics and form study groups.
 Read/Write learners like the written word, as evidenced by reading or writing, with
references to additional sources of information.
 Kinaesthetic learners enjoy doing hands-on activities, such as role-play and return
demonstration
INTERPRETATION OF THE USE OF LEARNING STYLE MODELS AND INSTRUMENTS:
 Caution must be exercised in assessing styles so that other equally important factors in
learning are not ignored.
 Styles only describe how individuals process stimuli; not how much or how well
information is learned.
 Style instruments should be selected based on reliability, validity, and the population for
which they are to be used.
 More than one learning style instrument should be used for appropriate assessment.