Principle — Significance
Aristotle suggested that a learner will not learn if he refuses to allow new information to enter
(Ross & Aristotle, 1996). Simply put, the thing to be learned must be in some way personally
relevant. Thorndike (1898) explained:
An animal cannot learn an act by being put through it. For instance, a cat who fails to
push down a thumb-piece and push out the door cannot be taught by having one take its
paw and press the thumb-piece down with it. (p. 46)
Significance is found in imagery, attention, the expenditure of effort, intensity, familiarity,
emotion, mental vigor and receptivity, elaboration, depth of processing, relation to prior
experience, anchoring ideas, schema activation, active participation, and novelty. In short, that
which is to be learned must be important or relevant in some way to the learner.
Theory Group
Behavioral
Local Principles
Aristotle:
Imagery
Receptivity
Relationship between significance and need for repetition
Thorndike:
Amount of attention determines speed of learning
Attention insured in acts where a definite movement is required Attention emphasizes and
facilitates the process which it accompanies Effort: an animal cannot learn an act by being put
through it
Pavlov:
Size of conditioned reflex dependent on intensity of stimulus
Relationship between intensity of stimulus and time to establish a conditioned reflex Effort:
ejecting stones v. ejecting sand from mouth
Association: CS gains meaning through pairing with UCS
Watson:
Intensity of stimulus must be sufficient to elicit a response The animal must work steadily
Skinner:
Intensity through hunger satiation
The law of threshold
Attention: work in area free from distractions Magnitude of response
Hull:
Stimulus-intensity dynamism Drive reduction
Guthrie:
Stimulus threshold intensity
Dynamogenesis
Significance through isolation of association (preventing an association from being
unlearned)
Emotional reinforcement Intention to learn Significance by doing
Theory Group
Cognitive
Local Principles
Estes:
Attention: effective stimulus elements
Ebbinghaus:
Mental vigor and receptivity
Meaning, rhythm, rhyme, and a common language
Intensity of attention and interest
Tolman:
Attention as 'persistence until' 'Working over' and 'elaboration' Strong appetite
Kohler:
Actively attending to the effort of trying Desire to obtain food
Cognitive Information Processing:
Active effort to encode Elaboration
Deep processing Reasoning
Overt response
Organization, elaboration, and cognitive activity
Mindless drilling vs. attentive learning
Getting attention
Limited attention
Learner choice
Attention as a filter
Attention as a tuner
Attention as allocation of capacity
Point of attachment in consciousness
Strength – significance is created through rehearsal
Connecting new information to something meaningful Leveraging preexisting associations to
encode new information Intensity: emotionally powerful
Ausubel:
Meaningful v. rote
Meaning through subsumability
Adequately established subsuming ideas in cognitive structure Central unifying ideas
Anchoring ideas
Anchorage, dissociability, and obliterative subsumption Discriminability
Set (attitude) to relate new material to cognitive structure Effort and attention result from
learner's perception of need Reformulate new propositions in own words
Intensity: unusual vividness
Intensity: primacy, uniqueness, enhanced discriminability
Constructive
Schema Theory:
Connected: new information fit into existing schema Schema activation
Structure imposed by schema on new information Schema as filter for what will be learned
Schema as retrieval plan
Significance of text elements depends on schema
New structures are based on a backlog of experience and memories Variable binding
Schema selection
Understanding based on level of specificity of the activated schema
General:
Effort encouraged through guided questioning
Learning requires extended learner effort
Student participation through inquiry methods
Cross domain (physical, intellection, emotional, and social) experience Intentional process of
Theory Group
Local Principles
constructing meaning from information and experience Significance due to language, cultural,
and social background
Meaningful learning
Possibility of application
Piaget:
Awareness of connections only by means of existing cognitive structures Assimilation
Humanistic
Social
Bruner:
Representing the structure of a subject in terms of the child's view Understanding fundamentals
Importance of detail
Discovery facilitated through prior experience and knowledge Accessibility in memory
Exercise of problem solving and effort of discovery
Biological Motivation:
Relative significance of relief from hunger versus pain
Decrease in novelty with repetition
Excessive novelty may activate without organizing a direct response
Freedom to Learn:
Feeling
Personal meaning
Relevance
Much significant learning is acquired through doing
Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the learning
process
Significant learning is maximized through participation
Vygotsky:
Symbolic representation
Response of others to one's own actions
Internalization
Attention and interest (in primitive stage), then relation to inner framework (fourth
stage)
Bandura:
Attention, accurate perception, and significant features Expenditure of effort
Situated learning:
Commitment of time, intensified effort, more and broader responsibilities, and sense of identity
Activity theory:
Resolution of actual contradictions in real-world situations
Cognitive apprenticeship:
Knowledge in context Active participation Narratives and stories Articulating
A sense of ownership, personal investment and mutual dependency