Week 4: 22nd -28th May (Activities: 2.6 & 2.7)
Contemporary learning approaches are informed by a variety of disciplines including psychology as well as other social sciences such as anthropology and sociology. These influences result in a much stronger emphasis on contextualised adult learning, extending the ideas of early constructivist approaches. This section explores the impact of person-centred approaches and briefly introduces social and situated approaches. These will be dealt in more depth in the practical application of learning theory in Unit 4.
Humanism and person-centred learning
The humanist movement in psychology is far from contemporary, but its influences can be recognised in current approaches to workplace learning. Carl Rogers (1902–1987) was one of the founders of this movement and perhaps the most influential figure. Rogers developed a theory of personality and personal relations which emerged from his psychotherapy practice, and then extended its reach to the education field. The central tenet is that humans have a propensity to learn and teachers should facilitate – not instruct or impose – that learning. Rogers builds on his knowledge about human personality to explain how this facilitation process can be enhanced (Smith, 2014).
Like constructivists, Rogers said that each person exists and behaves according to his or her own experience. He added that as humans we constantly strive to maintain a consistency in the way we see ourselves and the way others perceive us to be. This will in turn influence what and how we learn. For instance, if you have a view of yourself (i.e. self-concept) as being good at interpersonal relationships, you may be motivated to join a talent development initiative for future leaders and inclined to seek positions where managing people is involved.
Importantly, when we face situations that do not fit our experiences, we will be more rigid and less likely to learn if these are imposed upon us, and more flexible to change if we don’t feel threatened (Rogers and Freiberg, 1993). Applied to the adult learning context, this indicates the importance of developing learning environments in which making mistakes is allowed. For example, imagine that a company is introducing a new and complex piece of software that will drastically alter the way staff deal with customer orders. Telling staff that they must use the software by the end of a one-day workshop might cause anxiety and result in poorer learning outcomes. An alternative scenario would be to tell staff that in addition to the one-day workshop there will be extra support sessions for those who need them. This is likely to be perceived as a less threatening scenario and will therefore lead to more effective learning.
In summary, two key ideas of this approach are the importance of setting a positive learning environment and facilitating learning that is relevant for individuals according to their experience, needs and self-concept.
Adult learning theory
The emphasis on learner-centred approaches is also at the heart of the adult learning theory developed by Malcolm Knowles (1913–1997). The basic assumption of this theory is that children and adults are qualitatively different types of learners. Thus, adult educators cannot use learning tools and techniques that derive from the principles of ‘pedagogy’ (which literally means teaching children). Instead, helping adults to learn should be informed by the principles of adult learning, also known as ‘andragogy’ (Knowles et al., 2007).
A key principle of andragogy is that maturation involves shifting from being a dependent to a self-directed person, who has accumulated life experiences that will shape and be influenced by new learning. In this sense, pedagogical approaches such as traditional lectures may be suited for unexperienced young learners, but not for adult learners. Instead, adults will be more likely to learn through activities such as case studies, where they can use their experience and learn from others. This type of learning activity also taps into another key assumption of andragogy: the idea that adult learners are orientated towards learning that can have clear application (Knowles et al., 2007). One of the criticisms made of this theory is that differences between young learners and adults are perhaps less clear than the theory suggests (Rachal, 2002). In fact, the learner-centred approaches encouraged by the adult learning principles are increasingly being used effectively with young learners too.
If you want to read more about Knowles’ theory you can check the Suggested additional resources at the end of the unit.
Learning how to learn
Person-centred approaches have influenced the movement towards helping others in their self-directed journey to learn. Those helping others to learn have had to take on a range of new roles such as facilitation, coaching and mentoring, and to develop the skills associated with these roles. Helping others to learn is also about supporting others to develop the meta-skill (i.e. higher order skills that enable you to use other skills effectively) of ‘learning how to learn’. Traditionally, this process was largely informed by the widespread application of learning styles diagnostics. These tools encourage learners to reflect on how they learn and the strategies available to them in order to enhance their learning experiences.
Learning styles
There are a wide variety of models that fall under the umbrella of ‘learning styles’. Regardless of specific differences between them, they all seem to involve predictions about how people learn based on three attributes:
- information processing – habitual modes of perceiving, storing and organising information (for example, pictorially or verbally)
- instructional preferences – predispositions towards learning in a certain way (for example, collaboratively or independently) or in a certain setting (such as a particular environment or time of day)
- learning strategies – adaptive responses to learning specific subject matter in a particular context.
Learning styles models are broadly divided into those based on the premise that the styles are fixed and those that admit that learning styles can be modified. A very popular model among trainers and educators, which builds on a rather fixed conceptualisation of the styles, is the VARK modalities model (Fleming and Baume, 2006). According to this model each person has a preferred way to process information and learn – which may be visual, auditory, read/write and kinaesthetic.
You can read more about the VARK model in Suggested additional resources.
Honey and Mumford’s (2006) Learning Styles Questionnaire is one of the most widely used instruments in learning and development. It builds on Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle model. Kolb’s model states that learning happens as the result of engaging in actively experiencing the environment, standing back and reflecting on the experience, and using analytical reasoning and planning prepare for the new experience in a sort of continuous cycle. In practice, Kolb argued that most of us are stronger in one or more of the stages of the cycle than in others and that this presents challenges to managers who want to learn effectively from experience (Kolb, 1984).
Honey and Mumford (2006) developed their learning styles inventory to help individuals to identify where they have the greatest strengths and weaknesses on the learning cycle, as shown in Figure 2.2.
You may, for example, be someone who spends a great deal of time thinking back and reflecting on what has happened (reflector) and trying to make sense of the reasons for this (theorist) but not so good at deciding what this means for future practice or actually trying out new and different ways of doing things based on your reflections and theorising.
Alternatively, you might be stronger at trying new experiences (activist) and, when they don’t go well, trying another approach (pragmatist) without necessarily going through the process of looking back and making sense of what happened before you make a judgement about what to do next.
Table 2.2 provides a more detailed account of the characteristics of each of the learning ‘types’ identified by Honey and Mumford (these were also provided in B863: The HR professional.)
- Only one out of the 13 diagnostic tools examined showed acceptable standards of reliability and validity (the Cognitive Style Index or CSI). Nonetheless, a later study has also evidenced problems with the statistical validity of this tool (Hodgkinson et al., 2009).
- Honey and Mumford’s Learning Styles Questionnaire met only one of the four criteria (i.e. test-retest reliability).
- Some of these models imply a fixed trait, like nature of the learning styles, yet evidence does not seem to support this. In fact, it could be the case that the brain does change over time. Baroness Susan Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, was quoted in the Times Educational Supplement as saying that ‘from a neuro-scientific point of view [the learning styles approach] is nonsense’ (cited in CIPD, 2012, p. 6).
A further criticism of the psychometric properties of these tools comes from their lack of ability to reflect the learning demands of current environments. Thus, learning styles are more heavily focused on cognitive-led behaviours whereas contemporary workplace demands also place significance on emotional and affective-led behaviours to do with discerning patterns that drive innovation, and a high degree of self-awareness about how one’s own decisions might impact others (CIPD, 2012).
On the other hand, learning styles inventories continue to be widely used and many find them very helpful in raising awareness about their learning preferences and how to manage their own learning more effectively.
Social and situated learning
The learning theories reviewed so far are strongly informed by psychological theories, which explore learning from an individual level of analysis. Some of these theories consider the role that others have in our learning experiences but the emphasis is always on the knowledge developed and accumulated by the individual. By contrast, social and situated learning theories are based on the idea that learning cannot be understood separately from the context and culture in which it occurs. These theories are based on a wide range of schools of thought including social anthropology and social theory (Lave, 1988; Vygostsky, 1978).
In this module you will mainly be concerned with the application of social and situated theories of learning within organisational settings. Two of the most important writers in this field are Jean Lave (1988) and Etienne Wenger (2000) whose work has contributed extensively to the development and application of these ideas to support workplace learning. Wenger (2000, p. 4) proposes that learning happens through active engagement with the practices of communities to which individuals belong, or ‘communities of practice’. You will read more about these ideas in Unit 4.
