Gagne's Learning Theories

Robert Gagne
and Learning Hierarchy
(Contributions to
Science Instruction)
Prepared and Presented by :
KRISTINE ANN B. DE JESUS
BEEd 4-23

I-TOPIC: Gagne’s Impacts to Science
Teaching
SUB-TOPICS:
A. Taxonomy of Learning
Outcomes
B. Terminal Tasks
C. Difference between Procedural
Tasks Analysis and Hierarchal
Tasks Analysis

I-TOPIC: Gagne’s Impacts to Science
Teaching
SUB-TOPICS:
D. Gagne’s Hierarchy of Learning
E. Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction
F. Curriculum Implementation of
Learning Hierarchy
G. Gagne’s Contribution to Education-
(Science Teaching)

After the discussion the students of BEEd
4-23 are expected to:
a. describe the different types of Learning
Outcomes according to R. Gagne;
b. describe terminal tasks;
c. Differentiate Procedural Tasks Analysis
from Hierarchal Analysis;

d. identify Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction
and their corresponding processes;
e. identify Gagne’s Hierarchy of Learning;
f. link Gagne’s Hierarchy of Learning to
Science Instruction;
g. Illustrate a Hierarchal Task Analysis

GUIDE QUESTIONS:
 According to Gagne, there are different
types of Learning. What are these?
 Enumerate and describe Gagne’s 9 events
of instruction
 Illustrate Gagne’s Hierarchy of Learning

• What are the Learning Outcomes
introduced by Robert Gagne?
• What are internal conditions?
• What are external conditions?
• What are some of Gagne’s contribution
to science instruction?
GUIDE QUESTIONS:

• Born in 1916 in North Andover,
Massachusetts
• Received Bachelors of Arts and
earned his doctoral from Brown
University
Robert Gagne’s Theoretical Background
Gagne built on the work of
behavioral and information
processing theories by translating
principles from their learning
theories into practical instructional
strategies that teachers could
employ with directed instruction.

• Well known for “Theory of Conditional
Learning”
• Consist of 3 distinct component :
Taxonomy of learning outcomes - learning
domain
9 instructional events
Specific learning condition - Hierarchy of
Learning
Robert Gagne’s Background & Published
Works

Gagne’s 5 Types of Learning
Outcomes

Learning Domains :
5 types of learning outcome
Outcome
or Ability
Meaning Performance example
*Intellectual
skill
Ability to
interact with
surroundings
using concept
symbols
Identify the diagonal of a square.
Explaining why ice freezes at
0˚C.
Predicting the rate of growth of a
plant based on conditions of
water, soil, light, etc.
Cognitive
strategy
Ability to control
the individual’s
behaviour to
learn, remember
& think.
To draw a chart for organizing
data. To reason backwards to
solve problem. Breaking up a
problem into various parts.

4 Levels of Intellectual Skills
1. Discrimination- Making different responses to
the different members of a particular class.
2. Concrete Concept-Responding in a single way to
all members of a particular class of observable
events.
3. Rule Using-Applying a rule to a given situation
or condition by responding to a class of inputs
with a class of actions.
4. Problem Solving-Combining lower level rules to
solve problems in a situation never
encountered.

Outcome or
Ability
Meaning Performance
Example
*Verbal
Information
Development of
information using
language
Naming the parts of an
electric circuit & the
function of each part.
Listing objects that can be
recycled. Stating
characteristic of light.
Motor skills Manipulative skills &
carrying out routine
work.
Preparing a microscope
slide. Build a model of a
simple machine. Measuring
the weight of an object
using a balance.
Attitude Change of attitude
towards an object,
another person,
situation & change in
effective domain.
Making choices in the
preparation of an insects
collection. Visit science
museum voluntarily &
choose to borrow a book
on dinosaurs.

VERBAL INFORMATION
1.) Labels & Facts- Naming or making a
verbal “response” to a specific unit.
2.) Bodies of knowledge- Recalling a large
body of interconnected facts.

Internal Conditions of Learning
• essential prerequisites
- particular skills that become an
integral part of new learning
• supportive prerequisites
- capabilities that facilitate learning,
regardless of the type of outcome

External Conditions of Learning
External events are those events
outside the learner that activate and
support the internal processes of
learning. The appropriate provision of
external events is the framework for
planning instruction.

Determining the Learning Structure
*Learning Hierarchies: Provide one of the ways to
describe the “structure” of any topic, course, or
discipline
---In the analysis of topic----
1. Begin with the statement of the terminal objectivity.
2. Identify a subordinate set of tasks or subtopics, each an
individual learning act, that must be considered pre-requisites
for the learning.
3. Analyze each of the tasks or subtopics until one has arrived at
performances that learners are known to possess, at which
point the analysis stops.

Terminal Task
TASK A TASK B TASK C
A-1
B-1 B-2
C-1
The Learning Hierarchy :
It’s Structure

In constructing the Learning Hierarchy of
subordinate (pre-requisite) learnings for a
given task, these questions are asked:
“What must the learner already know how to
do, in order to learn this performance/task?”
and/or
“What would the learner have to know how to
do, in order to learn this performance/task,
given instructions such
as_____________________________?”

Terminal Task
TASK A TASK B TASK C
A-1
B-1 B-2
C-1
The Learning Hierarchy :
It’s Structure
Subordinate (pre-requisite tasks)
TASK ANALYSIS
-the process of
identifying the
subordinate/pre-
requisite tasks

Subordinate
Tasks
Terminal
Objective
Terminal
Task
TASK
ANALYSIS
LEARNING HIERARCHY

Some Basic Differences Between a
Procedural Task Analysis and a
Hierarchical Analysis
• Hierarchical Task
Analysis
"What must the
learner know or be
able to do to achieve
this task?"
• Procedural Task
Analysis
"What are the
mental and/or
physical steps that
the learner must go
through in order to
complete this task?"

Analysis
1. Developed
bottom up, from
general to specific.
2. Based on learning
taxonomies,
starting from the
most complex to
the least complex
• Procedural Task
Analysis
1. Developed linearly
and sequentially,
step-by-step.
2. Not concerned with
the levels of the
learning taxonomies,
it is procedural in
nature.

Analysis
3. Represented in
terms of levels of
tasks.
4. Read bottom-up
• Procedural Task
Analysis
3. Represented in the
form of a flowchart or
an outline.
4. read from left to
right or from top to
bottom

Analysis
5. Each task is
a prerequisite to the
task directly above
it.
• Procedural Task
Analysis
5. You can break
down some of the
tasks within the
flowchart into an
outline format if
those tasks have
subtasks.

Analysis
6. List all your givens
or assumptions as
prerequisites at the
very bottom of the
hierarchy.
• Procedural Task
Analysis
6. You must always
have a START and an
END

Gagne’s Hierarchy of Learning

• WHAT IS LEARNING?
-Change in behavior
-A result of reinforced practice
-Consists of Stimuli, Learner and Responses
• WHAT IS HIERARCHY?
WHAT IS LEARNING HIERARCHY?
-Set of specified intellectual capabilities according to an ordered
relationship to each other. Thus the entire set of ordered intellectual
skills formed a hierarchy that was considered to bear some relation to
a plan for effective instruction.
-Classification of a group
-A system in which people or things are placed in a series of levels
with different importance or status

The development of “intelectual skills requires
learning that amounts to a building process.
Lower level skills provide a necessary foundation
for higher level ones.
To teach a skill, a teacher must first identify its
prerequisite skills and make sure the students
possess them.
The list of building block skills is called learning
hierarchies.
Learning Hierarchies

Robert Gagne’s Hierarchy of Learning
1) Signal Learning
 Learn how to respond to a signal, like Pavlov’s
dog (Pavlov’s classical conditioned response)
 Usually the response is emotional
2) Stimulus(S) – Response(R) Learning
 Learn precise response to precise signal /
stimulus
 Different from signal learning, signal learning
leads to involuntary responses, whereas the
responses in S-R learning are voluntarily
controlled.

3) Psychomotor Connection Learning
“CHAINING”
 Occurs when a chain of stimuli and
responses are formed
 Lean to follow procedures
 Able to chain 2 or more stimulus-response
4) Verbal Association Learning
 Use terminology in verbal chains
5) Multiple Discrimination Learning
 Learn how to distinguish between similar
stimuli

 Make different responses to each type of
stimulus, even when they may be
perceptually similar.
6) Concept Learning
 Ability to generalize, or classify
7.) Principle/RULE Learning
 Viewed as a chain of two or more concepts.
 “PROCESS SKILLS”
 Learn to apply rules

PROCESS SKILLS
Basic Science Processes
o Observing
o Classifying
o Measuring
o Using space-time
relations
o Communicating
o Inferring
o Predicting
Integrated Science
Processes
o Formulating
Hypothesis
o Defining Operationally
o Controlling variables
o Interpreting data
o Experimenting (most
complex)

8)Problem Solving
 Highest learning type which lead to the
discovery of higher order rules
 All other types of learning must have been
completed for it to be present.

4 Important Types of Learning to
Science Teaching
1. Stimulus-response learning (S-R)
-Learners concentrate on linking names &
objects, objects & events, actions &
reactions
2. Multiple Discrimination Learning
-Learning depends on concrete materials
and rich experiences

3. Concept Learning
- If the learners have the skill in
separating and identifying the
characteristics of objects and events,
they will be able to infer and create
concepts.
4. Principle Learning (Process Skills)
A. Basic Science Processes
B. Integrated Science Processes
4 Important Types of Learning to
Science Teaching

PROBLEM SOLVING
• Terminal task
• Sub-tasks to terminal
tasks
• Pre-requisites to
subtasks arranged in a
systematic way from
simple to complex
• “Smoothly guided tour”
of a constructed
learning hierarchy
• Highly structured and
organized learning
• Instructional objectives
stated in behavioral
terms
Facts, Concepts, Principles
Elementsnecessaryforproblem
solving
CharacteristicsofLearningHierarchy
*PROBLEM-SOLVING IN LEARNING
HIERARCHY

• Set of component skills that must be learned before
the complex skill of which they are a part can be
learned
• Classifying different types of learning in term of the
“degree of complexity” of the mental involved.
• Higher orders of learning build upon the lower levels.
• The lowest 4 orders tend to focus on the more
behavioral aspects.
• The highest 4 focus on the more cognitive aspects

Problem
Solving
Principle
Learning
Concept Learning
Multiple Discrimination
Learning
Verbal Association Learning
Psychomotor Connection Learning
Stimulus – Response Learning
Signal Learning
Increasingcomplexity
More to behavioral
aspects
More to cognitive
aspects

Curriculum Implementation of the
Learning Hierarchy
 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of
Science) curriculum- Science-A Process Approach
(S-APA)
-The development of intellectual skills (process
skills) relevant to science in a systematic manner
 Gagne’s approach is that of “behavioral learning
engineering”
-A smoothly guided instructional sequence, which
starts from the simple stimulus-response and ends with
problem-solving

Gagne has had considerable influence on
education and training in corporate and
government sectors as well as some influence in
public schools.
*Field of instructional design that seeks to take what is
known about human learning and apply it to
instruction.
*“Father of instructional design.” He had wide influence
on people who follow a systematic approach to
designing instruction.
*His ideas about domains of learning
*His concept of instructional events.
His Contributions

49
The Nine Events of Instruction
Event of Instruction
• 1. Gaining attention
Giving learner a stimulus
to ensure reception of
coming instruction
Learning Process
• Attention
Methods for gaining learners’ attention include:
— Stimulate students with novelty, uncertainty and
surprise
— Pose thought-provoking questions to the students
— Have students pose questions to be answered by other
students

50
• 2. Informing the learner
of the objective
Telling learner what they
will be able to do for the
instruction
• 3. Stimulating recall of
prior learning
Asking for recall of
existing relevant
knowledge
Learning Process
• Expectancy
• Retrieval to working
memory

51
• 4. Presenting the stimulus
Displaying the content
Learning Process
• Pattern recognition;
selective perception
Ways to present and cue lesson content include:
— Present vocabulary
— Provide examples
— Present multiple versions of the same content, e.g.,
video, demonstration, lecture, podcast, group work
— Use a variety of media to address different learning
preferences

52
• 5. Providing learner
guidance
Supplying organization and
relevance to enhance
understanding
Learning Process
• Chunking, rehearsal,
encoding
Methods to provide learning guidance include:
— Provide instructional support as needed
— Model varied learning strategies
— Use examples and non-examples
— Provide case studies, analogies, visual images and
metaphors

53
• 6. Eliciting performance
Asking learners to respond,
demonstrating learning
Learning Process
• Retrieval, responding
Ways to activate learner processing include:
— Elicit student activities
— Elicit recall strategies
— Facilitate student elaborations
— Help students integrate new knowledge

54
Events of Instruction
• 7. Providing Feedback
Giving immediate feedback
on learner's performance.
Learning Process
• Reinforcement, error
correction

55
• 8. Assessing performance
Assessing and providing
feedback to learners
Learning Process
• Responding, retention
Methods for testing learning include:
— Pretest for mastery of prerequisites
— Conduct a post-test to check for mastery of content or skills
— Embed questions throughout instruction through oral
questioning and/or quizzes
— Include objective or criterion-referenced performances
which measure how well a student has learned a topic

56
• 9. Enhancing retention and
transfer
Providing diverse practice to
generalize the capability
Learning Process
• Retention, retrieval,
generalization
Methods for helping learners internalize new knowledge
include:
— Paraphrase content
— Use metaphors
— Generating examples
— Create concept maps or outlines
— Create job-aids, references, templates, or wizards

REMEMBER!
• According to Robert Gagne, there are nine
events and corresponding cognitive processes
that activate processes needed for effective
learning. Gagne believed all lessons should
include this sequence of events.
• He believed that basic concepts must be
understood first before moving to a higher
level.

Gagne’s structured learning hierarchies has greatly
influenced the new elementary science curriculum.
-Analyzing a task into subtasks and this analysis
continues until the simplest pre-requisite is identified.
Task Analysis is the heart of Instructional Design
-New level of skill and knowledge are attained if
process and product skills are developed in proper
sequence
 Although Gagne proposes 8 Types of Learning,
there are 4 that are most relevant to science
teaching.

1. Stimulus-Response Learning
2. Multiple Discrimination Learning
3. Concept Learning
4. Principle Learning (Process Skill)
a. Basic Science Processes
b. Integrated Science Processes
Gagne’s Approach is that “Behavioral
Learning Engineering” (smoothly guided
instructional sequence starting from
stimulus-response learning and ends with
problem solving

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