UNIT 1.

PRINCIPLES AND THEORIES IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

 Principle is a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a

system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.

 Theory is a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of

principles offered to explain phenomena.

 Teaching can be defined as engagement with learners to enable their understanding

and application of knowledge, concepts and processes.
o A teacher requires not only knowledge of subject matter, but knowledge of
how students learn and how to transform them into active learners.

 Learning–it is the process by which an individual gain new knowledge or skills and
change their thoughts, feelings, attitudes and actions.
o Learning is a permanent change in mental processing, emotional functioning,
skill, and/or behavior as a result of experience.
o It is the lifelong, dynamic process by which individuals acquire new
knowledge or skills and alter their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions.

OBJECTIVES
After completing this chapter, the reader will be able to:
1. Define the principal constructs of each learning theory.
2. Differentiate among the basic approaches to learning for each of the five
psychological learning theories.
3. Understand the theories of motivation and learning.
4. Identify the principles of effective teaching and learning.
5. Discuss adult and patient education principles.
6. Discuss barriers to effective communication and learning.
7. Describe the different learning styles.

This module is divided into 4 (four) lessons:

Lesson 1. Learning Theories Related to Health Care Practice
Lesson 2. Behaviorist Learning Theory
Lesson 3. Cognitive Learning Theory
Lesson 4. Social Learning Theory

LESSON 1. LEARNING THEORIES RELATED TO HEALTH CARE PRACTICE

Applying Learning Theories to Healthcare Practice

 In the current structure of health care, nurses, in particular, are often responsible for
designing and implementing plans and procedures for improving health education and
encouraging wellness.
  Beyond one’s profession, however, knowledge of the learning process relates to nearly
every aspect of daily life.
 Nurses can apply learning theories in the following category:
o Individual
o Group
o community levels
 The purpose of applying this learning theory are:
o to comprehend and teach new material and tasks
o to solve problems\
o to change unhealthy habits
o to build constructive relationships
o to manage emotions
o to develop effective behavior.

 Lesson 1 will review the principal psychological and motor learning theories that are
useful to health education and clinical practice. The following are most often applied to
patient education as an aspect of professional nursing practice.
o Behaviorist
o Cognitive
o social learning theories

 There is an argument that emotions and feelings also need explicit focus in relation to
learning in general (Goleman, 1995) and to health care in particular (Halpern, 2001).

 Emotional reactions are often learned as a result of experience.

o they play a significant role in the learning process;
o they are a vital consideration when dealing with the following:
 health
 disease
 prevention
 wellness
 medical treatment
 recovery
 healing
 relapse prevention

 The psychological learning theories are compared the ways in which learning is
transferred to new situations and problems with regard to the following aspects:
o Fundamental procedures for changing behavior.
o Assumptions made about the learner.
o Role of the educator in encouraging learning.
o Sources of motivation for learning.

Learning theories related to health care practice

Applying Learning Theories to Healthcare Practice
 Behaviorist Learning Theory.
  Cognitive Learning Theory.
 Social Learning Theory.
 Psychodynamic Learning Theory.
 Humanistic Learning Theory.

LESSON 2. BEHAVIORIST

Behaviorist Learning Theory

 Behaviorism or the behavioral learning theory is a popular concept that focuses on

how students learn.

 This learning theory states that behaviors are learned from the environment, and says
that innate or inherited factors have very little influence on behavior.

 A common example of behaviorism is positive reinforcement.

o A student gets a small treat if they get 100% on their spelling test. In the future,
students work hard and study for their test in order to get the reward. 

 Behaviorism is key for educators because it impacts how students react and behave in
the classroom, and suggests that teachers can directly influence how their students
behave.

 It also helps teachers understand that a student’s home environment and lifestyle can be
impacting their behavior, helping them see it objectively and work to assist with
improvement.

 Pavlov’s Dogs is a popular behaviorism experiment.

o A group of dogs would hear a bell ring and then they would be given food.
o After enough time, when the bell would ring the dogs would salivate, expecting
the food before they even saw it.
o This is exactly what behaviorism argues—that the things we experience and our
environment are the drivers of how we act. 
o When the bell rings, the dog salivates or pellet of food is given. (stimulus-
response)

 Motivation plays an important role in behavioral learning.

o Positive and negative reinforcement can be motivators for students.
 For example, a student who receives praise for a good test score is much
more likely to learn the answers effectively than a student who receives
no praise for a good test score.
 The student who receives no praise is experiencing negative
reinforcement—their brain tells them that though they got a good grade, it
 didn’t really matter, so the material of the test becomes unimportant to
them.
 Conversely students who receive positive reinforcement see a direct
correlation to continuing excellence, completely based on that response
to a positive stimulus. 

Behaviorist teaching strategies: Teachers can implement behavioral learning strategy

techniques in their classroom in many ways, including:

 Drills. Teachers may practice skills using drill patterns to help students see the
repetition and reinforcement that behavioral learning theory uses.

 Question and answer. Teachers can use a question as a stimulus and answer
as a response, gradually getting harder with questions to help students.

 Guided practice. Teachers can be directly involved in helping students go

through problems to give them the reinforcement and behavior demonstration
you want them to follow.

 Regular review. Reviews are important to behavioral learning theory. Going

back over material and giving positive reinforcement will help students retain
information much better.

 Positive reinforcement. Behaviorist classrooms utilize positive reinforcement

regularly. This can be in the form of verbal reinforcement and praise, reward
systems, added privileges, and more. 

LESSON 3. COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY

The Cognitive Learning Theory explains why the brain is the most incredible network of
information processing and interpretation in the body as we learn things.

Cognitive Learning Theories: Piaget (1966, 1970) believed that cognitive development
is an orderly, sequential, and interactive process in which a variety of new experiences
must exist before intellectual abilities can develop. His work with children led him to
develop five phases of cognitive development, from birth to 15 years of age, Nurses
must understand their audience’s learning stage to ascertain how to approach teaching
for that developmental stage.

Examples of cognitive learning strategies include:

Encouraging discussions about what is being taught. Helping students explore and
understand how ideas are connected. Asking students to justify and explain their
thinking. Using visualizations to improve students' understanding and recall.

What is the basic idea of cognitive theory?

Cognitive theory is an approach to psychology that attempts to explain human behavior

by understanding your thought processes.

 For example, a therapist is using principles of cognitive theory when they teach

you how to identify maladaptive thought patterns and transform them into
constructive ones.

Cognitive Skills: Why The 8 Core Cognitive Capacities

 Sustained Attention – is the ability to focus on an activity or stimulus over a
long period of time. It is what makes it possible to concentrate on an activity for
as long as it takes to finish, even if there are another distracting stimulus present.

 Response Inhibition – is the ability to inhibit one's own response to distractions.

Imagine two children paying close attention to a lesson, when there is a sudden
noise in the hallway. One loses her attention while the other does not.

 Speed of Information Processing – is a cognitive ability that could be defined

as the time it takes a person to do a mental task. It is related to the speed in
which a person can understand and react to the information they receive,
whether it be visual (letters and numbers), auditory (language), or movement.

 Cognitive Flexibility and Control – play an important role in an individual's

ability to adapt to continuously changing environments. Preliminary analyses
suggested a stable and reliable two-factor structure, that of cognitive control over
emotion, and appraisal and coping flexibility.

 Multiple Simultaneous Attention – is the ability to multitask with success. It is

the ability to move attention and effort back and forth between two or more
activities when engaged in them at the same time.

 Working Memory – the part of short-term memory that is concerned with

immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing.

 Category Formation – is the ability to organize information, concepts and skills

into categories, and forms the cognitive basis for higher-level abilities like
applying, analyzing, and evaluating those concepts and skills. Categories are the
basis of language and organization of the world.
  Pattern recognition – is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities
in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image
analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer
graphics and machine learning.

LESSON 4. SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

Social Learning theory

 The theory focuses on the learners.
 It is a theory of learning process and social behavior which proposes that new
behaviors can be acquired by observing and imitating others.
o For example, a teenager might learn slang by observing peers.
 It explains how people learn:
o new behaviors
o values
o attitudes.
 In addition to the observation of behavior, learning also occurs through the
observation of rewards and punishments, a process known as vicarious
reinforcement.
 They are benefitted by role models, building self-confidence, persuasion, and
personal mastery.
o Self-efficacy can lead to the desired behaviors and outcomes.
o According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy is "the belief in one's capabilities
to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage
prospective situations.
o " Self-efficacy is a person's belief in his or her ability to succeed in a
particular situation.
 Associated with Albert Bandura's work in the 1960s. Bandura's work is
considered part of the cognitive revolution in psychology that began in the
late 1960s.
o His theories have had a tremendous impact on:
o personality psychology
o cognitive psychology
o education
o psychotherapy
 Using Bandura's social learning theory in the classroom can help students reach
their potential.
o Students do not only imitate each other but also the teacher.
o Being a good role model, open to all the students, and holding the
students to a level of responsibility will be imitated by the students
according to Bandura.
o Bandura asserts that most human behavior is learned through the
following:
o Observation
o Imitation
o Modeling