2210D - PREMISES ABOUT LEARNING

West Clermont Local School District

Administrative Guidelines

2210D - PREMISES ABOUT LEARNING

In designing or revising any of the District's learning programs, recommended teaching and learning strategies should be based on the following convictions about learning and the instructional process.

___			All learning is self-generated. It cannot be given or received.

___			The only evidence of learning is the student's demonstrating his/her ability to do something (mentally or physically) that s/he could either not do or do as well before instruction.

___			Learning comes in three forms:

			Knowledge (facts, concepts, cause-effect principles)

			Skills (result-producing actions which are improvable through practice)

			Attitudes (mind-sets-for-action directed toward a referent)

___			Each form of learning requires the student to use a different sequence of thinking and physical actions (knowledge is not learned in the same way as skills, etc.)

___			Knowledge is usually a prerequisite for learning attitudes and skills, knowledge and skills are prerequisites to learning attitudes.

___			Students learn some things without being aware of what they are learning (mannerisms, some habits, etc.)

___			Students generate conscious learning by using specific thinking skills to gather and process information.

	___	Information consists of facts and inferences used to generate knowledge, skills, and attitudes.


___	Someone else's knowledge is only information to the student. Such information can be given and received in three forms:

	real (information containing all of the characteristics or dimensions the student needs to acquire, e.g. a live, on-site demonstration of a procedure);

	representational (information containing some but not all of the characteristics the student needs to acquire, e.g. a video taped demonstration of a procedure);

	symbolic (information containing none of the characteristics of what the student needs to acquire, e.g. a written description of a procedure).

___	Information is meaningless unless the student can relate it to personal experience. For a student to develop knowledge about something, s/he must have personal experience with what the knowledge deals with.

___	Learning is useful only when the student can apply it properly in new situations to achieve needed results.

___	The quality of learning is only as good as the quality of the result it produces. The quality of the result is only as good as the mental and physical actions that produce it.

___	Instruction is the process for generating learning and its application through the student's use of appropriate thinking skills and physical actions to gather, retrieve, and process relevant information.

___	The quality of instruction is only as good as:

	1.	the quality of defined learning it allows students to produce;

	2.	the quality of the confirmation of the learning.

___	Instruction can produce intended learnings (means) or learning outcomes (applied learnings or ends). For instruction and learning to be effective, "means" learnings should build cumulatively toward learning outcomes.

___	Learning outcomes of an educational program should be durable, significant, and transferable.