Robert M. Gagné

Robert Mills Gagné (August 21, 1916 – April 28, 2002) was an American educational psychologist best known for his Conditions of Learning. He instructed during World War II when he worked with the Army Air Corps training pilots. He went on to develop a series of studies and works that simplified and explained what he and others believed to be good instruction. Gagné was also involved in applying concepts of instructional theory to the design of computer-based training and multimedia-based learning.

His work is sometimes summarized as the Gagné assumption: that different types of learning exist, and that different instructional conditions are most likely to bring about these different types of learning.

Biography

Early life and education

Robert Mills Gagné was born on August 21, 1916, in North Andover, Massachusetts. In high school, he decided to study psychology and be a psychologist after reading psychological texts. In his valedictory speech of 1932, Gagné professed that the science of psychology should be used to relieve the burdens of human life.

Gagné received a scholarship to Yale University, where he earned his A.B. in 1937. He then went on to receive his Sc.M. and Ph.D. at Brown University where he studied the conditioned operate response of white rats as part of his thesis.

Career

His first college teaching job was in 1940, at Connecticut College for Women.

His initial studies of people were interrupted by World War II. In the first year of war, at Psychological Research Unit No. 1, Maxwell Field, Alabama, he administered and scored aptitude tests to choose and sort aviation cadets. Thereafter, he was assigned to officer school in Miami Beach. He was commissioned a second lieutenant, and assigned to School of Aviation Medicine, Randolph Field, Fort Worth, Texas.

After the war, he held a temporary faculty position at Pennsylvania State University. He returned to Connecticut College for Women. In 1949, he accepted an offer to join the US Air Force organization that became the Air Force Personnel and Training Research Center, where he was research director of the Perceptual and Motor Skills Laboratory. In 1958, he returned to academia as professor at Princeton University, where his research shifted focus to the learning of problem solving and the learning of mathematics. In 1962, he joined the American Institutes for Research, where he wrote his first book, Conditions of Learning. He spent additional time in academia at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with graduate students. With W. K. Roher, he presented a paper, "Instructional Psychology", to the Annual Review of Psychology.

In 1969, he found a lasting home at Florida State University. He collaborated with L. J. Briggs on Principles of Learning. He published the second and third editions of The Conditions of Learning.

Personal life

Gagné's wife, Pat, was a biologist. They had a son, Sam, and daughter, Ellen. His non-professional pursuits included constructing wood furniture and reading modern fiction. In 1993, he retired to Signal Mountain, Tennessee, with his wife. Dr. Gagné was known to base his foundations on behaviorism.

Taxonomy

Gagné classified the types of learning outcomes by asking how learning might be demonstrated. His domains and outcomes of learning correspond to standard verbs.

Cognitive Domain

:Verbal information - is stated: state, recite, tell, declare

:Intellectual skills - label or classify the concepts

:Intellectual skills - apply the rules and principles

:Intellectual skills - problem solve by generating solutions or procedures

::Discrimination: discriminate, distinguish, differentiate

::Concrete Concept: identify, name, specify, label

::Defined Concept: classify, categorize, type, sort (by definition)

::Rule: demonstrate, show, solve (using one rule)

::Higher order rule: generate, develop, solve (using two or more rules)

:Cognitive strategies - are used for learning: adopt, create, originate

Affective Domain

:Attitudes - are demonstrated by preferring options: choose, prefer, elect, favor

Psychomotor Domain

:Motor skills - enable physical performance: execute, perform, carry out

Learning process

Gagné's theory stipulates that there are several types and levels of learning, and each of these types and levels requires instruction that is tailored to meet the needs of the pupil. The focus of Gagné's theory is on the retention and honing of intellectual skills. The theory has been applied to the design of instruction in all fields, though in its original formulation special attention was given to military training settings.

Eight ways to learn

In 1956, Gagné devised a system of analyzing different conditions of learning from simple to complex. According to Gagné, higher orders of learning are built upon the lower levels, requiring a greater amount of previous knowledge to progress successfully; final capability is analysed as comprising subordinate skills in an order such that the lower levels can be predicted for positive transfer of higher level learning. The lower four orders focus on the behavioral aspects of learning, while the higher four focus on the cognitive aspects. In his original study on instruction, Gagné attributed individual differences in learning. However, using them as part of a complete instructional package can assist many educators in becoming more organized and staying focused on the instructional goals.

Evaluation of instruction

Have the objectives been met?
Is the new program better than the previous one?
What additional effects does the new program include?

When objectively analyzing the conditions for learning Gagné says, "Since the purpose of instruction is learning, the central focus for rational derivation of instructional techniques is the human learner. Development of rationally sound instructional procedures must take into account learner characteristics such as initiate capacities, experimental maturity, and current knowledge states. Such factors become parameters of the design of any particular program of instruction."

Influence

Robert Gagné's work has been the foundation of instructional design since the beginning of the 1960s when he conducted research and developed training materials for the military. Among the first to coin the term "instructional design", Gagné developed some of the earliest instructional design models and ideas. These models have laid the groundwork for more present-day instructional design models from theorists like Dick, Carey, and Carey (The Dick and Carey Systems Approach Model), Jerold Kemp's Instructional Design Model, and David Merrill (Merrill's First Principle of Instruction). Gagné believed in internal learning and motivation which paved the way for theorists like Merrill, Li, and Jones who designed the Instructional Transaction Theory, Reigeluth and Stein's Elaboration Theory, and most notably, Keller's ARCS Model of Motivation and Design.

Prior to Robert Gagné, learning was often thought of as a single, uniform process. There was little or no distinction made between "learning to load a rifle and learning to solve a complex mathematical problem".

His definition of curriculum has been the basis of many important initiatives in schools and other educational environments. Gagné was one of the early developers of the concept of instructional systems design which suggests the components of a lesson can be analyzed and should be designed to operate together as an integrated plan for instruction.

References

External links

Conversation on Instructional Design Home (Gagné and Merrill video seminar)