Health Education, Advocacy and Community Mobilisation Module: 6. Principles of Learning

Study Session 6  Principles of Learning

Introduction

This study session examines the principles of learning and why they are important within your role as a Health Extension Practitioner. It considers the key characteristics of learning and how they influence the health education activities that you will develop. In doing so it illustrates the similarities and differences in the ways both adults and children learn and how consideration of these can inform your practice in the delivery of health education. Drawing upon psychological, physical and environmental factors and teaching methodologies, this session identifies the factors that influence the learning process and how knowledge of these will help you when you are planning your health education programmes.

Learning Outcomes for Study Session 6

When you have studied this session, you should be able to:

6.1  Define and use correctly all of the key words printed in bold. (SAQ 6.1)

6.2  Describe the characteristics of learning. (SAQ 6.1)

6.3  Explain the principles of adult learning. (SAQ 6.2)

6.4  Describe the steps in learning. (SAQ 6.3)

6.5  Understand some of the most important factors affecting learning. (SAQ 6.4)

6.1  Characteristics of learning

There are three key concepts that will be used to help you learn in this study session: ‘learning’, ‘training’ and ‘education’. The term ‘learning’ refers to a process resulting in some modification, relatively permanent, of the ways of thinking, feeling, and doing of the learner (Figure 6.1). It includes both of the concepts ‘education’ and ‘training’.

Figure 6.1  These women are learning about health issues that are important to them. They are concentrating hard. (Photo: Lindsay Stark)

Training usually means the act of being prepared for something, of being taught or learning a particular skill and practising it until the required standard is reached.

The word education means to gain general theoretical knowledge and this may or may not involve learning how to do any specific practical work, tasks or skills. Education also refers to a process of training or receiving tuition. Usually basic training in health services is a combination of theoretical, educational and practical learning skills.

As a Health Extension Practitioner a large part of your work will involve teaching people in your local community about health matters. This is why you need to be able to understand the key characteristics of the learning process and the learner. Although some aspects of learning really are very simple and straightforward — for example if you don’t get bitten by a mosquito you won’t catch malaria — other aspects of learning are more complicated. In this respect learning is considered to be unitary the learner responds as a ‘whole person’ in a unified way to the whole situation. They respond intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually at the same time.

Learning is also social, because it takes place in response to the environment in which there are other individuals as well as physical things. Each learner is unique and has needs and problems not exactly like others. In other words, some have well developed intellectual abilities and others may be less able; some are skilled in self-expression, while others have difficulty; some are slow to learn, but others may be quick; some are sociable while others are shy and retiring. An effective health educator must consider the variations and differences among learners and provide health information accordingly.

Learning is self-active this principle embodies the idea that a learner learns through their own activities. Learning is a personal process. Self-active learning includes listening, visualising, recalling, memorising, reasoning, using your judgment and thinking. In your role as a health educator you will be expected to guide, direct and select different types of learning activities based on what you want your audience to learn from your health education session. Hence, you are expected to encourage active engagement of the audience in the learning process.

Learning is purposive. That means that learning is moving toward a goal or end result. Learning experiences are meaningful when they are related to the individual’s interests. It follows from this that as a health educator you are expected to involve the members of your community throughout the health education activity so that they feel ownership of the programme.

Figure 6.2  These young children are learning while being creative — and having fun at the same time. (Photo: SOS Children’s Villages)

Learning is creative. For each individual, learning is not merely a summing up of previous knowledge and experience, it is a creative putting together of all the knowledge and experience of the learner (Figure 6.2).

Learning is transferable: Transferable learning means that whatever is learned in one context or situation will also apply in another context or situation. For example, the knowledge about the utilisation of some services such as antenatal care (ANC) will also be applied to the utilisation of other health services as well. This characteristic of learning strongly implies that Health Extension Practitioners should be very careful while passing out information since bad or inaccurate information about one issue may be transferred to other types of knowledge, and it may seriously affect the future health behaviour of individuals in your community.

6.2  Steps in learning

As a member of your community, you have been living closely with mothers and children and you will have also observed how children explore and learn from their surroundings. Based on that you can get some useful ideas about learning by thinking about how babies and young children learn. They often have confidence in themselves and are still full of the joy of learning (Figure 6.3). At their best adults also learn in similar ways.

Figure 6.3  This young child is learning all the time — even from simple activities in the home. (Photo: Lindsay Stark)

Figure 6.4  Learning is an enjoyable activity for this child — and for her teacher. (Photo: Tedla Mulatu)

6.3  Principles of adult learning

Most of the time adults follow the same general patterns of learning as children do. Just read through Box 6.1 again and think about the sequence of learning. But while there are similarities between child and adult learning, there are also additional features of adult learning, that will help you while planning and conducting your health education sessions.

Principles of learning, also known as laws of learning, are readiness, exercise, effect, primacy, recency, intensity and freedom. These are discussed below and they should help you in designing and conducting your health education sessions.

6.3.1  Readiness

Readiness implies a degree of willingness and eagerness of an individual to learn something new. Individuals learn best when they are physically, mentally and emotionally ready to learn — and they do not learn well if they see no reason for learning. Getting the audience ready to learn, creating interest by showing the value of the subject matter and providing continuous mental or physical challenge is usually the health educator’s responsibility. Since learning is an active process, the audience must have adequate rest, health, and physical comfort while learning.

6.3.2  Exercise

The principle of exercise states that those things that are most often repeated are the ones that are best remembered. Your audience will learn best and retain information longer when they have meaningful practice and repetition. It is clear that practice leads to improvement only when it is followed by positive feedback.

The human mind is forgetful and it can rarely retain, evaluate, and apply new concepts or practices after a single exposure. Audiences will not learn complex tasks in a single session. They learn by applying what they have been told and shown. Every time practice occurs, learning continues. The health educator must repeat important items of subject matter at reasonable intervals and provide opportunities for the audience to practice while making sure that this process is directed towards learning something new.

6.3.3  Effect

The principle of effect is that learning is strengthened when accompanied by a pleasant or satisfying feeling — and that learning is weakened when associated with an unpleasant feeling. The learner will strive to continue learning as long as it provides a pleasant effect. Positive reinforcement is more likely to lead to success and motivate the learner — so as a health educator you should recognise this feature and tell your audience how well they are doing.

One of the important obligations of the health educator is to set up the learning situation in such a manner that each person being taught will be able to see evidence of their own progress and achieve some degree of success.

6.3.4  Primacy

Primacy, the state of being first, often creates a strong impression which may be very difficult to change. Things learned first create a strong impression in the mind that is difficult to erase. ‘Unteaching’ or erasing from the mind incorrect first impressions is harder than teaching them correctly in the first place. If, for example, a mother is taught a faulty technique about preparation of replacement feeding (formula, instead of breastfeeding), you as a health educator will have a difficult task correcting bad habits and ‘reteaching’ correct ones.

The learner’s first experience should be positive, functional and lay the foundation for all that is to follow. As a health educator you should present your subject matter in a logical order, step by step, making sure the audience has already learned and understood the preceding step.

6.3.5  Recency

The principle of recency states that things most recently learned are best remembered. Conversely, the further a learner is removed time-wise from a new fact or understanding, the more difficult it is to remember. For example, it is easier for a mother to recall what children were fed this morning than to remember what they were fed three days ago.

Information acquired most recently generally is remembered best; frequent review and summarising will help fixing in the audience’s mind topics that have been covered. To that end, the health educator should repeat, restate or re-emphasise important points at the end of a lesson to help the audience remember them.

6.3.6  Intensity

The more intense the material taught, the more likely it will be retained. A sharp, clear, dramatic, or exciting learning experience teaches more than a routine or boring experience. The principle of intensity implies that a learner will learn more from the real thing than from a substitute.

Likewise, a learner is likely to gain greater understanding of tasks by performing them — rather than merely reading about them. The more immediate and dramatic the learning is to a real situation, the more impressive the learning is upon the learner. Demonstrations and role playing will do much to increase the learning experience of your audience. Examples, analogies, and personal experiences also make learning come to life. For example, a mother will learn more from demonstration of bed net utilisation which is shown to her in her own house than from teaching her just by a talk at your Health Post (Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5  Although it is a good idea to show people the new bed nets, each family will need a demonstration in their own home to make the teaching more realistic and effective. (Photo: UNICEF Ethiopia/Indrias Getachew)

6.3.7  Freedom

The principle of freedom states that things freely learned are best learned. Conversely, if the audience is forced to learn something, the more difficult it is for them to learn. Compulsion and forcing are not favorable for personal growth. For example, if you force a family to construct a latrine in their compound, they may not be interested to do that. However if you motivate them to do that through proper education of the family, they are more likely to construct the latrines and use them properly.

6.4  Factors affecting learning

As you plan and carry out your health education sessions you should be aware of the factors that affect the learning process. These may be classified into four categories:

• Physiological factors
• Psychological factors
• Environmental factors
• Teaching methodology.

6.4.1  Physiological factors

The physiological factors include how people feel, their physical health, and their levels of fatigue at the time of learning, the quality of the food and drink they have consumed, their age, etc.

Physical health is important because ill health hampers learning, and so can fatigue. Studying for a long time can cause fatigue, which affects your audience’s learning capacity. The time of learning also influences how much new knowledge is acquired. The quantity and quality of healthy food and drink also plays a crucial part because nutrition is responsible for efficient mental activity. Poor nutrition adversely affects learning. Alcoholic drinks and caffeine, as well as tobacco, all have an adverse effect on the capacity of people to learn. Good physiological factors promote effective learning.

People find it very difficult try to learn new things if they are in a difficult environment. Atmospheric conditions such as high temperature and humidity tend to lower mental efficiency. Studying in conditions of poor ventilation, the lack of proper lighting, where there is noise and physical discomfort, all hamper learning capacity. Good conditions make it easier to learn (Figure 6.6).

Figure 6.6  These children are comfortable and are learning in an ideal environment. (Photo: SOS Children’s Villages)

6.4.2  Psychological factors

You will know from your own study that if you are anxious or worried you will not be able to learn very efficiently. Psychological factors such as mental ill-health or mental tension and conflict all hamper learning. A related psychological factor is motivation — no learning can take place in the absence of motivation. Purposeless learning is not learning at all. Motivation can energise, select and direct positive behaviour.

In general, for motivation to take place in health education sessions, learning should be purposeful and meaningful, and the audience should be interested in the health issue being discussed during the session. Encouragement and praise stimulate learning of health-related skills (Figure 6.7). You will need to encourage the people to whom you are giving your health education messages.

Figure 6.7  Children — and people of all ages — need encouragement to learn most effectively. (Photo: SOS Children’s Villages)

6.4.3  Environmental factors

The key environmental factors when delivering your health education messages are the conditions where the learners have to sit to do their learning. Learning is hampered by bad environmental conditions such as distraction, noise, poor illumination, bad ventilation, overcrowding and inconvenient seating arrangements.

The location of the health education setting, the internal set up, the accommodation, decoration and sanitary conditions are all very important for efficient learning. The organisational set up of the health education setting also influences learning. For example, if you are giving a health education session in your Health Post, and if the room is very overcrowded with healthy as well as sick individuals, some of them sitting on the floor and others by the door, this would hamper the learning among all of the attendants.

6.4.4  Teaching methodology

Your health education teaching materials should be properly planned and organised. They should suit the mental level of the audience. For example, if you are planning to educate a rural family on personal hygiene, a poster or picture could be good health learning material if it is supported with talks. But a leaflet with lots of text would not be a good teaching aid because a large number of rural people are unable to read. All your teaching should be presented in a meaningful and interesting manner. It is also important to encourage learning-by-doing. When we talked about the characteristics of learning, we referred to self-active learning — learning-by-doing is one very good way of active learning. For example, if you are teaching a family about the utilisation of bed nets, it would be good to encourage them to demonstrate back to you how they would attach them — after you show them how to do it for the first time. Saying things again and repeating them in a meaningful manner, as well as practice, are important for learning and the audience must be encouraged to learn through activity. Consequently, the use of lectures and health talks should be kept to a minimum. Learning can then be reinforced by simple testing, which is informal, but includes feedback. In this way, the audience would know how well they are doing and they will also be encouraged to learn new skills.

For example, if you want to teach a mother about proper position and attachment for breastfeeding, it is good first to demonstrate the correct position to the mother. You can then test whether she has learnt this correctly by asking her to demonstrate the proper positioning and attachment back to you. You should encourage her to practice it until she gets it right. This should continuously be accompanied by your comments and feedback on her level of achievement.

Summary of Study Session 6

In Study Session 6, you have learned that:

1. Learning is a process that results in some modification in the learner’s ways of thinking, feeling and doing. The characteristics of learning include the idea of learning as a unitary process: it is both an individual and a social experience that is self-active, purposive and can be creative and transferable.
2. Steps in the learning process include:
   • Observation (watching) very carefully.
   • Using other sensing methods like listening, touching or tasting.
   • Speaking and asking for responses to questions such as ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ something happens.
   • Imitating or copying the same action saying, ‘Let me do it myself’.
   • Repeating the action again and again.
   • Performing the action while others are observing you.
3. Principles of learning include readiness, exercise, effect, primacy, recency, intensity and freedom.
   • Readiness implies a degree of willingness and eagerness of an individual to learn something new.
   • Exercise states that those things most often repeated are best remembered.
   • Effect implies that learning is strengthened when accompanied by a pleasant or satisfying feeling.
   • Primacy the things you learn first often create a strong impression which can be very difficult to change.
   • Recency states that things most recently learned are best remembered.
   • Intensity implies that a learner will learn more from the real thing than from a substitute.
   • The principle of freedom states that things freely learned are learned best.
4. In the day to day activities of health education, the factors that influence learning may be classified into four categories: physical factors, psychological factors, environmental factors and teaching methodology.

Self-Assessment Questions (SAQs) for Study Session 6

Now that you have completed this study session, you can assess how well you have achieved its Learning Outcomes by answering these questions. Write your answers in your Study Diary and discuss them with your Tutor at the next Study Support Meeting. You can check your answers with the Notes on the Self-Assessment Questions at the end of this Module.