Shirley J. Caruso, Ed.D.
Learning is an essential element in organizational development. Without learning, individual, team, and organizational development cannot occur. Learning in the broadest sense is a change in thinking, values, and/or behavior brought about by experience. Learning places its focus on structuring developmental capability at the individual, team, and organizational levels. According to Marsick, Volpe, and Watkins (1999), the first step toward enhancing learning in organizations is to become more intentional about:
- What one wants to learn (learning goals);
- How this learning will help further one’s own life or career goals and those of the organization (without assuming that these goals are always congruent);
- How one can best accomplish this kind of learning, given differences in learning styles, personality and motivation variables, and constraints within the organization.
Learning has distinct elements, factors, or functional acts
Learning is acquired through communication of experience. Experience may consist of facts, truths, and concepts or may be taught by the use of words or by signs, objects, actions, or illustration. According to Gilley, Eggland, and Gilley (1989), if any act of learning acquisition is to be considered complete, it will be found to contain ten distinct elements, factors, or functional acts:
- Two perspective factors – a learning philosophy and learning climate.
- Two persons – a learning agent and a learner.
- Two mental factors – a common language or medium of communication and a lesson, truth, or skill to be communicated.
- Four functional acts or processes – that of the human resource development (HRD) practitioner, that of the learning agent, that of the learner, and a final or finished process to evaluate and fix the result.
Each of these elements, factors, or functional acts should be present and none of them can be omitted and no others need to be added. A combination of these elements, factors, or functional acts makes up the learning acquisition process.
Learning acquisition has laws
To assure that these ten elements, factors, or functional acts are properly blended, ten laws of learning acquisition (Gilley et al., 1989) must be followed:
- Learning agents must have a well-identified philosophy of learning.
- Learning agents must isolate the need for learning or performance improvement.
- Learning agents must create a climate conducive for learning.
- Learning agents must know the program, lesson, subject, skill or truth to be taught.
- Learners must attend with interest to the program, lesson, or subject.
- The language used as a medium between the learning agent and the information, truth, or skill to be mastered must be explicable in terms of information or truths already known by the learner. Therefore, the unknown must be explained by means of the known.
- The instructional process must be arousing, using the learner’s mind to grasp the desired thought or to master the desired skill.
- The instructional process must be arousing, using the learner’s mind to grasp the desired thought or to master the desired skill.
- The learning acquisition process must turn one’s own understanding of a new idea or truth into an overt habit that demonstrates the new awareness.
- The evidence of learning must be reflected through reviewing, rethinking, reproduction, and applying of the material, information, truth, or skill that has been communicated.
Summary
The focus of learning acquisition is acquiring knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs), and adopting behaviors that enhance performance in current jobs. So that HRD professionals use learning acquisition to its fullest capacity, the ten laws of learning acquisition should be followed.
References
Gilley, J., Eggland, S., and Gilley, A. M. (1989). Principles of human resource development. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Marsick, B.J., Volpe, M., and Watkins, K.E. (1999). Theory and practice of informal learning in the knowledge era. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.