Conditions of Learning

Conditions of Learning is a theory of learning set out by the psychologist Robert M. Gagne, first published in 1965, that identifies five major categories of learning outcome: verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills and attitudes. The theory holds that each of these different types of learning requires its own different internal and external conditions to occur, so that, for example, learning a cognitive strategy requires the chance to practice devising new solutions to problems, while learning an attitude requires exposure to a credible role model or a persuasive argument. Gagne further proposed that learning tasks for intellectual skills can be organized into a hierarchy of increasing complexity, running from stimulus recognition and response generation up through concept formation, rule application and problem solving, so that the lower levels of the hierarchy serve as prerequisites for the level above. In education, this hierarchy is the theory's main working tool: identifying the prerequisite skills a learner needs at each level gives an instructional designer a basis for sequencing a course, a distinct contribution from Gagne's own separate nine events of instruction, which describe how a single lesson should unfold rather than how a whole course of skills should be ordered.