Teacher's ten-part role in economic learning: prevent interfering associations, time effort and rest, and supply incentives at critical stages¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 7 claims (7 for) · 2 studies (2 causal), q2 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 7 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article closes with a summary of the teacher's specific functions in economic learning, derived from the typewriting studies. The teacher should know how the subject is naturally learned and the difficulties arising at each stage, since "By carefully directing the activities of his students in advance, he not only prevents the formation of many hindering associations but makes sure of the perfection of the elemental habits." The teacher should guide acquisition of right methods of study, ensure the natural economic method is used, prevent learners from pushing too fast at critical stages, regulate work and rest, provide incentives to effort and emotional helps at critical stages, urge learners on when conditions favor new adaptations, keep conditions favorable, and cultivate interest and pleasant feeling tone.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• The teacher must know the specific difficulties learners encounter, at what stages they occur, and the best ways of meeting them
• The teacher must understand the psychological importance of prompt and complete elimination of difficulties

Constraints¶

• The most economic periods of work and rest in different fields of learning had not yet been determined and required further investigation

Target Learners¶

• Students acquiring complex skills in school or laboratory settings

Target Learning Goals¶

• Economic, interference-minimizing acquisition of skill hierarchies
• Elimination of plateaus from learning curves
• Development of permanent interest and helpful feeling tone

Affordances¶

• Hierarchy Of Habits Book

Claims¶

• In natural learning, elemental and higher-order habits develop together, so the most economic method is to practice with the highest-order habits possible [+W]
• New adaptations in skill learning were made unintentionally and required intense, carefully applied effort under favorable conditions [+W]
• Lower-order habits persist after being superseded and resist new ways of working, requiring constant effort to overcome [+W]
• Learning-curve plateaus were caused by learners' failure to overcome specific difficulties at critical stages, not by the order in which habits developed [+W]
• Practice when learners were nervous or tired was worthless for strengthening associations and positively injurious, favoring wrong habits [+W]
• Typewriting skill showed an average daily gain of eighty-five strokes on memory tests taken after a year and a half without practice, attributed to the disappearance of interfering associations rather than neural growth [+W]
• Practice in substituting digits for letters transferred positively to writing symbols for digits but interfered with writing digits for symbols [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Book, William Frederick. (1908). The Role of the Teacher in the Most Expeditious and Economic Learning. The Journal of Educational Psychology. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=The+Role+of+the+Teacher+in+the+Most+Expeditious+and+Economic+Learning