Learning Strategies

For the purpose of this entry, learning is defined as behavior change that is governed by the feedback that the child receives from his or her environment. Hence, learning is a process that can be accelerated or decelerated depending on environmental conditions. The focus of this entry is to describe a paradigm within which learning can be evaluated and environmental conditions can be altered and optimized to accelerate learning for all children. Learning results from an interaction between the learner and the learner's environment can include a variety of influential variables, some of which result automatically when the learner responds (e.g., computer plays a song when the correct answer is selected), some that are under the instructor's control (e.g., teacher-directed variables), and some that are under the learner's control (e.g., child adds a set incorrectly and when checking the sum against a set of manipulative materials learns that he or she counted incorrectly). The environmental changes that precede and follow learner behavior (both programmed or intended events and unintended events) serve to either strengthen or weaken the learned association. This entry describes a paradigm for integrating assessment of learner performance with specific strategies empirically demonstrated to accelerate learning.

Instructional Hierarchy

The link between assessment and learning has been well documented and endorsed as a primary characteristic of effective teaching models. Child performance may be characterized in terms that link directly to instructional techniques of demonstrated effectiveness for that particular performance. Therefore, performance-based assessment before instruction is essential to determine prior knowledge that each child brings to the learning task. Regardless of the philosophies that teachers and researchers bring to understanding and promoting learning, the integration of performance assessment and instruction has broad utility and applicability to learning and may be incorporated within all approaches to instruction.

It is helpful to view learning as occurring in stages: initial learning for accuracy or quality; practice for fluency and endurance; and application, or combination of the components into new responses, to solve novel or more complicated problems. Hence, the instructional hierarchy is a useful heuristic for organizing learner proficiency and therefore identifying which strategies are likely to accelerate (and decelerate) learning for that particular learner. The instructional hierarchy has been widely and successfully used to design, implement, and evaluate interventions for children's academic performance problems.

The hierarchy contains four stages of learning: acquisition, fluency, generalization, and adaptation. Knowing the stage at which a learner's skill falls relative to goals for learning communicates to instructional facilitators exactly which training goals, performance measures, and associated set of instructional strategies will be most effective for that learner. The instructional hierarchy provides a framework for instructional decision making that is driven by learner competence. Specifically, the instructional hierarchy provides a system for translating a continuous variable like learning into categories of proficiency for a skill or series of skills drawn from the instructional objectives. The learner's performance or proficiency determines which instructional strategies will be most effective for that particular learner at that particular point in time. Hence, the instructional hierarchy provides a basis for implementing effective instructional strategies and for revising these strategies over time as learner skill improves (and new strategies are needed). Characteristics of learner performance and associated instructional strategies are described for each stage of the instructional hierarchy in the following sections.

Acquisition

The first stage of the instructional hierarchy is the acquisition stage. A learner's performance at the acquisition stage is characterized by low accuracy and subsequent dysfluency. When children are first learning a skill (acquisition stage of learning), responses will be hesitant and sometimes incorrect. The goal of acquisition-level training is for learners to perform a new skill or behavior accurately without assistance. Instruction is provided on a continuum ranging from less intensive and more naturalistic strategies to more intensive and less naturalistic strategies. Because performance is continuously monitored as the learner acquires a new skill, instructional facilitators or trainers might initially provide less intensive and more naturalistic instruction embedded into the typical environment. If progress monitoring does not reflect discernible acceleration of learning, more intensive instructional programming can be undertaken at this stage, which might include more directive, less naturalistic approaches such as direct instruction. Direct instruction has been demonstrated to be an effective core and supplemental instructional approach that reliably accelerates learning.

Certain instructional strategies are of primary importance when learner performance is at the acquisition stage of learning. For example, instructional feedback should immediately occur. Hence, during this stage of learning, independent practice of the skill is counterproductive and actually gives the student a chance to practice the skill incorrectly. Guided practice is the ideal form of instruction whereby a peer or teacher monitors each learner response and provides immediate corrective feedback. The content of the feedback at this stage should be correct and quick (interrupting the incorrect response). Delayed feedback or error correction will be inefficient and ineffective at the acquisition stage of learning. In addition to immediate corrective feedback, certain antecedent strategies are important at the acquisition stage. For example, extensive use of cuing, prompting, and modeling of correct responses when the teacher anticipates an incorrect response is pivotal to establish correct responding. Effective instructional facilitators have a system of antecedent support that includes providing task materials of appropriate difficulty, providing structured exemplars of correct and incorrect responding, and providing increasingly intensive cues and prompts until the correct response occurs. Important to the successful use of these strategies is the adequacy of the learning environment, most often classrooms. To successfully program acquisition-level instruction, the teacher should maximize time devoted to active student engagement in the lesson (minimizing behaviors that interfere with academic engagement) and should briskly pace instruction while frequently checking for student understanding. Effective teachers have a system for tracking student responding when a new skill is introduced to ensure that learners have made the correct discrimination before moving to the next stage of learning where more independent learning can occur.

At the acquisition stage of learning, the goal is to establish correct responding with instructional support. The level of intensity of instructional support should be increased until correct responding occurs. Learners who fail to correctly respond given intensive prompting and feedback may require alteration of task materials (making the task easier) or additional instruction on prerequisite skills. Ongoing performance assessment is necessary to determine whether or not the learner has attained the goal of the acquisition stage of learning, that is, accurate and independent performance of the skill. Whatever antecedent and consequent supports have been provided to establish correct responding at this point should be removed to measure persistence of correct responding in the absence of instructional support. If accurate responding persists when instructional supports are removed, then the learner has reached the fluency-building stage of learning.

Fluency Building

Fluency is necessary to competency. Fluency is defined as the combination of accuracy plus speed and is typically converted to a rate-based metric, such as number of responses correct per minute. The temporal dimension of the response allows for a performance description that extends beyond the attainment of 100% accuracy. Fluency has been shown to be an element in the development of competency within a wide variety of situations including general and special education. Fluency also requires the ability to quickly link a component skill with other component skills to produce more complex learner responses. Fluent component or subskill performance enhances competency with complex skills. Fluent learners can identify which component skills will help them to solve more complex problem presentations without hesitation.

Learners whose performances fall in the fluency-building stage of learning are learners who can accurately respond when the response is required and can therefore tolerate longer intervals between instructional feedback occasions. Independent practice at this stage can be effective so long as materials are controlled such that the learner can continue to accurately and independently respond (i.e., low probability of errors). It is difficult to overstate the importance of adequately controlled task materials at each stage of the instructional hierarchy. At the acquisition stage, materials should be controlled such that cues for skill performance are salient to the learner. Hence, predictable and repetitive cues for responding are desirable. Variation is desirable only to the degree that the learner is given occasion to discern the conditions under which a response is correct and incorrect. In the fluency-building stage of learning, variation in task materials is desirable to the degree that learner errors remain low. Task materials systematically may be increased in difficulty at the fluency-building stage so long as learner performance remains accurate as speed of responding improves.

At this stage, feedback can be delayed and should be tied to motivating contingencies to maximize growth and learning. Reinforcing faster performance and blocking reinforcement for slower performance is the guiding principle. At this stage, feedback should not interrupt responding (because it interferes with fluency and is unnecessary). At this stage, feedback must still be correct, but it can be less elaborative. Prompts and cues for correct responding should not be provided at this stage, because they interfere with fluency building. Accurate responding is established with frequent and immediate feedback, whereas fluency is built with frequent delayed feedback. The key is to provide feedback after short intervals of practice during which students are working to improve their performance. Feedback generally should be brief, rather than elaborative, preserving instructional time and maintaining a brisk pace of instruction. At this stage, overcorrection may be an effective consequence-based strategy that can be combined with delayed feedback. When corrective feedback is provided, the student is then asked to provide the correct response three times in quick succession. This strategy has been used successfully in reading instruction.

Similar to decision making at the acquisition stage of learning, ongoing assessment of learner performance is the basis for determining when the learner has completed the fluency-building stage of learning for a particular skill. Fluent responding governs a learner's ability to apply a learned skill to the solution of increasingly complex and novel tasks. Learners who can fluently perform a particular skill are ready for the maintenance and generalization stages of learning.

Maintenance and Generalization

Struggling learners generally fall into the acquisition or fluency-building stages of proficiency and, therefore, most often benefit from the strategies described for those two stages. However, learners operating in the generalization or adaptation stages may require interventions such as guided application of fluent skills under novel conditions and with more complex tasks. Another element necessary for a student to achieve competency is application. Application refers to learners being able to use a skill in a wide range of settings and situations, or to accurately discriminate between the target skill and similar skills that might be needed to contend with various task demands. The practice conditions that establish fluent responding are the same conditions that promote maintenance and generalization. Maintenance refers to the continued performance of the skill when instructional supports have been removed. Generalization refers to two specific events, the occurrence of the trained response under untrained conditions and the occurrence of different responses under the training conditions. Maintenance and generalization epitomize the goals of the learning effort. If learning strategies have been successful, then the learned skill will persist when the instruction ceases, will serve the learner in accessing new information or solving similar problems in the future, and will lead to generally greater adaptation for the learner in the future. After all, what good is instruction if it does not produce a robust and enduring skill set that has value to the learner over time? Fluent responding is a necessary pre-condition to maintenance and generalization. Maintenance and generalization is also assessed via ongoing performance assessment. Brief timed episodes of responding yielding a score of responses correct per minute may be utilized to assess the learner's skill trajectory during the fluency-building stage of learning. Similarly, responses correct per minute in the absence of instruction and over time provides important information about the persistence of a learned skill and whether re-training might be needed given certain goals of instruction. Research has demonstrated that greater fluency is associated with successful maintenance, faster recovery or return to fluency, and faster acquisition of related skills. Hence, training to fluency is an important goal related to establishing a skill that maintains and has generality for the learner. Maintenance of foundational skills should be verified to ensure successful learning of related more complex tasks in the future. Further, responding under conditions that differ from those provided during instruction and more typical of the everyday conditions under which the behavior will need to occur to effectively serve the learner should be examined. For example, students who learn to read a number of content-controlled passages at high fluency levels that maintain in the absence of reading instruction may not necessarily demonstrate adequately changed reading performance on a task in a science lesson that requires successful passage reading. The degree to which the learned skill (fluent reading) generalizes to conditions that are different from those encountered during training (e.g., reading a science lesson) or to responses that allow for successful performance under typically encountered conditions (e.g., looking up an unknown vocabulary word to comprehend a science lesson) can and should be directly assessed.

When a learner has demonstrated sufficiently fluent performance and has been provided with reinforcement to apply that performance under different contexts and yet application does not occur, then the learner requires instructional support for generalization. Instructional facilitators should provide guided practice opportunities to cue the need for application, assist the learner to apply the skill in that context, and provide immediate feedback to promote correct application. If needed, the instructional facilitator may provide many opportunities to respond, applying the learned skill to novel or more complex problems to build fluency for application of the learned skill. So, for example, often learners will successfully apply their knowledge of basic sums and subtraction facts 0 to 20 to the solution of word problems that utilize those computations, fact family problems, or multidigit addition or subtraction without, or even with, regrouping. For learners who do not automatically apply the learned skill, the same progression of instructional support to build accurate and fluent application may be needed to support successful application of the learned skill.

Adaptation

Even when a student is able to use a skill in many situations, he or she may not yet be able to modify or adapt the skill to fit novel task demands or situations. The goal of attaining competency is for the student to become capable of identifying elements of previously learned skills that he or she can adapt to new demands and situations. So, for example, a child who is at the adaptation stage may readily modify the skill of basic fact of 10 + 20 to solve 10 + 21, by solving the basic fact and adding one to the solution. Adaptation can be supported by prompting, suggesting, or reviewing possible strategies for students at this stage of instruction; however, this should only occur for learners who have surpassed the generalization stage of learning. Instruction often inadvertently occurs at this level for learners who have not demonstrated accurate, fluent, and generalized performance, and this mistake of instruction leads to errors in performance and decelerated learning trajectories in general.

Systems of Data-Based Decision Making to Facilitate Learning

The use of routine performance assessment is fundamental to identifying instructional strategies that will accelerate learning. Instruction that is not matched to student proficiency will be less effective and will negatively affect learning over time. Those who wish to facilitate learning must have a system for monitoring student performance and responding to those data in an iterative fashion to support continued learning toward competency. In addition to using routine performance assessment linked to specific instructional strategies, researchers must attend to the technical adequacy of the dependent variable (measurement) and the independent variables (implementation and measurement). Recently, systems of data-based decision making have been designed to translate learner performance information into instructional targets and measure the effect of those instructional efforts to reach decisions to ultimately improve learning for all children. These systems of data-based decision making have been referred to asresponse to intervention (RTI) models. Use of RTI models in schools has resulted in more equitable identification of children requiring special education services, lower numbers of children requiring special education, and improved learning for all children, most particularly for those at risk for failure. RTI evolved out of a desire to utilize the information obtained from routine performance assessment and instructional response to reach judgments of importance in schools, including who should receive supplemental or special education and how existing resources could be used to most efficiently accelerate learning for the greatest number of students possible. RTI is a very promising science of decision making that is being widely used following recent revisions to educational policy in the United States. Yet, the effectiveness of RTI (or the degree to which routine learning assessment is linked to use of strategies that enhance learning) depends upon two critical variables: intervention integrity and decision-making accuracy.

Intervention Integrity

Understanding how (and how well) an intended intervention was carried out is critical to internal, external, and consequential validity. Arranging antecedent conditions is a necessary but not sufficient condition to promote integrity of intervention implementation. Research is clear in suggesting that implementation integrity cannot be assumed. Rather, integrity of instructional implementation also must be routinely assessed and high levels of integrity must be strategically programmed. Research has found that to ensure adequate implementation of desired instructional strategies, teachers should be provided with needed materials and should receive an in vivo performance coaching system that uses a combination of verbal instruction, written prompts detailing intervention steps, modeling, coaching, and ongoing performance feedback about the accuracy of instructional implementation along with documented changes in learning associated with correct use of the instructional strategy.

Decision-Making Accuracy

Decision rules should be operationalized, linked to data-collection procedures, and monitored for accuracy. Researchers have found that decision-making teams in schools rarely reach decisions about the need for a special education eligibility evaluation that match with (a) their own assessment data, (b) others' assessment data, (c) or even local criteria for identification. Hence, monitoring and quantifying the degree to which decision makers correctly utilize performance data to reach decisions about what types of instructional strategies are needed and when children might require more intensive support, such as that provided through special education, is essential.

Entry Citation:

"Learning Strategies." Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology. 2008. SAGE Publications. 22 Sep. 2009. .