Learning As A Function of Difficulty Values of the Learning Material: Learning To Be

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CHAPTER1, INTRODUCTION:

Research and development in Educational psychology now-a-days holds much promise for contributing directly to the improvement of educational practice. During the last two decades a lot of research in the educational field has been done and many developments have taken place both in the theory and practice of learning. As a result of this research work, it has been observed that conditions exercising negative influence on education at the different levels of instruction exist. Awareness of these facts is important to put educational practices and applications of educational approach in proper perspective.
In the more recent times, psychological studies about learning problems and conditions in school settings. In this connection learning abilities that may be improved through education are being rationally and purposefully identified. Efforts are made to understand, precisely, the nature, scope and objectives of learning matters and suitable procedures are adopted, accordingly, to reduce the possibilities of the recurrence of these negative influences, to ensure maximum learning achievement of the students and to develop more and more creative abilities in them.
From a psychological point of view, it would be expected that the child's experience is most important to his later behavior. It is in the period of childhood that progress is made from an organism, with a very limited repertoire of motor and verbal behavior under poor environmental control to an organism that has extremely complicated verbal and motor behavior under complex stimulus control including subtle social control.
Man, being a rational animal and being possessed of the power of reasoning, is amenable to undergo many desirable changes in respect of his behavior through the process of learning. The process of learning begins from the birth of a child and continues throughout his life when the child is born, his mind is just like a clean slate. His learning starts from the very time he comes into contact with his environment and begins to react with it. The changes that are produced in his behavior by his interactions with the environment are very conspicuous.
Learning occupies an important position in the field of psychology. Educational psychology is vitally interested in the study of the nature of learning and with the evolution of effective learning conditions in the school settings. The educational psychologists, (broadly speaking) are divided into two groups:

1. The Association Theorists (S.R)
2. The Cognitive Theorists (S.S)
The Association theorists relate learning to stimulus-events and response-events. The Cognitive theorists on the other hand believe that human beings manipulate or operate on concepts, images, and feelings that matter materially in a learning process. According to them the theory of association can be effective only to the extent of the most extremely changes in behavior. However the two groups of theorists are united in attempting to clearify very closely the learning processes and to identify the conditions within the organism and within the environment that influence learning.
An instructional system takes into account all the variables that affect learning performance in a school setting. In recent years research in educational psychology is conducted directly in school and in laboratories with school-age children. Because of the many variables that change from one school to another, teachers and other educational practioners are in constant need of gathering information to make important decisions based on such information. Then alone they can design effective instructional plan to suit varying needs of their students under varying school condition to keep abreast with a latest developments in the educational field. The instructional work plans have to be developed in the schools on the bases of latest psychological finding concepts, principles, and skills.
In the discussions of teaching-learning process in the school settings, the conditions under which learning takes place assumes a great significance.
Programmed learning material have attracted the attention and interest of teachers, school administrators and teaching directors, the reason being that the programmed learning-material have proved surprisingly very effective. Frequently they can teach as well as human teachers and sometimes even better. Often they can do the same teaching job in less time. A programme can be used in a wide range of instructional situations chiefly because it is such a teacher as can fit easily in to the existing staff, either as replacement or as a supplement.
Programmed learning is individualized that is, every-one learns at his own time and pace. The device used presents material to be learnt in minimal increments. It operates on the principle that we learn better in small doses, and in going from concrete to abstract, from simple to complex and from easy to difficult. As the possibility of errors or confusion is avoided, learning becomes better; it ensures that whatever is to be taught is rigorously ordered. In order to minimize errors by learners, each step in the learning process has to follow a logical order. Instead of being restricted to a class room situation where an average student sets the pace for all the students a quick learner using the programmed instructional device can go ahead in proportion to his innate ability. His rate of accomplishment is established by his performance.
In the programmed learning material, the students answer is almost instantaneously checked against the correct answer before the next question is asked. In this manner, the student receives the reassurances that his/her response is correct as the very appearance of the correct answer reinforces his/her learning.
Objective of Present Study:

The present study tried to study the relationship between the learning efficiency and difficulty-value of the learning material, with the objective to see the impact of reducing difficulty value in the learning material on:

1. Learning achievement with respect to information, concept formation, and application.
3. Motivation
4. Auto-instruction.
Need and Scope of Present Study:

The present study tried to develop an auto-instructional device in terms of discovering soft-ware principles involved in making learning easier, self-motivating, self-directing, self- coordinating, self regulating, self controlling and self evolving.
The investigator believed that by reducing the Difficulty-value in the learning material the learning could become easy, and self motivating and as such it could be possible to reach greater number of learners through distance education making use of programme learning materials, tapes, audio-visual aids, films and other devices capable of transmitting communication.
Our country is badly in need of such soft-ware principles which can unlock the secrets self-motivated learning and thus make auto-instruction possible.
Our country suffers from the dearth of resourceful teachers, and resourceful schools and such the means of mass-media have to be pressed to service in the education of the masses.
The scope of present study is to educate the masses through auto-instruction.