Gagné's Conditions of Learning

Gagné's theory of the conditions of learning—part learning theory, part theory of instructional design—underwent significant changes during the twenty years following its original publication. Largely behaviorist in orientation when first introduced in 1965, it became more cognitivist in orientation by its fourth printing in 1985. Gagné's theory was comprehensive, and included a taxonomy of learning outcomes, and an outline of the internal conditions necessary for learning (e.g., cognitive information processing stages), as well as an outline of the corresponding external conditions—or events of instruction—that best support learning. Gagné's contributions were unprecedented and helped move the fields of education and psychology forward to their present states.

Keywords Attitudes; Cognitive Strategies; Conditions of Learning; Events of Instruction; Gagné, Robert; Intellectual Skills; Instructional Design; Motor Skills; Verbal Information

Educational Theory > Gagne's Conditions of Learning

Overview

In a career that spanned over forty years, American psychologist Robert M. Gagné wrote numerous books and hundreds of articles about teaching and learning. The second half of the twentieth century was a volatile time in his field; psychology shifted from an almost exclusive focus on behavior to a nearly equally exclusive focus on cognition. Gagné's own work mirrored such shifts.

The name of Gagné's theory—the conditions of learning—is somewhat misleading. Although it does address the conditions of learning, the theory encompasses far more; to determine the optimal ingredients for learning, Gagné reasoned, one must first determine what is to be learned. He aimed to "identify the general types of human capabilities that are learned," and then give an account of "the conditions that govern the occurrence of learning and remembering" (Gagné, 1985, p. 15). Thus, his theory provides a taxonomy of outcomes as well as guidelines for instruction. Before we turn to the specifics of the theory, however, it is important to pause for several important points of emphasis.

Gagné began his career as the field of psychology poised itself for what many refer to as a paradigm shift. Largely behaviorist in orientation when Gagné himself was in school, psychology soon turned its attention to what was inside the "black box." Again, Gagné's student Tuckman (1996) reflects: "When you really think about it, you can see that he stood at the crossroads of psychology. He had been trained in [behaviorism], indeed had even developed a runway on which to test rats for his own dissertation and was now drawn inextricably toward the light of what he called nonreproductive learning" (p. 15). Driscoll (2000) echoes this sentiment when she explains that "Gagné's conditions for learning has undergone development and revision for twenty or more years. With behaviorist roots, it now brings together a cognitive information-processing perspective on learning" (p. 345).

The shift from behaviorism to cognitivism brought with it another shift as well. Psychology moved away from its attempts to find the 'holy grail' of learning—a single theory that would explain all human learning—towards an understanding of the variety and complexity that personal growth entails. Gagné was one of the first to recognize the futility of "efforts to force-fit all learning into a single description" (Gredler, 2005, p. 160). Gredler (2005), in describing Gagné's approach, writes, "The human capacity for learning makes possible an almost infinite variety of behavioral patterns. Given this diversity, no one set of characteristics can account for such vivid activities as learning to define a word, to write an essay, or to lace a shoe. Therefore, the task for learning theory is to identify a set of principles that accommodates both the complexity and variety of human learning" (p. 160).

Thus far, Gagné's theory has been described as a learning theory. And yet Gagné is considered to be one of the forefathers of instructional design; in other words, he is as much a practitioner of teaching as he is a theorist of learning. However, the distinction itself may be somewhat artificial and unnecessary. In 1969, Gagné wrote, "Much of the work designed to investigate the phenomena of human learning may be thought of as having its ultimate applicability in the design of effective conditions for instruction. In some general sense, it would be truly difficult to distinguish the psychology of instruction from the psychology of learning" (p. 381). What he noted, however, was that many theories of learning were difficult to apply in practice; much of his work was devoted to developing a theory that could be easily applied.

In the end, Gagné's ability to bridge the gap between learning theory and instruction may be one of his greatest and most remembered contributions. He began his career during World War II, helping the military train pilots for combat; from the beginning, the questions he asked about teaching and learning had real-world applications and consequences. As Gredler (2005) explains "prior learning theorists developed explanations of the learning process in the laboratory and extended the findings to the human situation" (p. 192) Robert Gagné, in contrast, began by observing the range of skills humans demonstrated in real life, and then determined the conditions that would best support the various types of skill development. In other words, Gagné moved educational research into the classroom and out of the laboratory. He and colleagues criticized laboratory research, noting that "the findings of many studies of human learning presently cannot be applied directly to instructional design for two major reasons: a) the conditions under which the learning is investigated…are often unrepresentative of conditions under which most human learning occurs; and b) the tasks set for the learner…appear to cover a range from the merely peculiar to the downright esoteric" (Gagné & Rohwer, 1969, p. 381).

Taxonomy of Learning Outcomes

An introduction to Gagné's theory should perhaps start with an obvious question. How did Gagné define learning? First and foremost, Gagné differed from developmental psychologists who attributed many changes in behavior to maturation or growth. For Gagné, learning itself was largely responsible for an individual's development (Gredler, 2005). Gagné also believed learning was cumulative and incremental; that is, an individual develops complex skills by building upon previously learned simple skills. Finally, Gagné believed learning resulted in a variety of different behaviors he called capabilities. The first step in his attempt to develop a comprehensive learning theory was to define all such capabilities.

Others before him had also attempted to catalog types of learning into different domains. Most notably, Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues developed a taxonomy of the cognitive domain, which others then followed with taxonomies of the affective and psychomotor domains (Driscoll, 2021). What made Gagné's taxonomy distinct, however, was that he was "the first to propose an integrated taxonomy of learning outcomes that included all three domains" (Driscoll, 2021). Three components of Gagné's taxonomy—verbal information, intellectual skills, and cognitive strategies—correspond to the cognitive domain, while attitudes and motor skills map to the affective and psychomotor domain, respectively. The following provides a brief description of each.

Verbal Information

Gagné referred to verbal information as "one of the most familiar categories of learned capabilities" (1985, p. 154). Consisting of names, facts, dates, and other organized knowledge, verbal information is also known as declarative knowledge. Being able to name Albany as the capital of New York, recite a poem, or identify the date WWII ended are all examples of verbal information. Because verbal information is more easily and naturally acquired than other types of capabilities, "it is not uncommon to hear disparaging statements about 'facts' or 'mere verbal knowledge' among teachers," Gagné noted. But verbal information is important, he argued, because, since we use facts in our everyday lives, it provides the foundation for other kinds of learning, and is "a vehicle for thought" (Gagné, 1985, p. 175).

Intellectual Skills

When an individual interacts with their environment using symbols, they demonstrate intellectual skill. Most formal instruction, Gagné argues, addresses the development of intellectual skill, the most typical type of which is the development of rule-governed behavior. Someone using a saw to cut a board is interacting directly with their environment, but the measurement they took before cutting the board required the manipulation of symbols (e.g., representing length in inches and centimeters) as well as the use of rules (e.g., subtraction of fractions). Gagné suggests four different subcategories of rules—concepts, discriminations, higher-order rules, and procedural rules.

Cognitive Strategies

Cognitive strategies are defined as "skills by means of which learners regulate their own internal processes of attending, learning, remembering, and thinking" (Gagné, 1985, p. 55). Many before Gagné—behaviorists and cognitivists alike—studied such processes, referring to them by various names like self-management behaviors and executive control processes. In the twenty-first century, psychologists most often refer to thinking about our own thinking as metacognition. Cognitive strategies typically vary by person, but Gagné believed some were better than others. He wrote, "The strategies that some people possess appear to be better than those of others…how to bring about improvement in cognitive strategies, so that every learner is 'working up to potential' is one of the challenging problems of education" (Gagné, 1985, p. 56).

Attitudes

Part of the affective domain, attitudes, are defined as "an internal state that influences (moderates) the choices of personal action made by an individual" (Gagné, 1985, p. 63). Like other psychologists, Gagné defined attitudes in terms of three components—emotion, cognition, and behavior. Whereas others were most interested in the origin of attitudes, however, Gagné was most interested in how an attitude impacts behavior. "The internal states that influence these actions may well possess both intellectual and emotional aspects. However, it is their outcomes in human performance that provide the point of reference for our description of attitudes as learned dispositions" (Gagné, 1985, p. 64). Attitudes can be learned, he suggested, from family members, from experiences of success and failure, or even as a result of a single experience.

Motor Skills

Motor skills correspond to the psychomotor domain, and were defined by Gagné as "the precise, smooth, and accurately timed execution of performances involving the use of muscles" (1988, as cited in Driscoll, 2000, p. 356). Whereas other types of learning are not so easily distinguishable—a child sitting at his desk reading may be learning verbal information or developing intellectual skills—it is comparatively easy to identify a child performing motor skills. Practicing a sport—is an obvious example of motor skills, but learning to write or play the piano requires motor skills as well. Gagné took pains to emphasize the equal importance of all types of learned capabilities; no single type was of greater or lesser value than any other (even though many educators believe cognitive skills are more important than affective or motor skills).

Internal Conditions of Learning

In the prior section, we learned that Gagné understood learning to be cumulative; we also reviewed what he proposed were the five types of learning outcomes, or capabilities. An important element of Gagné's definition was left out—mainly, the part of the definition that answers the question, "How do humans learn?" According to Gagné, humans acquire capabilities as results of two factors—cognitive processing, or factors internal to the individual, and stimulation from the environment, or factors external to the individual. We will review external conditions—or what Gagné referred to as the nine events of instruction. The next section briefly reviews internal conditions of learning.

Internal conditions of learning should be understood similarly to the previously emphasized characteristics of learning; internal conditions are cumulative and of great variety and complexity. As Gagné noted, an individual does not approach a task with a blank slate, but rather builds upon knowledge and abilities they already possess. "The child who is learning to tie shoelaces does not begin this learning 'from scratch' but already knows how to hold the laces, how to loop one over the other, how to tighten the loop, and so on. Previously learned capabilities make up the internal conditions necessary for learning" (Gagné, 1985, p. 17). Second, Gagné recognized that different types of capabilities require different internal and external conditions for learning; "there are several varieties of performance types that imply different categories of learned capabilities. These varieties of performance may also be differentiated in terms of the conditions for their learning" (Gagné, 1985, p. 17). In other words, there is no single set of internal or external conditions that will facilitate all types of learning. The prerequisite knowledge one brings to learning how to swing a golf club, for example, is quite different from the internal conditions necessary to understand the law of gravity.

Gagné categorized the internal conditions of learning into nine phases, with each phase representing a sequential cognitive process that is a necessary component of learning. Gredler (2005) further categorized the nine phases into three separate stages: cognitive processes that facilitate preparation for learning, cognitive processes that facilitate actual acquisition and performance, and cognitive processes that facilitate the transfer of learning. The first stage involves attention, expectancy, and recall; the learner attends to a relevant stimulus, orients herself toward a particular learning goal, and retrieves relevant information from memory. In the second stage, selective perception, semantic encoding, retrieval and responding, and reinforcement constitute the "core phases of learning" (Gredler, 2005, p. 169). In this phase, the learner recognizes a meaningful stimulus, stores it in long-term memory using a conceptual framework, retrieves the information from memory and executes a response, and receives feedback, either from self or others. In the final stage, learners develop cues to enhance later recall and generalize learning to new situations.

Further Insights

As stated earlier, Gagné's ability to bridge the gap between theory and practice will be one of his enduring legacies. He wanted to better understand learning so that he could better design instruction. He knew that learning could occur in the absence of instruction, but he was interested in how to deliberately design instructional events to support learning. For Gagné, "an important characteristic of instruction is that external events occur in the context of the learner's internal control processes. Therefore, external events do not produce learning; instead, they can only support the learner's internal processing" (Gredler, 2005, p. 174). As such, each of the nine events Gagné describes corresponds to one of the internal processes described above. The following is a brief introduction to each of the nine events of instruction; the corresponding internal condition is presented in parentheses.

The External Conditions of Learning: The Nine Events of Instruction

Gain Attention (Attending)

Driscoll (2021) writes, "since learning cannot occur unless the learner is in some way orientated and receptive to incoming information, gaining attention is the obvious first event that must occur in instruction" (p. 364). How an instructor gains a student's attention depends on the type of task being learned; a gym teacher helping students develop motor skills might gain attention by demonstrating a cross-court backhand. A science teacher helping students gain intellectual skills might begin a lesson by asking a thought-provoking question.

Inform the Learner of the Objective (Expectancy)

The second event of instruction corresponds to the internal cognitive process of establishing expectations. Helping a student understand the goal of an activity will help them process relevant information and ignore information not related to the task at hand. If teachers do not provide explicit objectives, students will develop them on their own (Driscoll, 2005). Oftentimes, however, the goal a student establishes is not the same one the teacher intended; a student may simply choose to complete a task, whereas a teacher may have hoped that the student would attend more to the process and skill development.

Stimulate Recall of Prior Learning (Retrieval)

For Gagné, learning is a process of developing increasingly complex skills by building upon a foundation of simpler skills. As a result, teachers must facilitate the recall of students' previous learning. In Gagné's earlier example, a teacher might have to remind a young child how to form a loop with a shoelace before proceeding with demonstrating the next step in the process of tying a shoelace.

Present the Stimulus (Selective Perception)

Previous events help prepare students for learning. The presentation of the stimulus is the first of four events that will help the student acquire and/or perform a new skill. The presentation of the stimulus will depend on the type of skill being learned. If students are acquiring new verbal information, a teacher might present them with a new vocabulary list. If students are learning intellectual skills such as rules of grammar, a teacher might diagram sentences on the chalkboard.

Provide Learner Guidance (Encoding)

Learner guidance facilitates the encoding of information in long-term memory. Helping students develop a meaningful framework for new information—by demonstrating how it relates to what they already know—will help them more easily retrieve it. The amount and type of guidance provided will depend on the age and ability of the learner, as well as the type of learning outcome desired.

Elicit Performance (Responding)

The first five events are designed to ensure learning occurs. Learning must be inferred, however, from behavior. "Performance, then, enables the learners to confirm their learning—to themselves, their teachers, and others" (Driscoll, 2000, p. 367). At this stage, learners should be able to perform without penalty; in other words, performance at this state gives students an opportunity to practice. Errors should be expected.

Provide Feedback (Reinforcement)

Learners are often able to improve performance by self-correcting. Teachers, however, are also important sources of feedback. At this point, students are told whether their 'answers' are correct or incorrect; if incorrect, they are given information that will help them improve.

Assess Performance (Reinforcement)

Learning is not just a change in behavior, but a change in behavior that persists over time (Driscoll, 2021). Assessment at the end of a unit of instruction is one way to determine whether learning has occurred. Even though little guidance is provided during assessment, Gagné emphasized the importance of providing feedback at this stage of instruction as well.

Enhance Retention & Transfer (Retrieval & Generalization)

Again, learning should persist over time. Students should also be able to apply what was learned in one situation to new situations they encounter that are similar, but not identical, to the original learning context. Helping students enhance transfer is not necessarily the last event of instruction; the facilitation of encoding may also be an event designed to help students recall and generalize. Nevertheless, Gagné suggested periodic reviews—at the end of a semester or beginning of a year—as a way to enhance retention of material previously learned.

Applications

The academic literature offers ways in which Gagné’s conditions of learning are being applied in the field of education. A Sri Lankan study was carried out to explore learner perceptions on the instructional design features of interactive multimedia (IMM), which was designed to support open and distance learners studying microbiology. The purpose of the IMM was “to explain the dynamic abstract concepts and processes of bacterial genetics that are hard to comprehend by referring to print course material.” When developing the IMM package, emphasis was placed on the interface design, navigational design, and instructional design. Instructional design was mainly based on Gagné’s nine events of instruction, as well as Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning on verbal and pictorial information. Evaluation “revealed many positive features to be incorporated into the design of IMM in providing better support for the learners.” Findings of this study “throw light on designing effective learner-centered multimedia learning material” (Kulasekara, Jayatilleke, & Coomaraswamy, 2011).

Buscombe (2013) presents ways in which Gagné's instructional design model may be used to design lesson plans and teach procedural skills in small group settings. She uses the nine points described by Gagné to outline a “comprehensive lesson guide for teaching psychomotor skills” to medical students, using a surgical procedure as an example. Each of Gagné’s instructional events is considered with specific activities for each, and with “the variety of activities delineated to meet diverse learning styles” (Buscombe, 2013).

In a research project by Mai, Tse-Kian, and Fui-Theng (2013) set in Malaysia, Gagné’s nine instructional events were incorporated into the development of an interactive multimedia learning module that was embedded into a student-centered learning environment to enhance the knowledge transfer and the student learning process. Results showed that students “reported positive feedback in their attention to the content, their learning experiences, interaction, and with the presentation of the content, all of which provided strong support for the use of Gagné’s nine instructional events as an instructional framework for the development of an interactive learning module within a student-centered learning environment” (Mai, Tse-Kian, & Fui-Theng, 2013).

Viewpoints

Even though Gagné's theory has had a considerable influence in the field of education and continues to be cited in educational journals and used in the classroom, it has not escaped criticism. Gagné's emphasis on using behavioral objectives (e.g., specifically defining what is to be learned before designing instruction), for example, has been received with mixed enthusiasm. Objectives have been criticized for being behaviorist in orientation, for being ineffective in improving learning, and for benefiting teachers more than students (Driscoll, 2021). Others suggest that his theory, although designed to be easily applied, is more useful for curriculum designers than actual classroom teachers (Gredler, 2005).

Apart from the specific criticisms of Gagné's theory, it is important to remember that it is just one of many approaches to understanding learning and teaching. Within the cognitive perspective alone, information-processing theorists, Gestalt psychologists, and motivational researchers have all put forth their own models of learning and development. Behaviorists, developmentalists, and constructivists, too, have all contributed to the conversation. Some theories conflict with Gagné's theory more than others, (e.g., constructivists question whether Gagné's events of instruction are compatible with the notion that students create their own knowledge); nonetheless, Gagné's mark on education is likely to endure.

Terms & Concepts

Attitudes: Gagné identified five different types of human capabilities, also known as outcomes of learning. Part of the affective domain, attitudes are defined as "internal state(s) that influence (moderate) the choices of personal action made by an individual" (Gagné, 1985, p. 63).

Cognitive Strategies: Gagné identified five different types of human capabilities, also known as outcomes of learning. Cognitive strategies, referred to as metacognition, are defined as "skills by means of which learners regulate their own internal processes of attending, learning, remembering, and thinking" (Gagné, 1985, p. 55).

Conditions of Learning: According to Gagné, humans acquire capabilities as a result of two factors—cognitive processing, or factors internal to the individual, and stimulation from the environment, or factors external to the individual. He referred to these as the internal and external conditions of learning.

Events of Instruction: Gagné identified nine events of instruction, also referred to as the external conditions of learning. The nine events were designed to correspond to the internal cognitive processes of the learner. The first three events prepare the student for learning. The following four events facilitate the actual acquisition of new skills, while the final two events foster retention and transfer.

Intellectual Skills: Gagné identified five types of human capabilities, also known as outcomes of learning. Intellectual skills are skills that allow individuals to interact with their environment using symbols. The most typical type of intellectual skill is rule-governed behavior.

Instructional Design: Gagné recognized that learning occurs naturally. Nevertheless, he was interested in learning that takes place in environments deliberately designed to support it—such as the classroom. The effort to create environments that support learning—based on knowledge about the learning process itself—is instructional design.

Motor Skills: Gagné identified five different types of human capabilities, also known as outcomes of learning. Motor skills correspond to the psychomotor domain, and were defined by Gagné as "the precise, smooth, and accurately timed execution of performances involving the use of muscles" (1988, as cited in Driscoll, 2000, p. 356).

Verbal Information: Gagné identified five different types of human capabilities, also known as outcomes of learning. Gagné (1985) referred to verbal information as "one of the most familiar categories of learned capabilities" (p. 154), consisting mainly of names, facts, dates, and other organized knowledge.

Bibliography

Buscombe, C. (2013). Using Gagné’s theory to teach procedural skills. Clinical Teacher, 10, 302–307. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=90146067&site=ehost-live

Driscoll, M.P. (2000). Psychology of learning for instruction. Allyn and Bacon.

Driscoll, M.P. (2021). Psychology of learning for instruction (4th ed.). Allyn and Bacon.

Gagné, R.M. (1985). The conditions of learning and theory of instruction. CBS College Publishing.

Gredler, M.E. (2009). Learning and instruction: Theory into practice (6th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.

Gagné, R.M., & Rohwer, W.D. (1969). Instructional psychology. Annual Review of Psychology, 20, 381-418. Retrieved September 30, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11325899&site=ehost-live

Kulasekara, G., Jayatilleke, B., & Coomaraswamy, U. (2011). Learner perceptions on instructional design of multimedia in learning abstract concepts in science at a distance. Open Learning, 26, 113–126. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=60429489&site=ehost-live

Mai, N., Tse-Kian, N., & Fui-Theng, L. (2011). Developing an interactive multimedia-mediated learning environment using Gagne’s 9 events of instruction in a Malaysian classroom. International Journal of Instructional Media, 38, 379–389. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=66721445&site=ehost-live

Tuckman, B.W. (1996). My mentor: Robert M. Gagné. Peabody Journal of Education, 71, 3-11. Retrieved September 30, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9602125586&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Gagné, R.M. (1980). Preparing the learner for new learning. Theory into Practice, 19, 6-9. Retrieved September 30, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=5200885&site=ehost-live

Gagné, R.M. (1975). Essentials of learning for instruction. The Dryden Press.

Gagné, R.M. (1974). Principles of instructional design. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc.