It should come as no surprise that lifelong learning should be pursued by both educators and learners. From the perspective of educational psychology, learning is defined as a reasonably long-lasting behavioral shift brought about by experience in all living things, including the lowest creatures.
Kimble defines learning as an event that results in a relatively lasting alteration in a person’s potential behavior. This shift does not, however, include behavioral shifts that occur naturally as a result of biological maturation or transient alterations brought on by pharmacological side effects or physical exhaustion.
The stages of a learning process can provide a few crucial details. Learning transfer, motivation, perception, conceptualization, memorization-forgetting, and learning readiness are a few of them.
The internal conditions of a person who is prepared and capable of learning and gaining a certain new experience are referred to as learning readiness.
Thorndike summarizes the following laws pertaining to learning readiness in brief: 1) One will be satisfied with an action after they are prepared to perform it and have done so successfully. 2) One will feel let down by an action if they are prepared to perform it but are unable to do so successfully. 3) One will feel depressed and dissatisfied about an action when they are compelled to undertake it even when they are not ready to.
According to Bruner, anything that can be efficiently sent to pupils based on their developmental phases is learning ready. The sensorimotor stage (0–2 years), pre-operational stage (2–6 years), concrete operational stage (7–12 years), and formal operational stage (beyond 12 years) are the four learning phases identified by Piaget.
However, Vygotsky argued that pupils’ readiness included both their ability to study alone and with the assistance of others, in addition to their current level of knowledge. According to research, there are three different kinds of learning readiness: psychomotor, emotional, and cognitive.
Cognitive readiness is the state in which a person is mentally prepared to engage in a particular learning task. It has to do with the phases of cognitive growth that include reasoning, thinking, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating. An individual’s intellectual growth often increases in direct proportion to his age. For example, a pupil has completed sufficient listening prior to speaking practice.
An individual’s attitude, desire, spirit, diligence, sentiment, and interest in expressing a particular learning activity are all considered aspects of their affective readiness.
According to Standford, a student’s attitude has more of an impact on effective learning than the number of times he or she goes over the same information.
That is to say, a student’s affective readiness will be high enough to allow him to feel prepared to participate in the learning process if he develops a positive attitude, high self-motivation, being active, becoming aggressive, and having the desire to achieve excellence along with diligence and interest in learning.
On the other hand, a student’s affective readiness will be poor if he or she becomes uninterested in learning and adopts a negative attitude toward it. This might lead to learning failure and prevent the student from succeeding in his or her learning activities.
For example, a student will only study English if he has a strong interest in the subject. Math is a topic that a student who has no passion in can never succeed in.
When a person is prepared to do a specific physical activity in a new learning process, it’s known as psychomotor readiness, which is also known as physical maturity or potential.
Psychomotor preparedness is the state in which a person’s body reaches maturation in compliance with the necessary physical training.
Even though each person’s physical development is unique and distinct, a student with high psychomotor readiness will be able to carry out training tasks throughout the learning process effectively and efficiently.
For learning subjects like art, physical education, gaming, music, and living skills, psychomotor preparedness is crucial. For example, PT exercises are easy for a student football player.
Thus, assisting students in carrying out seamless, enjoyable, and productive learning activities requires a strong understanding of learning readiness.
Instructors should be aware of and responsive to their students’ readiness for learning in order to design and carry out appropriate teaching-learning activities that correspond to each student’s developmental stage. The following is a succinct and direct explanation of the consequences of learning readiness for various activities:
- Students’ level of learning readiness has an impact on how effective learning readiness is.
- The talents and experiences of the students should be taken into consideration while designing the teaching-learning activities.
- Teachers must conduct out teaching-learning activities from simple to complicated, from existing to new experience, from nearby to distant environment, and from general to specific. They must also divide learning content into stages based on the students’ level of learning preparedness.
- To keep pupils interested in learning, teachers must employ a variety of stimuli.
- Teachers must employ strategies like questioning and inquiry-discovery methods to awaken kids’ innate curiosity.
- In order to accommodate the individual variances among pupils, teachers must employ both group strategies and individual instruction.
- To instill and increase the level of learning preparation for the next learning activity, teachers must design lessons that can help students succeed and feel satisfied.
- In order for pupils to acquire high learning preparedness, teachers must employ proper ways to instill good self-concept values and enhance their level of self-esteem.
- For consolidation, teachers must offer enough basic skill activities.
- In order to conduct efficient teaching activities, teachers must set up a classroom that is conducive to learning.
- In order to gain students’ attention during class, teachers must prepare engaging teaching materials.
Get ready for learning.
