Gordon Pask: Quotes about learning

Gordon Pask was British psychologist. Explore interesting quotes on learning.
Gordon Pask: 60   quotes 0   likes

“We now come to the underpinning contention of the previous monograph. Psychological phenomena, especially those involved in learning and education, stem from or are related to states of consciousness. Using the argument which relates the information available about conscious processes to the type of experimental situation, we maintain that the basic unit of psychological /educational observation is a conversation. In order to test hypotheses and explicate the conversational transactions, it is necessary to invoke various tools and explanatory constructs. These are coherent enough to count when interlocked as a theory, and this theory was dubbed conversation theory.”

Gordon Pask

Source: Conversation Theory (1976), p. 3.

Education , Learning

“Observers are men, animals, or machines able to learn about their environment and impelled to reduce their uncertainty about the events which occur in it, by dint of learning… [We] shall examine human observers who, because we have an inside understanding of their observational process, belong to a special category. For the moment, we shall not bother with HOW an observer learns, but will concentrate upon WHAT he learns about, i. e. what becomes more certain.”

Gordon Pask

Source: An Approach to Cybernetics (1961), p. 18.

Men , Understanding , Learning , Animals

“The' holist/serialist' distinction (Daniel, 1975; Pask and Scott, 1971, 1972) is an example of different learning strategies, rather than the more generally exhibited learning style. The holist or serialist strategies are exhibited in a, strict conversation,' and are thus insufficiently refined to account for learning in general. Holism and serialism appear to be extreme manifestations of more fundamental processes, which are induced by systematic enforcement of the requirement for understanding which is as strong as, or stronger than, the requirement for' deep-level' processing.”

Gordon Pask

Source: Styles and Strategies of Learning (1976), p. 133.

Understanding , Strong , Learning , Appearance

“Complex human learning is a concept involving communication between the participant in the learning process, who commonly occupy the roles of learner and teacher.”

Gordon Pask

Pask (1976) "Conversational techniques in the study and practice of education", In: British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 46, p. 24.

Communication , Learning , Teachers

“Since human beings are highly adaptable it may be possible for an individual with any sort of competence to learn, in the end, according to any teaching strategy. But the experiments show, very clearly indeed, that the rate, quality and durability of learning is crucially dependent upon whether or not the teaching strategy is of a sort that suits the individual”

Gordon Pask

Source: Learning Strategies and Individual Competence (1972), p. 221 as cited in: Nigel Ford (2000) " Cognitive Styles and Virtual Environments http://docis.info/docis/lib/tian/rclis/dbl/jamsis/(2000)51%253A6%253C543%253ACSAVE%253E/advertising.utexas.edu%252Fvcbg%252Fhome%252FFord00.pdf" in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Vol 51, Is. 6, p. 543–557.

Learning , Dependency

“Cybernetics is a young discipline which, like applied mathematics, cuts across the entrenched departments of natural science; the sky, the earth, the animals and the plants. Its interdisciplinary character emerges when it considers economy not as an economist, biology not as a biologist, engines not as an engineer. In each case its theme remains the same, namely, how systems regulate themselves, reproduce themselves, evolve and learn. Its high spot is the question of how they organize themselves.
A cybernetic laboratory has a varied worksheet - concept formation in organized groups, teaching machines, brain models, and chemical computers for use in a cybernetic factory. As pure scientists we are concerned with brain-like artifacts, with evolution, growth and development; with the process of thinking and getting to know about the world. Wearing the hat of applied science, we aim to create what Boulanger,' in his presidential address to the International Association of Cybernetics, called the instruments of a new industrial revolution - control mechanisms that lay their own plans.”

Gordon Pask

Source: An Approach to Cybernetics (1961), p. 11. Partly cited in: A.M.E. Salazar, A. Espinosa, J. Walker (2011) A Complexity Approach to Sustainability: Theory and Application. p. 11.

World , Mathematics , Question , Nature

“A [learning] style is a disposition to adopt one class of learning strategy.”

Gordon Pask

Source: Learning Strategies, Teaching Strategies, and Conceptual or Learning Style (1988), p. 85.

Learning

“A learning strategy is comparable in kind with a performance strategy. Each sort of strategy entails decomposing goals into subgoals and applying mental subroutines to achieve the subgoals concerned. The necessary difference between learning strategies and performance is in the domain upon which they operate. Whereas the performance strategy solves problems posed by states of the (usually symbolic) environment, the learning strategy solves the problems posed by deficiencies in the current repertoire of relevant performance strategies; the solutions produced by a learning strategy are performance strategies.”

Gordon Pask

Source: Conversation, Cognition and Learning (1975), p. 261 as cited in: K.V. Wilson (2011) From Associations to Structure. p. 200.

Problem , Learning

“An earlier paper (Pask, 1976) introduced conversational techniques, some involving a human participant in dialogue with a student, others involving a mechanically or computer implemented 'participant' through which the student 'talks to himself' under restrictions imposed by the device. In either case (human or mechanical monitoring) the subject matter of a conversation is represented in a liberally conceived, but standard, fashion, as a conversational domain consisting in an entailment structure (embodying one or more description schemes and indicating the many ways in which one topic may be known in terms of or derived from others) and behaviour graphs (one for each topic in the domain) that prescribe what may be done to model or explain the topic in question. Within this framework, the conversational techniques secure, or approximate, a standard condition for experiments on learning.”

Gordon Pask

Source: Styles and Strategies of Learning (1976), p. 128: Pask is referring to the article: Pasc, G. (1976). "Conversational techniques in the study and practice of education". In: British Journal of educational Psycholy, Vol 46, p. 12-25.

Way , Fashion , Question , Learning

“There is a theory of learning and teaching together and that is all. Results from many studies support this point of view as, also, does the evidence of commonsense. So, to be dogmatic (but with confidence) learning implies teaching and teaching implies learning. Sometimes the teacher and learner responsible for th joint process are obvious (a student at a desk and another person wearing an academic cap and gown). Sometimes, the teacher and learner are not so obviously distinct and turn out to be unexpected but, once-indicated, intuitively plausible entities.”

Gordon Pask

p 33 as cited in: D. Psillos (2003) Science Education Research in the Knowledge-Based Society. p. 44.
Conversation, Cognition and Learning (1975)

Confidence , Support , Study , Learning

“Given a realistically sized task (and assuming that he cannot already perform it), a student is unable to generate the required performance strategy all at once. Instead, he directs his attention to various facets or subtasks and musters subroutines that build up a performance strategy bit by bit. The process is carried out by a learning strategy which, in the free learning subject, may be innate or acquired and which, for the student, is imposed externally by a teacher or learning system.”

Gordon Pask

Source: Conversation, Cognition and Learning (1975), p. 261.

Learning , Teachers

“There are two subcategories of holist called irredundant holists and redundant holists. Students of both types image an entire system of facts or principles. Though an irredundant holist’s image is rightly interconnected, it contains only relevant and essential constitents. In contrast, redundant holists entertain images that contain logically irrelevant or overspecific material, commonly derived from data used to "enrich" the curriculum, and these students embed the salient facts and principles in a network of redundant items. Though logically irrelevant, the items in question are of great psychological importance to a "redundant holist", since he uses them to access, retain and manipulate whatever he was originally required to learn.”

Gordon Pask

Source: Learning Strategies and Individual Competence (1972), p. 258.

Question , Learning

“We now come to the underpinning contention of the previous monograph. Psychological phenomena, especially those involved in learning and education, stem from or are related to states of consciousness.”

Gordon Pask

Using the argument which relates the information available about conscious processes to the type of experimental situation, we maintain that the basic unit of psychological /educational observation is a conversation. In order to test hypotheses and explicate the conversational transactions, it is necessary to invoke various tools and explanatory constructs. These are coherent enough to count when interlocked as a theory, and this theory was dubbed conversation theory.
Source: Conversation Theory (1976), p. 3.

Education , Relation ships , Learning