Robert Gagne uses a very practical teaching strategy that is based off of his background as a psychologist. Gagne received his Ph.D. in psychology from Brown University and from there he began teaching at different Universities and eventually taught pilots for the Air Force. “It was at this time that he began to develop some of his ideas that comprise his learning theory called the ‘Conditions of Learning’” (psy.pdx.edu 2001). Gagne gives a nine step process of how instruction should be taught in the classroom based on the cognitive processes. When developing these instructions, he based his work on “five basic categories of learning: verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills and attitudes” (psy.pdx.edu 2001) that he also created.

            Gagne’s five categories of learning categorize the differences in how people gain information, retain it, and decipher what should be kept and what shouldn’t. The first skill, intellectual learning, deals with the philosophical. It is the minds ability to process the abstract; to make sense of things that cannot be seen. The second, cognitive strategy, is the brains process for using information. This process is how the brain stores and uses information that is remembered. Third, verbal information is memorized information that the brain can pull up for use at any time, such as birthdays, addresses, book titles and authors, etc… Forth, motor skills, deal with the persons hands on ability to learn something through practice, such as learning how to play a violin or riding a bike. The last category, attitude, is based off of the individuals opinion of something and the way that she deals with it. If a student has had a bad experience with science class, the student will probably filter out much of the information because she deems it unimportant to her. (starfsfolk.khi.is 2007) These different attributes of an individual’s ability to learn form the foundation of Gagne’s nine steps of instruction.

            Gagne’s nine instructional steps are meant to instill a lasting impression of the information into the student. “Gagne suggests that learning tasks for intellectual skills can be organized in a hierarchy according to complexity: stimulus recognition, response generation, procedure following, use of terminology, discriminations, concept formation, rule application, and problem solving” (psi.pdx.edu 2001). These hierarchical steps are meant to give information not only to every level of student, but to every type of learner as well. 

            The first step is to gain the classes attention. This can be done through “arousing them with novelty, uncertainty, [and] surprise; posing questions; or having the classroom pose questions” (ide.ed.psu.edu 2000). After the teacher has the class’s attention, he must clearly state the objectives of the lesson. This focuses the class, lets them know what they will be learning, and the standards at which they will learn it. The next step is to relate the material to something that the class has prior knowledge of. This will help with making the material both more understandable and more relatable to the student. This step will make the material seem less abstract to the student and bring it closer to something that he/she already understands. The next step is to present the stimulus. This is the step where the students gain the knew material. At this step the students do not necessarily need to understand the new material, but they need to have properly obtained it so that they can make sense of it in the later steps. In this step the teacher will present will give vocabulary, examples of the work, or use cueing programs so that the students have properly obtained the new information (ide.ed.psu.edu 2000). The next step is for the teacher to guide the class with their learning, or understanding, of the material. For this step, the teacher will help the students with strategies on how to understand the material. At this step the teacher may need to work one-on-one with some of the students who are having trouble with the new material. The next step is to have the students practice with the new material. Now that the material has been given and any questions have been answered by the teacher, the classroom should have enough of an understanding to begin working with the material. This is the time when many teachers give handouts or other forms of practice to the students. This is when, for example, a student not only understands that an adjective describes the subject, but actually comes up with descriptive words or finds them within a sentence. This is the step when the students learn how to apply the new material. Once the students have practiced with the new material, the next step is for the teacher to give feedback on how the students have handled the new material and how they can improve on their use of the material. At this time, there will be a lot of one-on-one work with each student to make sure that each individual is improving. The teacher may also need to go back over certain points of the lesson with the class as a whole if several students missed the same information. The next step is to test the students’ knowledge. The teacher can give a quiz at this point or instead could ask questions of the students throughout the lesson. The last step is used to enhance the students’ retention of the material. At this point, the teacher is summing up what the class has already gone over. The teacher can re-quiz if the class did poorly on the first quiz, he can tie it back into a broader subject, or he could relate it back to an earlier assignment again. This step is mostly a mixture of the earlier steps, hitting on any of those steps that the class or teacher did not perform well at.

            For the English classroom, this process would be best used for more concrete material such as vocabulary or grammar. Because this process deals best with information that can be taken as factual, it would not be appropriate for discussions about topics such as literary themes or other material that deals with a reader’s opinions and beliefs. Although this process could possibly be used in literary analysis, it would be better suited for forming a paper on a subject more that explaining that subject. A process based structure such as this one will emphasize process based material. This means that a conversation or group work that deals more in interactions would be better suited for non-factual material, while this process would be better suited for more practical applications.

            Perhaps a better way to use this process is in formulating rubrics. Because this is a step-by-step process, it contains several of the important aspects to learning that a rubric should define. For instance, the rubric for this paper contains several of the steps in this process, such as “hooking the reader”, building on prior knowledge, giving clear objectives, etc… Although Gagne’s nine step process is perhaps less useful in an English class, there are many beneficial aspects to it and at times, it would certainly be useful to teach certain types of knowledge.