Analyzing Task for Prerequisites

When task representing learning outcomes have been adequately described

and categorized, it than becomes possible to conduct a further step, which
constitutes learning analysis. This step identifies the prerequisites for the learning of
the capability represented by the task description.
Most investigators of the process of instruction acknowledge the importance
for planning of finding out what the learner brings to the learning situation. Glaser
(1967, 1979), for example, has often emphasized the importance of entering
behavior as a critical element in instructional design. The point of view elaborated
here is that certain previously learned capabilities need to be retrieved from the
long-term memory and need to be readily accessible in the working memory
whenever a new capability is learned. These resultants of prior learning may
support the new learning : an example is the retrieval of a cognitive strategy the
permits the encoding of information to be learned. At least an equally important
function of retrieval of previously learned. Entities, however, is their incorporation
into new learning. When the intellectual skill of adding integers is learned, the
previously acquired skill of subtracting whole numbers in incorporated as a part of
the new capability. Similarly, when the intellectual skill making the subject of a
clause agree in number with its verb, the previously learned skills of identifying
subject and verb are incorporated into the newly learned skill.

Prior learning as support for new learning. A case can be made for idea that
certain previously learned capabilities provide necessary support for new learning,
regardless of what is being learned. For example, cognitive strategies of one kind or
another must be brought to bear upon the phases of the learning process-attending,
perceiving, encoding, retrieving, and problem solving. Whatever strategies are
available to the learner as a result of prior learning must be retrieved and activated
as executive control processes for the new learning. Although these strategies may
be refined by the learning exercise, they do not themselves become a part of that is
learnedwhich may be a new intellectual skill, a new motor skill, a new set of
information, or an attitude.
In a similar sense, certain intellectual skills, often those learned years ago,
may be seen to give support to the learning of any or all kinds of capabilities. The
learner who is acquiring new information or a new attitude from reading must be
able to use the intellectual skills needed in the decoding of words and the
comprehension of printed prose. Attitudes provide another source of support for
learning in that they engender choices of action toward particular subject matter to
be learned and preferences for achievement in the attainment of expected goals.
Prerequisites as components of what is learned. While previously learned
capabilities may facilitate learning in a number of different ways, the true meaning
of prerequisite is a capability of prior learning that is incorporated into new learning.
The previously learned entity actually enters into the newly learned capability and
becomes and remains a part of the behavior that result from the events of learning.

The most obvious examples of prerequisites as components of new learning

occur in the domain of intellectual skills, some examples of which have already
been mentioned. When the new skill of pronouncing printed words having a final e
and medial a is learned, this skill incorporates the prerequisite skills of (1)
identifying a final e, (2) identifying a medial a, and (3) naming the long a
sound. When the new skill of subtracting multiple-place numbers is acquired, it
incorporates the prerequisite skills of (1) subtracting single-place numbers, (2)
subtracting zero from a number, and (3) borrowing for another operating having
this purpose. As pointed out in Chapter 6, these prerequisites may be considered
subordinate skills to the new and more complex skill that is being learned. A
complex rule may actually be composed of simpler rules and concepts. The latter
may be learned as prerequisites immediately prior to the new skill, or they may
have been learned some time ago. When the new and more complex skill is being
learned, they must be accessible in the working memory of the learner.
Incorporated prerequisites also become involved in the learning of other
kinds of capabilities. In the case of motor skills, prerequisites are often the partskills that compose the total skill; the skill of handwriting, for example includes the
part-skills of forming each of the letters. Attitude, too, have prerequisites
incorporated into their learning. Intellectual skills in the form of concepts of the
categories of objects toward which the attitudes are directed are essential to the
learning of attitudes. Thus, to acquire a positive attitude toward the maintenance of
health, the learner must have prerequisites concepts that provide meaning to good
health in terms of the functioning of various parts and organ systems of the body.
Another kind of prerequisites for the learning attitudes, as described in chapter 11,
is information about the situations in which the attitude will operate. An attitude
toward obeying tge speed limit in automobile driving incorporates prerequisite
knowledge about the range of speed limits and the situations in which they are
posted (highways, urban streets, school zones, and so on).
Does the learning of cognitive strategies, such as those of productive
thinking, require prerequisites that are incorporated into the newly acquired (or
newly refined) strategy? As indicated in Chapter 7, this is a matter of theoretical
controversy and cannot be given a final answer at the moment. According to the
views of piaget (1970) and others, cognitive strategies require prerequisite
intellectual growth in the sense of the maturation of capabilities of logical thought.
Learned intellectual skill support this intellectual growth, since the make possible
the variety of specific performances required in the practice of the cognitive
strategies. A contrasting view (gagne, 1968) is that intellectual skills (rules and
concepts) are incorporated into cognitive strategies by cumulative generalization
and thus are true prerequisites in the learning of problem-solving strategies (see the
discussion of learning hierarchies, Chapter 6).
What prerequisites are required for verbal information learning? Lets us
suppose that fact being learned is jack captured a squirrel. Evidently, the
concepts represented by each word must be known as prerequisites if the sentence
is to be learned as meaningful fact. However, we noted in Chapter 8 that a
proposition can be acquired and stored even when word meaning is not known, as

in the sentence turlop glavered renstil. Another essential prerequisite, then, is

the basic skill of identifying the syntactic relations in strings of words. By this
meant the identification (not by name, of course) if agent-action-object and their
transformation into subject-predicate, the sentence turlop glavered renstil is
learned as a proposition because turlop appears to be a subject, gravered
appears to be a verbs, and renstil appears to be the object of the verb. It is
reasonable to conclude, then that the specific intellectual skill of talking in a
sentence as a set of words having subject-predicate relations with each other is an
essential prerequisite for information learning. The identification of subject and
predicate is incorporated into hat is learned.