Learning control

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Learning control or learning success control is a technical term used in teaching . In general didactics, learning controls are understood as measures corresponding to the projected objectives of a teaching process, which are intended to measure and ensure the success of the learning specifications as objectively as possible.

Sense and purpose

The necessity of learning controls arises didactically on the one hand from the necessity of personal feedback for the learner about his learning success and on the other hand from the objective requirement of a systematically structured, reflected learning process. The "principle of ensuring success" is one of the elementary principles of teaching and applies to all teaching and learning areas:

Teaching and learning without goals gets lost in the non-committal, random, arbitrary. Lessons without accompanying learning controls dispense with the control of the learning processes, lessons without concluding learning controls on a reflection of the objective learning success. He does not take his own objectives seriously and thus documents that the results of the learning processes are not of particular interest or should only be subjectively taken note of. Learning guidelines that do not require subsequent learning controls also ignore the logic of gradually building up learning:

A consistent learning process sets goals that are intended to be achieved. In modern teaching, these are presented as overarching key objectives and more concrete learning objectives .

Whether the intended objectives have actually been achieved can only be ensured through objective learning controls. The learning status determined by the review then becomes the starting point and the basic decision for new learning objectives in further lessons, which are subjected to a new learning status determination after completion of the next lesson phase. In this way, learning progress, but also learning deficiencies of the individual student and of the entire learning community, can be analyzed and improved in a differentiated manner. They can also give rise to a change in the choice of method or to reducing or accelerating the learning speed. Professionally designed lessons require an accompanying and a final success control. The sequence "setting learning objectives - checking results - setting new objectives - checking results again" is the basic didactic rule for any type of reflective training and teaching:

The didactic engineer Siegbert A. Warwitz uses the image of the seaman who sets out with his ship on the Atlantic to explain the meaning of learning goals and learning controls: He has the opportunity to go out to sea without aiming or disorientation and to practice pure seafaring delight. But he can also choose a specific destination. To do this, he has to determine the correct course, take sufficient provisions on board, check his position in the vastness of the ocean again and again and finally ensure that he has reached the destination port of New York and not the coast of Scotland or North Africa.

Evaluation of teaching success

Learning controls also have an indispensable and undisputed meaning in the quality management of teaching: The evaluation of teaching measures provides information about the acceptance of the chosen teaching and learning path by the learners as well as about the effectiveness of certain methods and the resulting teaching success. Changes in content and structure can be made on the basis of the knowledge gained. Those who refuse to accept them evade the performance assessment of both the teacher and the learner. To the extent that it meets scientific standards and does not just contain a demonstration of sympathy or antipathy, the teaching evaluation in the form of an event review serves to ensure the quality of teaching. The "Society for Evaluation", founded in 1997, has developed certain standards for this.

history

Teaching geared towards specific learning outcomes has always been associated with learning controls in all cultures. A differentiated scientific examination of the question of learning objectives and learning control only began with the emergence of modern didactics and the appearance of Didactica magna , the "Great Didactics," by Johann Amos Comenius in the 17th century.

The American experimental psychologist BF Skinner developed what is known as programmed learning in the 1950s . In this learning method based on operant conditioning , independent learning and the principle of reward after successful learning control play an essential role. With the advent of the digital age, today's e-learning was developed from the form of programmed teaching, which is inconceivable without constant learning controls .

The examination of the problem of learning objective control came to a head in the discussion about so-called curricular didactics in the second half of the 20th century. According to the presentation of this didactic direction, all learning processes should be linked to defined objectives, if possible, should be restricted to so-called operationalizable behavior, i.e. observable behavior strictly according to the teacher's objective, and correspondingly verifiable results. The didactic direction in the behavioristic tradition narrowed the target spectrum and neglected the breadth of learning performance, especially the creative performance spectrum. One of the results of this didactic direction, which is focused on learning objectives, is still the widespread multiple choice test procedure , in which one of four to five pre-formulated answers is to be recognized as correct. The glaring shortcomings of this test procedure lead z. Sometimes to strange results. In medical training, for example, reality is bypassed because the bedside doctor has to find and make the correct diagnosis himself from the fund of his knowledge and he is not given five options, one of which is the right one. During the first theory tests for a paraglider pilot license at the end of the 1980s, the grotesque situation arose that, against better judgment, several wrong answers had to be ticked because the template evaluation mistakenly stated that they were correct. Such undesirable developments are now largely corrected or mitigated by supplementary test methods, but the multiple-choice procedures are still widespread, primarily because they are easy to evaluate.

Learning target specifications and corresponding control mechanisms are now part of the standard of every curriculum development in the public school system (see also performance evaluation and performance ).

Examples

Learning controls can provide information about the learning progress and the final success of learning as objectifying feedback. Accordingly, they are designated and used in the education system as accompanying and concluding test procedures. The established level of performance is usually attested by corresponding certificates:

Accompanying learning controls

In school lessons, classwork serves as evidence of a limited amount of study in individual school subjects during the current lesson. In university education, exams serve the purpose of verifying a successful semester in an academic discipline. These are learning controls in the function of so-called "intermediate exams". They are also common in any vocational training, depending on the subject, in oral, written or practical form.

Final learning controls

A high school diploma , secondary school diploma or school leaving examination mark a successful school education. In the trade, journeyman's exams and master craftsman's exams ensure the necessary qualifications for the respective profession. The university education ends with a state examination , a diploma examination , a bachelor 's or doctoral degree after the relevant proof of achievement . Anyone who legally goes paragliding and wants to take out insurance cover also needs special training and a license . Lifeguards demonstrate their competence by means of a performance certificate or a training certificate from the German Life Rescue Society or the water rescue service , motorists by means of a driver's license test , and cyclists by means of a cycling test . Ski instructors or physiotherapists can call themselves "state-tested" after appropriate learning controls. All these qualifications and authorizations result from securing results after certain training courses and corresponding learning controls. The performance assessments can only be declared as “passed” or “not passed”, but they can also be shown in a more differentiated manner in the form of grades and certificates .

Problems and limits

The problem of an exaggerated fixation on learning-goal-oriented teaching and correspondingly rigid control mechanisms was discussed in detail in the 1970s in connection with curricular didactics :

Difficulties arise, for example, when the complicated network of key goals, guideline goals, rough goals, fine goals is to be operationally integrated or one wants to tie the cognitive , affective , psychomotor , social learning goals, which are difficult to separate in the learning reality , to appropriate learning controls. It is relatively easy to combine learning controls with short-term, product- and skill-related learning goals such as increasing knowledge and skills, and less easily with process-oriented, long-term objectives such as behavior and attitudes. In doing so, the taxonomists' accurate notions moved away from the realities of life and teaching. The understandable desire for operationalization and thus the most transparent, comprehensible presentation of services as possible must not lead to over-formalized specifications, as found numerous in the assessment templates of the 1970s. If the taxonomy of the learning objectives exceeds a reasonable degree of differentiation, it runs the risk of losing reality on the one hand and impoverishing the didactic variety and creative teaching design on the other. What taxonomists are able to neatly separate abstractly and mathematically can lead to a sham accuracy in real life, for example, if rough estimates of performance (very good - good - satisfactory - sufficient - inadequate - insufficient) arithmetically / statistically in tenths or even hundredths of a digit ( 1.1 and 2.15) are transformed, compared with each other and finally real non-existent performance differences are constructed from this. Learning outcomes can only be evaluated as precisely as the underlying raw scores allow , without any loss of reality .

literature

  • Hans Aebli: Basics of teaching: a general didactics on a psychological basis. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1993/2003.
  • Johann Amos Comenius: Great Didactics: The complete art of teaching everyone everything . 10th edition, ed. by Andreas Flitner. Velcro-Cotta 2008 (original 1657).
  • Hans Glöckel : About the class. Textbook of general didactics . 4th edition. Bad Heilbrunn / Obb. 2003, ISBN 978-3-7815-1254-2 .
  • AM Strathmann, KJ Klauer: Learning process diagnostics: An approach to long-term learning progress measurement . Journal for Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology 42 (2010) pages 111-122.
  • Siegbert Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: The objectification of success controls . In: Dies .: Project teaching. Didactic principles and models . Verlag Hofmann, Schorndorf 1977, pages 24-27, ISBN 3-7780-9161-1 .
  • Siegbert A. Warwitz: Learning objectives and learning controls in traffic education , In: Ders .: Traffic education from child. Perceiving-playing-thinking-acting , Baltmannsweiler, Schneider-Verlag, 6th edition 2009. Pages 23 and 26–28, ISBN 978-3-8340-0563-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Aebli: Basics of teaching - a general didactic on a psychological basis. Stuttgart 2003.
  2. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: The systematic structure of traffic education . In: Ders .: Traffic education from the child. Perceiving-playing-thinking-acting , Baltmannsweiler, 6th edition 2009, pages 72-75.
  3. ↑ a b AM Strathmann, KJ Klauer: Learning progress diagnosis: An approach to long-term learning progress measurement . Journal for Developmental Psychology and Educational Psychology 42 (2010) pages 111-122.
  4. ↑ Hans Glöckel: From teaching. Textbook of general didactics . 4th edition. Bad Heilbrunn / Obb. 2003.
  5. ^ A b c Siegbert A. Warwitz: Learning objectives and learning controls in traffic education . In: Ders .: Traffic education from the child. Perceiving-playing-thinking-acting , Baltmannsweiler. 6th edition 2009. Pages 23 and 26–28.
  6. ↑ James R. Sanders: Handbook of Evaluation Standards . The standards of the “Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation”, 3rd edition. Wiesbaden 2006.
  7. ^ Johann Amos Comenius: Great Didaktik - the complete art of teaching all people everything , 10th edition, ed. by Andreas Flitner, Klett-Cotta 2008 (original 1657).
  8. ^ BF Skinner Foundation (Ed.): The Technology of Teaching . First published in 1968, reprinted in 2003 by the Library of Congress Card Number 68-12340 E 81290, Cambridge.
  9. ^ Siegbert Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: The objectification of success controls . In: Dies .: Project teaching. Didactic principles and models , Schorndorf 1977, pages 24-27.
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Polasek: Exploratory Data Analysis - Introduction to Descriptive Statistics . Springer publishing house. Berlin 1994, ISBN 978-3540583943 .