Processes And Strategies In Health Professional Education

Learning Theories and Health Education
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Abstract
Learning theories constitute the fundamental framework that assists in the planning and scheduling of educational systems within a classroom environment. This is a crucial aspect of the technical training for the nursing field. The acquisition and mastery of these theories by the teachers and other trainers can assist them in the dissemination of knowledge and flexibility depending on the situations at hand. Behaviorists are of the notion that learning occurs only when there is a reaction to a given stimuli, that results in a change in the behavior of an individual or organism. This shift in behavior should be observable.
Behaviorists place much of their argument upon the impact on the emotions of the learner. Thorndike and Skinner have done quite a lot when it comes to this approach to learning. Contrary to what these behaviorists believe, cognitive scholars, on the other hand, believe that education is supposed to be internal, doing with consciousness. They understand that learning should to a large extent focus upon the understanding and organization of thought.
According to fundamentalists, the learning process should entail forearming the learner with the necessary research and problem-solving skills. These are the ingredients that they believe can help one to learn through discovery and fact-finding. Such ideas are put forward by the likes of Wertheimer and Brunner. One’s feelings and personal experiences form the foundations of the humanistic interpretation of learning. Scholars such as Carl Rogers believes in the embracement of a semantic continuum, whereby the learning process is centered on the retention of the concepts learned.
Introduction.
Health, just like any other discipline, has got appropriate learning strategies. These strategies are hinged upon theories, which help in providing a greater understanding of teaching methods. Theories can be defined as a scholarly body of information that tries to explain or describe a certain concept. In other terms, it is a collection of propositions that combine to seek to explain, define or predict an individual concept or phenomena. The aim of learning theories is to provide detailed alternatives as it relates to knowledge dissemination and application.
There is usually a connection between learning and psychology. In real sense, much of what constitutes knowledge and education has been a culmination of the works done by psychologists. Psychologists and other scholars have for quite some time developed theories that have helped towards a further understanding of learning and education. When delving into the field of educational psychology, in particular, there are numerous theories, all of which work towards the same goal; to decipher learning.
These theories offer various perspectives to do with how people learn in different ways. It is these learning methods that form the core, or the foundation, of educational psychology. It is through the understanding of these theories that stakeholders in the field can know how to create a conducive learning environment, which goes a long way into not only streamlining but also harmonizing the education system. The continuous practical applications of these theories over the years have helped to come up with the most effective ways of identifying behavior, traits, and perceptions of learners. This, therefore, helps in selecting the most appropriate means of handling them.
For any professional in the field, it is important to give close attention to the nature of the learning process itself. Learning theories, therefore, provide a platform that can enable the entire process to occur seamlessly. They have a broad range of applications, from the basics of education to counseling. Learning theories are therefore important in the nursing field as well as the general health profession.
Discussion
The health profession entails constant interaction with patients, clients, colleagues as well as the management. As a result, it calls for the mastery and practical application of these theories in educational activities. The current healthcare environment is so demanding of professional excellence that such requirements are treated as default aspects. Health training, therefore, comes to the fore, as a crucial element of the entire process (Bush, 2006). It constitutes the foundations of the whole professional system. To have an educational framework that can be helpful and indeed very practical for the practitioners in the field, there is need to have it designed by specialists in the same health care.
While this should be the case, only a few nations have delegated such duties to these experts. Iran for example delegates the task of developing and design, control and implementation of health training to the nurses. This helps to ensure that the curriculum is indeed in touch with the needs of the learners. According to Quinn (2007), the advantages of learning theories include; helping in altering behavior and the general way of thinking, development of practice, mastering of emotions control, and also influencing health habits. The learners can, therefore, easily relate to it. Learning theories can be used at any level, be it individual, group or communal basis.
By taking up the strengths and similarities of each theory and then working on the harmonization of their differences, the entire theoretical body becomes a valuable asset. Lasater & Nielsen (2009), are of the opinion that such a collaborative or combined strategy should be applied under any given circumstance.
(a.).Behaviorist Learning Theory
As mentioned earlier, the underlying notion of this concept of this theory specifies learning to be complete only when two conditions are met. First, there needs to be a change in general behavior for learning to have taken place, secondly, there needs to be a response to a particular stimulus (Saif, 2009). Behaviorists, therefore, build their argument around the belief that positive behavioral reinforcement is a major prerequisite for learning and education in general. They view repetition and constant practice as a mandatory element for learning. As a result, there is the existence of positive and adverse behavior reinforcement. Implementation of either of these contributes towards the recurrence of a particular conduct.
Behaviorists try and ignore the happenings within the body of an individual or animal, and instead focus on what happens outside. They look at how changes in certain external conditions can result in subsequent changes in the general behavior of the individual. They monitor specimen responses and then go ahead to influence conditions so as to take note based on what they intend to observe. According to Bush (2006), behaviorist theory has been widely accepted as a theory that is more likely to be applied in conjunction with another theory. In most cases, it is used alongside the cognitive theory, especially in the field of clinical psychology and education.
Behaviorism can be established in the case of emotional control of a learner. It is evident that the emotional reactions that an individual can have towards something can either be positive or negative. For example, painful experiences can make a person go through moments of fear or general anxiety. When the person has such experiences in future as well, then there is a high likelihood that he or she would still suffer from fear and anxiety (Joyce & Calhoun, 2005). In this case, it becomes a repetitive occurrence. Behaviorism works on aspects that are directly observable. The theory continues to be a significant contributor to nursing and general health care.
Motivation is a factor in the theory. It is defined as the willingness to cut down on some drive. For example, individuals who are complacent or satisfied can be considered to have little motivation as far as learning and adjustment go (Wiseman & Hunt, 2008). Transfer from a particular set of behavior to another is largely a factor of practice. Such practice is usually considered a strengthening habit. A major contributor to the transfer process is the similarity between the processes and situations at that moment and those in the future when they would problem-solving. Operant and Respondent conditioning are the two key procedures upon which the behaviorist theory is based.
Respondent/Pavlovian/ Classical Conditioning
According to Ormrod (2004), this kind of conditioning focuses on the nature of the stimulus as well as the interrelations formed during the learning process. This model of learning happens when a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned one. A neutral stimulus is one that has no significance to the learner in question. After some these combinations, the neutral stimulus starts having the same unconditioned response, even in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus. From this interpretation, learning occurs when the newly conditioned stimulus gets related to the conditioned response. In some cases, this process might happen even without conscious knowledge.
Taking the example of an individual who visits her sick colleague in hospital. The person constitutes the neutral stimulus. While there, she takes note of the offensive smell emanating from the hospital, which represents unconditioned stimulus. She would then start feeling light-headed, which represents unconditioned response. Finally, after repeating the visits for some time, she would then relate hospitals to anxiety and nausea. Hospitals, therefore become the new conditioned stimulus, while the anxiety and nausea become the conditioned response. The whole notion about Pavlovian conditioning is that it underlines the role played by the hospital's environment on the motivation of the health care personnel. This trickled down to the educational aspect of it (Cameron, 2006).
In it quite a characteristic, that visitors to hospitals will develop such a mentality and attitude towards hospitals visits; something that would act as the basis for their long-term negative perceptions about healthcare systems in general. Classical conditioning not only contributes towards the acquisition of new stimuli but also helps in the deletion of one learned earlier. This is what brought about systematic desensitization, which works on the notion that just in the same way that the fear of a particular stimulus is learned, so can it be extinguished(O'Donohue & Fisher,2009).It is a therapy used to reduce and effectively treat maladaptive anxiety.
In health professional education, the above case is testament enough to the importance of placing much focus upon the basics of a healthcare setup. The institutional structure should keep in mind the surrounding environment. Quite similarly, the development of the educational curriculum should not only look at the skills acquisition and dissemination but rather at the entire concept of a healthcare setup (Joyce & Calhoun, 2005). These professionals need learn that the surrounding environment is as crucial to the patient’s recovery process, just as the treatment is.
Thorndike’s Proposition
Thorndike built upon that theory by noting that general behavior is usually created or destroyed based on the right or bad impacts resulting from it (Hergenhahn & Henley, 2014). In essence, he believes that taking into account the various options at hand, are what help in ensuring one selects the right one, after which he or she reinforces it (Sobhaninejad, 2005).When a learner gets the results that are not favorable, he or she will go over and over again until there is the realization of the right one. This can be transferred to health education, through the use of mannequins as a method of learning skills and performing certain procedures.
Mannequins provide the students with a platform to which they can do trial and error, harmlessly. When the students land upon unpleasant outcomes, they would repeat the process all over again until they came to then right one. After this, they are then able to come up with a combination of the right set of skills. They then work on the reinforcement of these skills so that they become experts in them. In a classroom setup, the pleasant results might be satisfaction from classmates or the teachers (Torre et.al. 2006). From a professional point of view, the expected or satisfying results can be satisfaction from clients after service.
Skinner’s Proposition
Skinner looked at the whole concept of behavior as voluntary, while he focused more on the result instead of the cause. He, however, introduced punishment and reinforcement as the two chief drivers of behavior. If one’s conduct was accompanied by punishment, then there was a high likelihood that the behavior would cease. The opposite is true if the response is accompanied by reinforcement. In the educational environment, it can be used in particular, for behavior therapy (O’Donohue & Fisher, 2009). Here, it helps in altering the general behavior of students in their educational and social setups (Torre et.al. 2006).
It is also applicable to the teaching of clinical skills. To ensure a comprehensive coverage of th...