Brian Cambourne’s Conditions for Learning

Jocelyn Downs

FLaRE Area Coordinator

Think of a time when you had to learn something difficult, such as: Cooking a new recipe Doing your income taxes Working on a car Playing a card game Riding a bicycle Learning a new computer program

What process did you use to help you learn?

Immersion

Learners need to be immersed in text of all kinds

Demonstration

Learners need to receive many demonstrations of how texts are constructed and used.

Expectation

“We achieve what we expect to achieve: we fail if we expect to fail. We are more likely to engage with demonstrations of those whom we regard as significant and who hold high expectations for us.”

Response

Learners must receive “feedback” from exchanges with more knowledgeable “others.” Response must be relevant, appropriate, timely, readily available, non-threatening, with no strings attached.

Approximation

Learners must be free to approximate the desired model —“mistakes are essential for learning to occur.”

Use

Learners need time and opportunity to use, employ, and practice their developing control in functional, realistic, non-artificial ways.

Responsibility

Learners need to make their own decisions about when, how, and what “bits” to learn in any learning task. Learners who lose the ability to make decisions are “depowered.”

Engagement occurs when: The learner is convinced that he or she is

a potential “doer” or “performer” of the demonstrations.

The learner believes that engagement with these demonstrations will further the purposes of his or her life.

The learner can engage and try to emulate without fear of physical or psychological hurt if the attempt is not fully “correct.”

Engagement is a compelling concept, especially when trying to explain learning failure. It suggests the clutch mechanism of a car engaging the motor; the clutch connects the engine’s power to the drive shaft, and this sets the car in motion. If the clutch does not engage properly, all that results is useless revving of the motor; the car does not move. from Cambourne’s,“Conditions for Literacy Learning”

Unless learners engage with the demonstrations provided by the persons or artifacts available to them, it is highly improbable that such demonstrations will set learning in motion. from Cambourne’s,“Conditions for Literacy Learning”