Learner and Learning Process Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The key gives hormones.

Individual differences have causes, or determinants, and areas in which they show. The determinants are heredity and environment, and among the biological factors through which heredity acts are the glands and their hormones: the thyroid, the pituitary and the sex hormones affect growth, energy, temperament and maturation, and so produce differences between individuals.

Attitude, interest and personality are areas in which individuals differ, the outcomes that are measured when individual differences are studied. They are the differences themselves rather than the factors that cause them, which is why the key picks hormones as the determinant.

Answer: C

The stage not in Erikson's theory is humour versus anger.

Erik Erikson described eight psychosocial stages, each with its own crisis: trust versus mistrust (infancy), autonomy versus shame and doubt (early childhood), initiative versus guilt (preschool), industry versus inferiority (school age), identity versus role confusion (adolescence), intimacy versus isolation (young adulthood), generativity versus stagnation (middle adulthood) and integrity versus despair (old age).

Trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and initiative versus guilt are the first three stages. Humour versus anger is not among the eight, so it is the one not enumerated.

Answer: D

The component that is not part of tacit knowledge is managing imaginations.

In Robert Sternberg's account of practical intelligence, tacit knowledge is the action-oriented know-how people acquire from experience rather than from formal teaching. He and his colleagues grouped it under managing oneself (one's own motivation and work habits), managing others (subordinates, peers and superiors) and managing tasks or one's career.

Managing self, managing others and managing career are therefore its components. Imagination belongs rather to the creative part of Sternberg's triarchic theory, and 'managing imaginations' is not a category of tacit knowledge.

Answer: C

The missing term is drive.

Clark Hull's drive-reduction theory explains behaviour by the formula in which reaction potential depends on habit strength multiplied by drive and incentive motivation. Need is a biological deficit; drive is the state of arousal the need produces, which energises behaviour; habit strength is the learned connection built by reinforced practice; and incentive motivation reflects the size of the reward. Learning occurs when a response reduces the drive.

Stimulus and response are terms used by every behaviourist and are not the distinctive concepts of Hull's theory. Performance is the outcome the formula predicts, not one of its central terms. Drive is the concept that gives the theory its name.

Answer: B

The first stage in Gagne's hierarchy is signal learning.

Robert Gagne arranged eight types of learning in a hierarchy, each building on those below it: signal learning (a general response to a signal, as in Pavlov's classical conditioning), stimulus-response learning, chaining, verbal association, discrimination learning, concept learning, rule learning and problem solving.

Chain learning is the third type, verbal associative learning the fourth, and concept learning the sixth. Because each higher type assumes those beneath it, signal learning, the simplest conditioned response, comes first.

Answer: A

The main aim of educational guidance is pupil development.

Educational guidance helps each pupil make wise choices and adjustments in education: choosing courses and subjects suited to his abilities and interests, developing good study habits, overcoming learning difficulties and planning further study. Its focus is the individual pupil and his all-round development.

Solving the school's problems, easing the transaction of the curriculum and raising the school's standards may follow from good guidance, but they are aims for the institution. Guidance is a service to the pupil, and the other options shift the focus away from him.

Answer: A

The focal point of vocational counselling is the individual.

Vocational counselling helps a person choose, prepare for and enter an occupation suited to him. The counsellor begins with the individual: his abilities, aptitudes, interests, personality, values and circumstances, and helps him understand himself and relate that understanding to the world of work. The person, not the job, is at the centre of the process.

The vocation and the skills it requires are the information the counsellor brings to the individual. The individual's interest is only one of several personal factors considered. Each of these is part of the process, but the focal point is the individual as a whole.

Answer: D

The characteristic is individual differences.

Development follows a general pattern, but every individual develops at his or her own rate and in his or her own way, because of differences in heredity and environment. This principle of individual differences is one of the standard principles of development.

Development does not proceed at a constant speed, since it has spurts and plateaus, and 'analytical nature' and 'more speed than animals' are not principles of development.

Answer: A

The University's key gives 3½ years as the proper age for admission to a pre-primary school.

Pre-primary (nursery) education serves children before the formal primary stage, so admission is placed in the early part of the 3 to 6 age band: a child much younger, such as 2½, is usually considered too young for a school routine, and 4½ is late for a first entry into pre-primary classes.

Be aware of what could not be confirmed: many policy statements and school norms simply say 3 years (option C), and I could not trace 3½ to a named policy text. The question rests on the textbook the paper-setter used, and the key is kept as printed.

Answer: B

Dewey's sequence is Awareness, Defining, Locating, Formulation of hypothesis, Verification.

In How We Think Dewey described reflective thinking as beginning with a felt difficulty (awareness of a problem), then locating and defining it, gathering and organising relevant information, suggesting a possible solution (hypothesis), and finally testing it (verification).

Option A puts definition before awareness, option C forms the hypothesis before the information is gathered, and option D verifies before any hypothesis has been made.