You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This book, by the head of the Department of Psychology in Indiana University, is designed primarily as a textbook in teacher training courses in schools and colleges of education, but brings together a great deal of material which should make it worthy of study by anyone who is seriously interested in habit formation or the psychology of learning in general.
The last thirty-five years have witnessed a great number of experimental studies and investigations upon various aspects of the learning process; how numerous and important the results have been is known to few who have no affiliations within the field of educational psychology. But so difficult is the task of sifting the vast amount of material accruing from these investigations that education in general is little beyond where it was a generation ago in the application of a sound technique of learning to the everyday problems of the class room or laboratory. No one in this country is better fitted than Dr. Book to accomplish the task of making the results of research on the learning process available to any serious student.
Starting from the premise that “the chief goal of the educational process is to learn how to learn,” the book proceeds to an explanation of the general nature of the learning process, to show when and where learning occurs, how it takes place, the levels on which it may take place, and finally discusses how to make it most economical and efficient. Learning is viewed as a genetic process, having two “rather distinct” phases: habit formation, conscious or unconscious, and “creative learning “or the acquisition of the ability to do something never done before. The motivation of the learner, “the central factor in the learning process,” is discussed at length, and the various kinds of motivating conditions, so often entirely ignored by parent or teacher, are set forth in detail. The behavioristic view of learning as the forging of new stimulus-response bonds and that of Gestalt psychology as the