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Learning Contract Strategy

Tracy Brown

Description

Description The Learning Contract strategy purpose is to have an agreement between the learner and the educator – to have the learners “buy-in”. With this strategy the educator create a win-win situation. Meaning the educators will be able to fulfills the term of his/her employment contract and the learners gets to help setup the ground rules for how they would like to learn, or in other words it adapts the educational needs to individual needs and interests.

The Learning Contract Strategy can be implement by the educator giving the learners a set of objectives and the learners will then decides how they will fulfill these objectives. Although each learner may go about how these objectives are completed differently, the key is that the learners are actively involved in the decision-making process that is pertinent to both the creation and the process of how they learn.

The sample Learning Contract below outlined a framework for describing what someone might learn as a result of a learning activity (Knowles, 1975; Lindquist, 1975). There are five sections (Galbraith, p. 278) which are generic to most learning contracts;

1. Learning objectives
2. Learning resources and strategies
3. Target date for completion
4. Evidence of accomplishment
5. Evaluations of learning

Sample Learning Contract
Learner

• Learning objective
  

What are you going to learn?

Learning Experience

• Learning resources and strategies
  

How are you going to learn it?

• Target Date of completion
  

What date(s) will assignments be completes?

• Evidence of accomplishment
  

How are you going to demonstrate that you have learned it?

• Evaluation of the learning
  

What are the criteria on which you will judge that your learning efforts have been successful and who will be involved in that judging process?

Major Concepts

The Learning Contract Strategy is appropriate and effective with adult learners because it also relates to the Constructivism learning theory, because just like in the reflection strategy the learning was inquired based, with the learning contract strategy the learning is discovery based. That is to say with the learning contract the educator will provide the learners with the course objective and the learner will gain his knowledge of these objective via research, class discussions, life experiences, and many other way [discovery].

Relationship to Teaching Perspective

The Learning Contract Strategy can be used in relationship to Pratt’s (2005) Developmental – Cultivating Way of Thinking (2005) perspectives of teaching.

When Pratt spoke of learning and teaching I found it very interesting and as I reflected on what Pratt said about the Developmental perspective, one of Pratt’s stories keeps coming to mind in regards to relationships between a teacher and a learner.

Story -- A boy told his friend he taught his dog to whistle, his friend puts his ear near the dog’s face and when he did not hear anything he told his friend this. The boy replied, “I said I taught him. I never said he learned.” (Whitman, 1990)

Benefits

The relationship between teacher and learner is not always in the forefront of everyone’s thoughts. I feel if a teacher is using the development perspective of teaching than they also need to consider using the learning contract as a strategy. If the teacher uses the learning contract strategy with this perspective than the learners and the teacher will have the best of both world. That is to say that the teacher will provide the learner with the objectives of the course and the learner will be able to experience the subject matter in the way they wish to learn.

Drawbacks and Cautions

A drawback when using the learning contract strategy is that there are assumptions being made about the learner. For example Galbraith list four assumption that Lindeman (1926) talked about in early writings and was later verified by Knowles (1980):

• The learner is ready to move from dependent to a self directed learner
  
• The learner has the experience they can use as resources for learning
  
• They know what they want to do in life
  
• The learner time perspective is toward learning is now focus on immediate application and performance –centeredness.
  

I believe that unless the learner has had a lot of experience in self-directed learning projects it can be a very difficult learning experience, especially if the learner’s confidence is not above average. I believe group leaning experiences allow learners the opportunity to learn from one another at a multitude of levels – and not merely at a self-directed level.

Final Thoughts

I think the learning contract strategy should be an opinion an educator might bring to the table the first day of class. It is my belief that learning contracts has the ability to hold the educator and the learner’s responsible/freedom to take ownership of their teaching/learning goals. I am in favor of self-directed leaning activities, as long as the educator provides clear guidelines/objectives to the learners. With clear objectives, new learners being introduced to this kind of learning environment will have the opportunity to be successful.

References

Pratt, D. (2005). Five Perspectives on teaching in adult and higher educations. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company.

Galbraith, M. (1998). Adult learning methods. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company .

Cranton, P. (1989). Planning instructions for adult learners. Toronto: Wall & Thompson

Kieft, R. N., Armijo, F., Bucklew, N. S. (1978). A Handbook for Institutional Academic and Program Planning: From Idea to Implementation. Boulder, Colorado: National Center for Higher Education Management System.