Title: Principles of learning and training
Course: Level 3 - Health Education and Promotion > Section: Conduct training for model family

- A. Readiness---- implies a degree of willingness and eagerness of an individual to learn something new.
- B. Exercises---- refers to the principle of application what the learners have been told and shown. Every time practice occurs, learning continues. Therefore, a health educator must repeat important items of the subject matter at reasonable intervals and provide opportunities for the audience/learners to practice while making sure that this process is directed towards learning something new.
- C. Effect--- The principle of effect is that learning is strengthened when accompanied by a pleasant or satisfying feeling (reinforcement) - and that learning is weakened when associated with an unpleasant feeling. For example, One of the important obligations of the Health Extension practitioner is to set up the learning situation in such a manner that each person being taught will be able to see evidence of their progress and achieve some degree of success.
- D. Primacy----the state of being first, often creates a strong impression which may be very difficult to change. Things learned first create a strong impression in the mind that is difficult to erase. "Unteaching" or erasing from the mind incorrect first impressions is harder than teaching them correctly in the first place. If for example, a mother is taught a faulty technique about the preparation of replacement feeding (formula, instead of breastfeeding), you as a health extension worker will have a difficult task correcting bad habits and "reteaching" correct ones. The learner's first experience should be positive, functional and lay the foundation for all that is to follow. As a health educator you should present your subject matter in a logical order, step by step, making sure the audience has already learned and understood the preceding step.
- E. Recency---- states that things most recently learned are best remembered. Conversely, the further a learner is removed time-wise from a new fact or understanding, the more difficult it is to remember. For example, it is easier for a mother to recall what children were fed this morning than to remember what they were fed three days ago.
- F. Intensity----states that a sharp, clear, dramatic, or exciting learning experience teaches more than a routine or boring experience. The principle of intensity implies that a learner will learn more from the real thing than from a substitute. i.e.,. The more immediate and dramatic the learning is to a real situation, the more impressive the learning is upon the learner, Such as demonstrations and role playing will do much to increase the learning experience of your audience. For example, a mother will learn more from demonstration of bed net utilisation, which is shown to her in her house than from teaching her just by a talk at your health post
- G. Freedom--- states that things freely learned are best learned. Conversely, if the audience is forced to learn something, the more difficult it is for them to learn. For example, if you force a family to construct a latrine in their compound, they may not be interested in doing that. However, if you motivate them to do that through proper education of the family, they are more likely to construct the latrines and use them properly