Definitions, generative learning theory,

1. Generative Learning
ALEXANDRA
BADOIU

2. Generative
Learning
‘‘A key to becoming a learning organization is to achieve a stage of generative
learning’’ (SENGE 1995)
‘‘Generative learning involves any approach to the implicate order through a
process of self-transcendence’’ (R. CHIVA, A. GRANDÍO & J. ALEGRE 2010)

3. What is generative learning?
 Style of learning that incorporates existing knowledge with new ideas
based on experimentation and open-mindedness.
 Encourages individual and team creativity, resulting in a new way of
viewing old methods.
 Organizations rely on the generative learning style to adjust to changes in
the market, technology and society.

4. The Generative Learning Theory
 The Generative Learning Theory was introduced
in 1974 by Merlin C. Wittrock an American educational
psychologist.
 “ The generative model is a model of teaching of comprehension and the
learning of the types of relations that learners must construct between
stored knowledge, memories of experience, and new information for
comprehension to occur, Wittrock, 1991.”

5. Applying the Theory: The Four Elements
of Generative Learning
 Recall – use when the learner access information from long-term memory, learning about
fact-based information. Ex: repeating facts and information, reviewing concepts until they are
fully understood, that make the information easier to pull from memory.
 Integration – involves incorporating new facts and concepts with prior known facts and
information; aims to modify information into facts; paraphrasing and summarizing contents;
make use of analogies and metaphors.
 Organization –aims to have the learner relate background knowledge to new concepts in
well-structured or meaningful ways. Ex :analysing key ideas, categorizing similar topics,
outlining and creating concept maps.
 Elaboration –is about connecting new information to prior knowledge, then synthesizing and
adding ideas to the new concept. Ex: creating physical diagrams, visual displays of ideas, and
freehand writing.

6. Creating a Generative Learning
Organization
 How each person in an organization “contributes to the organization’s
problems, and then changes the way they act” (Chris Argyris, 1991)
 “Requires new ways of looking at the world, whether in understanding the
customer or in understanding how to better manage a business”
Senge(1990)
 See our own thinking and behaviours as they really are, rather than as we
wish they were
 Do not fall into defensive routines that save us from perceived
embarrassment or threat.

7. Argyris’s studies conclusions
 when people are faced with their own behaviours in situations that may seem embarrassing
or threatening, they shift the focus from examining their own behaviours to blaming
someone else or something else for their behaviours.
 found a greater degree of defensiveness in people who have higher levels of education
 if these people could use generative learning behaviours, they would be able to examine
their own defensive routines and generated new thinking and behaviours from what they
learned.
 To create the opportunity for generative learning, we must build more effective thinking
patterns