When teaching doesn’t equal learning

I do several different types of teaching and training. In addition to working directly with animals, a huge part of what I do is teaching people how to train their pets. I also teach a class for undergraduate students in the behavior analysis department at our local university. The same basic principles of learning apply in all of these situations, even though they seem pretty different.

There’s something we have to be very careful about when teaching that I’ve experienced many times with the people and animals I work with. Just because you think you’ve taught something, doesn’t mean that the learner has actually learned it.

Here are a few examples to explain what I mean…

In the undergraduate class that I teach, we spend a handful of class periods playing the shaping game PORTL. One exercise that the students always enjoy is teaching another student the concept of “taller.” When given a set of objects, the learner has to wait for a cue and then select the tallest object. (The teacher must teach this entirely with the clicker – no talking to the learner!)

Once the students think they have taught the behavior, I come and test their learner by presenting several new objects. Sometimes, however, rather than taller, the learner has created an elaborate set of rules based on color, shape, position, or other properties of the objects. If this is the case, when presented with totally new objects, the learner either confidently picks the wrong object or has no clue what to do.

Although PORTL is a simulation, the same thing can easily happen when working with an animal, a child, or an adult. The teacher thinks she has taught a certain rule or concept, but the learner has learned something entirely different.

Here’s another example. Some months ago, a friend was teaching her dog to go lie on his bed in the living room. She kept practicing the behavior until it was really solid. Then one day without thinking about it, she moved the bed to another spot in the living room.

Later in the day, she told the dog to go to his bed. Rather than going to the bed, however, the dog went to the spot in the room where the bed used to be. In this case, he had learned a different version of “go somewhere” than what the owner had intended to teach. He thought it was about going to a particular spot in the room, rather than going to his bed.

Different types of disconnects between teaching and learning

I think this breakdown between teaching and learning happens more than we realize. Sometimes, however, it is difficult to tell because the learner just makes occasional errors. For example with the PORTL taller example I discussed above, the learner may come up with a rule that isn’t related to taller, but that still resulted in picking the correct object most of the time.

This happened recently to several of my students. They were trying to teach the concept of taller using a collection of about a dozen objects. By chance, several of the taller objects were shades of red, pink, and red-orange. The learner thought the task had something to do with color and had come up with several rules that allowed her to often be correct, even though she had no idea the teachers wanted her to pick the tallest object.

Here are several variations of this phenomenon that can occur in training situations:

1) The animal or human thinks he has learned the behavior, but actually has learned something different than what you were trying to teach. This was illustrated in both the PORTL taller example and the mat example above. Sometimes there is just a little bit of disconnect, while other times the individual has learned completely the wrong behavior or concept. Often the learner is very confident and thinks that he is doing exactly what you want!

2) The animal or human has learned the basic behavior, but can’t yet do it to the extent the trainer expects. If the trainer asks for too much, it appears that the animal doesn’t know the behavior or doesn’t understand what the trainer wants. Perhaps the dog does usually know how to sit and stay when guests come over, but the behavior breaks down when your cousin arrives with her four rambunctious young children. The dog hasn’t forgotten – he just doesn’t yet know how to sit and stay under these conditions.

3) The behavior has multiple parts, and the animal or human has only learned part of what you were trying to teach. Perhaps the final behavior is a chain of smaller behaviors or perhaps the behavior has multiple components that must happen at the same time. In either case, if even a small part wasn’t learned or was learned incorrectly, it can sometimes cause the whole behavior to fall apart.

What to do? What to do?

When teaching doesn’t equal learning, the traditional trainer or teacher tends to place the blame on the student, whether the student is an animal or a human. The teacher may say that:

The learner wasn’t trying hard enough.
The learner wasn’t paying enough attention.
The learner is lazy and unmotivated.
The learner isn’t smart enough.
The learner just doesn’t care.
And so on.

If you assume that the failure is entirely the learner’s fault, then there’s not much for the teacher to do, except to keep practicing with the learner or to try to teach the behavior again, often using the same methods and procedures.

Instead, the more difficult, but ultimately more useful approach is to figure out if there are ways you can improve your teaching so that it is easier for the learner to master the concepts you are trying to teach.

How can you improve your teaching so that it is easier for the learner to master what you are trying to teach? Share on X

Here are some action steps if your learner has learned the wrong concept, or is making a lot of mistakes, or is just really struggling to learn a particular behavior.

1) Recognize it. This may seem like a given, but it’s not. I see many teachers and trainers who just continue with the same plan, even though it is clear that the current plan isn’t working for a particular learner.

2) Don’t blame the learner. Work with the assumption that if the learner understood what you wanted, and was motivated and physically capable of doing it, that he or she would be doing it.

3) Analyze what’s going on. Learning is always taking place. Instead of focusing on what the individual hasn’t learned, instead try to discover what the individual did actually learn instead of what you were trying to teach. Understanding the source of the disconnect can lead to valuable insights.

4) Make sure your objectives are clear. Sometimes training doesn’t go as planned because the trainer doesn’t actually have a clear enough picture regarding what the final behavior is supposed to look like.

5) Make a new plan. Change something. What can you do differently so that the learner has a better understanding and the necessary skills to achieve what you are trying to teach?

6) Keep teaching. Implement your new plan. You may need to revise it again later on, but that’s okay. If you’re really stuck, you may need to seek advice from a friend or professional.

My current teaching project

I teach an upper-level undergraduate behavior analysis class in the fall and spring. We just finished up the spring semester, so I’ve taught the class three times now.

However, there are several key areas where I’ve realized there is a clear disconnect between what I’m trying to teach and what the students are actually learning. These are concepts and ideas that they really have trouble grasping, either because it is the first time they have been exposed to the idea or because it is something that is easily confused with another concept.

I have a project for this summer. I’ll be completely redesigning this course. I’m planning to carefully examine the objectives for the class – what are the outcomes that I really want the students to master during this course? Then, I’ll be redesigning the content and instruction so that it is easier for all of the students in the class to learn what I am trying to teach.

Next fall, I’ll test it out and continue revising it. It’s a big project, but I’m excited. I may share some more about the course redesign process in the coming months, as it is going to be on my mind a lot this summer.

Here is what I want you to think about this week. If your student is struggling – whether an animal or person – what can you do to improve your teaching to make it easier for the individual to learn?