The American educator Robert Gagne developed a hierarchical theory that some types of learning are prerequisites to other kinds of learning. His research has been fruitfully used in determining the sequence of instruction.

Associated with Florida State University, Gagne's educational practices came from US Army instructional techniques. Instructional development (and design) as we understand the term today is largely the invention of Gagne. Perhaps his most influential books are "The Conditions of Learning" and "Principles of Instructional Design".

Eight classes of situations in which human beings learn:

Signal Learning - individual learns to make a (general) response to a signal., similar to the conditioned response in Pavlov's theory.

Stimulus-Response Learning The learner learns to make a more precise response to a more specific stimulus

Chaining The learner is able to chain two or more stimulus-response connections.

Verbal Association The learner is able to learn using verbal chains.

Discrimination Learning The individual learns to discriminate between different but physically similar stimuli

Concept Learning The learner can make a singular response to an entire class of stimuli.

Rule Learning - Learner applies a rule, which is a chain of two or more concepts.

Problem Solving A kind of learning based on deep thought

Five categories of learning:

intellectual skills
cognitive strategies
verbal information
motor skills
attitudes

Within the above categories, there are nine instructional events. The nine principal instructional events are gaining attention, informing learners of the objective, stimulating recall of prior learning, presenting the stimulus, providing learning guidance, eliciting performance, providing feedback, and enriching retention and transfer.

Theory of instruction is based in behaviorist philosophy, however his philosophy contends that the behavior also has a great deal to the memory. Gagne believed, unlike Thorndike, that not everything could be best learned by practice and repetition. He believed, for example, that the learning of cognitive strategies for problem solving is a very different type of learning which requires presenting the learner with puzzles, and assisting them in solving those puzzles. For this type of learning he believed simple practice to be counter productive.

Books and Publications

The Conditions of Learning

Principles of Instructional Design