Transferring Learning To Behavior

During much of the past century, training programs tended to fall into two camps: classroom instruction, which focused mainly on imparting knowledge, and on - the - job training, where the emphasis was on imparting skills. The former stressed the concepts, principles, rules, and procedures to be learned and evaluated in class. The latter stressed the behaviors to be displayed and evaluated in the workplace. More recently trainers and consultants have realized that their job is not primarily to impart information but rather to improve performance by changing behavior. And that's the focus of this book. Unlike the majority of books that are written primarily for training specialists and Human Resource managers, this book is chock full of helpful hints for anyone who is responsible for the performance of others, from group leaders and technical support people to owners of small businesses and supervisors, managers, and, yes, corporate executives. ----Preface by Scott B. Parry, PhD

Since its creation in 1959, Donald Kirkpatrick's four-level model for evaluating training programs - reaction, learning, behavior, and results - has become the most widely used approach to training evaluation in the corporate, government, and academic worlds. However, trainers today are feeling increased pressure to prove whether instruction is worth its cost. And calculating and presenting results (Step 4) becomes tricky when, despite training, workers aren't fulfilling Step 3: applying what they've learned to their behavior. This book takes on this age-old challenge, first examining why learned concepts don't make it into practice, then offering solutions that will work in the real world. Coauthor James Kirkpatrick, a training practitioner, introduces five prerequisites that help an organization achieve ultimate training success. He includes practical examples (such as Toyota and Nextel) from his own work, plus 12 best-practice case studies.

In this indispensable companion to the classic book Evaluating Training Programs—The Four Levels, Don and Jim Kirkpatrick offer detailed guidance for putting any or all of the Four Levels into practice. In addition, they show how to decide what to evaluate, how to get managers to support the evaluation process, and how to use the Four Levels to construct a compelling chain of evidence demonstrating the contribution of training to the bottom line.

Since the mid-1970s, scientific and educational research has left a gap in the field of basic and applied research on transfer of learning. This book fills the gap with state-of-the-art information on recent research in the field, emphasizing methodological paradigms and interpretive concepts based on contemporary cognitive/information processing approaches to the study of human behavior. Issues discussed include how transfer is measured, how its direction and magnitude are determined, how training for transfer differs from training for acquisition, and whether different principles of transfer apply to motor, cognitive, and meta-cognitive processes.