While Stephen Klein was teaching psychology at Old Dominion University, he realized that there was a need for a motivation textbook for one of his classes. In 1982, McGraw-Hill published Klein’s textbook, “Motivation: Biosocial Approaches.”Four years later, he wrote a learning textbook. Since its publication in 1986, Klein’s book “Learning: Principles and Applications” has been used in several hundred universities, including The Air Force Academy, Boston University, Columbia University, Duke University, the University of Florida, the University of Georgia and many more, including a Spanish translation used in Mexico, Spain and Latin and Central America.
Now teaching at Mississippi State and head of the psychology department, Klein has recently released the fourth edition of his textbook.
“I am very pleased with how successful the book has been,” Klein said. “It has been over a decade since publication, and hopefully it helps the students understand learning, how we learn, why we learn and don’t learn.”
The original copy of “Learning: Principles and Applications” took around four years for Klein to write, and the fourth revision alone took almost a year and a half.
“I write mostly at home, at night and on the weekends, whatever moments I can spare,” he said.
Klein wrote all of his books as a single author, but he did incorporate suggestions and the reviews from his colleagues at other universities.
Klein also authored “Biological Psychology.”
“One of the goals of the new edition is to promote students’ understanding of the learning process and help them see its relevance to their everyday lives,” Klein said, according to a press release. The book discusses two main themes.
Pavlovian conditioning, a concept formulated by Ivan Pavlov, describes the learning of emotions and feelings.
Klein also writes about operant conditioning, investigated first by B. F. Skinner. Operant conditioning involves the learning of behavior to obtain rewards and avoid punishment and how reward and punishment affect behavior.
Klein said he feels that writing the book goes hand-in-hand with teaching.
“My classes are better, more current and up-to-date,” he said. “Writing is just a part of my teaching.” Klein said he wrote “Learning: Principles and Applications” to enhance his teaching and also to inform students “of the basic principles of learning and the application of that learning in order to deal with emotion and behavior throughout our society.”
The publishers of the textbook, McGraw-Hill, have also made a Web site for the book at www.mhhe.com\klein4. The site has an outline of every chapter, practice quizzes for each chapter and much more information about the textbook.