What is Learning?

‘What is learning?’

Quite a question to be asked after two weeks off on a Monday morning! My initial definition was “The process of gaining new knowledge or skills” but after a discussion with my peers and lecturer Steve Wheeler I now believe learning to be slightly more complex than this.

I gave this question a Google and found that the dictionary definition of learning is “The acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught” a very close definition to what I first came up with (I didn’t cheat, honest!). However, I still think that this is too simple a definition and I do not believe that learning is necessarily taught. A famous man named Albert Einstein (ever heard of him?) stated this “I never teach my pupils, I only provide the conditions in which they can learn”. This is much like the saying “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink”, just because someone teaches you something it does mean that the person has learnt it. So basically I’m saying I do not agree with the dictionaries definition for “learning”.

During the seminar I also realised that knowledge and skills are not the only two domains we learn. Benjamin Bloom suggests that there are three domains to learning; cognitive (knowledge), psycho-motor (skills) and affective (emotional).  

I didn’t even consider emotional learning (affective domain) when asked “what is learning?” but now it seems pretty obvious that the manner of how we deal with emotionally is learnt and developed over time.

In order to try and get closer to a definition for learning we then started looking at learning theories in chronological order. We looked at how theories of learning change over time as new research and ideas are developed, behaviorist learning theories of the 1920’s are considerably different to connectivist theories of today.

This question needs a much deeper insight than a single blog post allows because of the complexity of learning and the sheer amount of research around it. I do not think a definitive definition can be given because of how ideas change over time as new research and theories come to light. I’m sure sometime in the future new theories will be suggested which may change the answer to the question “what is learning?”.