‘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?”.