What is Learning?

Definitions from the Internet dictionary: Known facts, ideas, and skill that have been imparted The act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill. Knowledge or skill gained through schooling or study. See synonyms at knowledge.knowledge Psychology. Behavioural modification especially through experience or conditioning. What do you think learning is?

What was the last thing you learned?

Understanding Knowing Skills What’s the difference ?

Cognitive: thinking, remembering, knowing Affective Feeling, sensing, responsive to…. Psycho-motor: (motor=movement) Body and brain working together to do a set task

Is it possible to classify learning? Psycho-motor Movement tied to orders from the brain ‘Muscle memory’ Cognitive Thinking Involves intelligence, memory, language, perception Affective Linked to ‘affection’ Feelings-linked

What have other people thought and said about learning? Skinner Maslow Piaget Bruner ………..and were they right?

Behaviourism Pavlov, Skinner The Age of Science Non-emotional, totally rational. What you see is what is happening. Stimulus-response. Conditioned reflexes = change in behaviour through external events.

Piaget  Learning is a much bigger process than we thought.  Children have to learn to think and to learn.  They learn gradually, through a series of evolutionary steps.  There is a set pattern in the development of their thinking although not all children will go through the stages together.  Not everyone will have the mental capacity to reach the highest level.  Children make their own learning happen through exploration of their environment.

Assimilation Accommodation

Perception is the key! New ideas: People’s brains work to make sense of the information coming in through the senses. Previous experiences affect what the outcome is of this process of making sense of something. Rogers: “Much of our perception process is taken up with selecting in and selecting out. We are editors of our own experience.”

What difference does it make to your thinking about your students and how they are learning what these people have to say about the process of learning? Relate these ideas to your teaching and learning.

What have other people thought and said about learning? Skinner  Piaget  Maslow  Bruner  ………..and were they right?

We must view our students not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit