This blog is Part 2 of 3.
In Part 1, I started to unpack the concept of learning, giving a general answer and then looking up close at knowledge and understanding.
Here, I’ll continue to focus on the question, teasing out some more ways we can think about the nature of learning.
Skills
A different answer to the question ‘What is learning all about?’ is the word ‘skills.’
Often, in education, content and skills are set against each other.
The opposition, it is argued, comes from the fact that the former is all about learning information while the latter deals with practising and developing abilities.
As with knowledge and understanding, skills cannot reasonably sit as a separate and distinct entity.
When we talk about learning skills, we must be mindful to remember that skills exist and are used within a context – always.
It can never be the case that skills exist independently.
This is logically impossible.
Possessing a skill, learning a skill.
Both these statements imply that the general form (skills) is made concrete in something particular (for example, the skill of critical thinking, the skill of playing a long pass in football, or the skill of holding a pencil correctly).
And, in being made concrete, it is immediately tied up with the real world – as well as the knowledge and understanding we possess.
For example, in an English lesson we might be helping learners to learn about the skill of debating.
We begin with some general thoughts and discussion but soon move onto application of the skill in concrete scenarios.
We might ask learners to debate a certain topic, to critique an argument, or to write a peroration.
This application of skills – practice in process, as it were – suggests that, while it is possible to speak of skills in an abstract sense, to learn about them through the use of general exercises or examples is inherently limiting.
For skills-based learning to be effective – for it to be meaningful and useful – it must be grounded in knowledge and understanding.
It is here that we come to a realisation about the nature of learning that I’m sure you have already grasped.
While we can talk about aspects of learning as if they are separate – knowledge, understanding and skills – the reality is that this is rarely, if ever, the case.
All three are bound together. And largely inseparable.
With that said, it has been helpful for us to attend to each element in turn.
Doing so gives us an opportunity to think about how learning as a whole might work in our classrooms.
It also allows us to consider how the balance between the three areas can alter, depending on the type of lesson we are teaching, the age of our learners, and where we are at with a given topic.
Conceptual Understanding
An area of thought some would argue is the answer to our question about the nature of learning is conceptual understanding.
Concepts are ideas. They are abstractions that refer to intangible things.
Courage is a concept.
It does not exist in the world in the same way as a lump of rock.
Instead of being an object, it is an idea.
We can witness someone being courageous, but we cannot go into a shop and pick up a piece of courage.
(For more on this dilemma, see The Wizard of Oz.)
Concepts are the foundation of much of our thought.
It could be argued that they are the intellectual embodiment of culture, with culture being the way of life (mental as well as experiential) that people share within a society.
Consider, for example, how young children must learn even the most basic concepts.
Concepts we as adults take for granted.
Like time, sharing or truth.
Then consider how, as children grow older, their conceptual understanding develops.
A five-year-old conceives of time differently to a fifteen-year-old, even if they can both use the concept in speech.
Similarly, a five-year-old may talk about sharing in a very basic sense, whereas a twenty-five-year-old may talk about sharing through a political lens, using the concept as the basis for an argument about redistribution of wealth and the provision of public goods.
Here we can see how we continue to rely on concepts throughout our lives.
Without any understanding of them we would not be able to think or communicate with each other.
We would probably not even conceive of ourselves as people.
The term ‘person’ is a concept, after all.
Learning then, is primarily about the development of conceptual understanding.
This development includes a growing sense of depth and nuance regarding the meaning and use of concepts – but so too does it entail broadening the mental maps upon which our concepts sit.
So, for example, learning knowledge in the form of facts and information gives us a more detailed vista of thought from which we can engage with concepts; helping us to develop our conceptual understanding just as much as does the process of interrogating, analysing and applying concepts.
Another way to think about the development of conceptual understanding is that, through learning, we become wiser.
That wisdom is a result of us knowing more and being able to do more.
As this process occurs, we find ourselves moving closer to the reality of things; a reality that is too vast to ever be fully comprehended, but which we can come to know better as we continue to learn.
The only problem with moving down this wisdom route is that the term is notoriously tricky to define.
To that end, it may not serve our purpose here.
Nonetheless, seeing learning as, at least to some degree, the development of conceptual understanding, means thinking about what we do in the classroom as having a direct impact on the maps of the world learners use to navigate school, wider society, and their own experiences.
I think this is a nice metaphor, because it allows us to envisage learning (and teaching) as being concerned with adding detail, depth and breadth to those maps, as well as helping learners to use them ever more accurately, critically and carefully.
Processes
We move now to a rather more instrumental answer to the question.
Here we can argue that learning is all about processes.
By this we mean the processes we use to learn.
Such an answer draws our attention to the fact that learning is itself a process.
This is because it involves the learner doing a series of things that (hopefully) lead to a desired end.
For example, a learner may spend time practising a dance move with the aim of perfecting it.
As they do this, they note the improvements that come from correcting small errors, as well as the increased familiarity they gain through repetition.
Whether the learner is consciously aware of this process is an interesting point.
They do not need to be to use it to good effect.
But they will often be able to use it more effectively if they are.
Here we come to a common theme concerning learning.
Expert learners tend to be actively engaged with the processes of learning.
An expert artist experimenting with a new medium, for instance, will likely direct a good deal of their mental energy toward analysing and evaluating the results of what they do, before using this information to make changes and adaptations.
A less expert artist might use the medium, then step back and think about what happened.
A still-less expert artist may use the medium and then wonder why things didn’t turn out as they hoped.
Certain elements of the learning process are universal, other aspects differ according to what you are learning and how you are learning it.
The use of memory is one universal process – something on which all learning depends.
Consider, if you will, the idea of a man with amnesia who must learn his name again every morning when he wakes up.
His case points to the centrality of memory while also implying that an active engagement with memory – through aids or mnemonics, for example – can help us to marshal the forces at our disposal more effectively.
Another universal process is trial and error.
Again, the efficacy of its deployment tends to vary depending on whether it is done consciously, semi-consciously or without any thought at all.
We often see trial and error at its freest and least constrained in very young children.
They constantly explore, test and experiment with their surroundings, usually with no concern as to whether they have made a mistake or not.
It is only later that fear of failure begins to rear its head, as we grow older and the scope of our world changes.
But consider also the essential playfulness of many creative individuals – artists, musicians, scientists, inventors.
Here we have often much older people who retain (or have cultivated) a child-like sense of engagement with trial and error.
Who, crucially, see it as a useful process, rather than as a threat.
This helps draw us back to the central conceit that learning is all about processes.
In so doing, it gives us food for thought in terms of how we might help our learners to think about their learning – and how we might think about our own as well.
Failure and Success
Which leads us nicely to the topics of failure and success.
Learning, surely, must be about these, mustn’t it?
I mean, when you learn, you either succeed or you fail, don’t you?
If you can do more than you could do previously, if you know more than you did before the learning began, then you have succeeded.
If you don’t, or you can’t, you’ve failed.
Is it really as simple as that?
Well, yes and no.
First, we have the undoubted fact that learning can be viewed in terms of success and failure.
The point of reference will usually be whether the ends we set out to achieve have been reached.
If they have, success is ours, if they haven’t, we are faced with failure.
Second, when it comes to learning in a classroom context, whether we have succeeded or failed is usually pretty easy to judge – particularly if we have a method of assessment such as a test, question or exam paper on hand to give us an accurate summary.
On the other hand, though, failure and success seem like somewhat ham-fisted concepts when applied in this way.
They give rise to the idea of learning as a zero-sum game.
You either win or lose, and that’s the end of it.
A better approach might see us redefining the concepts, such that their application starts to have different effects.
Beginning with success, we need to ask what success actually looks like – both from the perspective of the learner and from that of the teacher.
When thought of in this way, success starts to become less like a monolith that we can either climb or not, and more like a series of steps – some of which will be harder to climb than others, but all of which are potentially in reach.
One of the reasons learners can see success in a dualistic sense (complete or non-existent) is because their understanding of what they are setting out to learn is, naturally, limited.
This couples with their, often restricted, experience of the process of learning, making it difficult for them to look at a large, far-off goal (being able to do what they want to be able to do) and break this down into smaller, more manageable steps.
So learning is about success, but that success needs to be redefined.
Learners are often unable to do this themselves and the teacher needs to step in and do it on their behalf.
A similar story can be told about failure.
Again, learners often see it as an absolute, as opposed to something from which we can learn.
They can struggle to understand that failure is just part of learning.
That mistakes are a sign of challenge.
And that trial and error is part of the process.
No failure connected to learning in the classroom is absolute.
Every failure presents us with information we can use to develop and make progress.
Here, the difficulty comes in having to change the perceptions learners might hold about what failure means.
The process of re-education, or challenging their preconceptions, is an important part of the teacher’s work.
As you will note, it links closely to what we have said already about the development of conceptual understanding and the importance of process.
