This blog is Part 3 of 3.

Here’s a link to Part 1.

And here’s a link to Part 2.

We’ve been thinking about what learning is and looking at this question from a range of perspectives.

In the last blog, I finished off by talking about failure and success, and how we might need to challenge some of the preconceptions learners have around this.

Now, we can turn our attention to a different aspect of learner psychology.

Agency

This is the ability of an individual to act in the world.

A prisoner has much of their agency removed, as does someone who is oppressed.

When it comes to learning, the whole process is about promoting, enlarging and bestowing agency.

Or, to put it another way, increasing and improving a learner’s ability to act in the world.

Literacy is the keenest example of this.

While a person who cannot read or write may well be successful and live a life that is good, they will also find themselves cut off from accessing a significant portion of human experience.

Even more, they will find acting in the world difficult in certain situations, not least because of the central role the written word plays in society and culture.

Imagine now that this individual, when they are older, long after passing through formal education, learns how to read and write.

This would represent a major change in their life.

One that would bring them a far greater degree of agency than was previously the case.

As their literacy skills improve, so too will their ability to act in the world.

Their agency increases.

We can draw the point more widely by saying that learning allows us to become more than we were, and that with each step we take through such a process, the range of possibilities open to us grows a little larger.

These possibilities may be physical or mental, external or internal.

Examples include the opportunity to access jobs of certain types and the opportunity to think about our experiences and emotions in a way that is more accurate and precise.

Both examples see learning as being about increasing our capacities to be human, to be successful, to be known and understood; to be who we are, or who we want to be.

There is a risk that this might be dismissed as too vague, too unfocussed.

But to see learning in purely utilitarian terms is to miss the fundamental difference there is between knowing and not knowing, being able to and not being able to.

That difference amounts to a small gap in many places, but a huge chasm in others.

Learning nearly always contributes to an individual’s agency – extending the boundaries of how they can act in the world.

Sometimes it makes a small change; sometimes an enormous one.

Regardless, however, of what learning takes place, a change of some sort will always occur.

This vision of learning – and it is a vision – as a transformative experience tied to a human being’s capacity to act in the world, their agency, is easily lost in the necessarily formalised and bureaucratic land of centrally-funded and centrally-administered education.

But it is worth holding onto.

If only to remind us of the deeply humane aspect of the job, we as teachers are setting out to do.

Personal Fulfilment

Abraham Maslow, a twentieth century psychologist with whom you may be familiar, produced a hierarchy of needs as part of his work.

This hierarchy, Maslow argued, represents those things that human beings need, ordered according to the relative necessity of those needs.

Hence, we find physiological and safety needs at the bottom, as the starting point.

Breathing, food, water, shelter, and protection being the foundation on which other needs rest.

Above these we find Maslow’s third category: love and belonging, in which he placed friendship, family and sexual intimacy.

The fourth category is esteem, including the respect of others, confidence and a sense of achievement.

Finally, at the top of the pyramid, is self-actualisation.

This includes needs Maslow identified as being central to fulfilling your personal potential – to becoming who or what you feel you can be.

There is much debate around whether Maslow’s hierarchy ought to be accepted.

And, indeed, it has been considerably developed since the construction of the initial model that I have outlined.

We do not need to go into the debates here, however.

Rather, we can use the hierarchy to help us think about learning’s role in personal fulfilment.

And, by extension, the wider pleasure that can be derived from learning, as well as the important role it plays in many people’s lives.

It is not by mistake that the phrase ‘learning for learning’s sake’ exists.

It indicates the fact that learning is not just a means to an end but can also be an end in itself.

Learning about a topic for no other reason than that you find it interesting is as good a reason as any to pursue a course of study, however informal this may be.

Personal fulfilment is seen as a desirable goal in many societies.

It is frequently tied up with a person’s attempt to fulfil their potential – to push themselves to grow, change and become more than they are.

And what is this if not a description of learning?

Children, though, are compelled to go to school.

Of course, it is right that this is so … but they may not always see it like that!

This leads us to a position whereby learning can, for them, take on a perfunctory meaning somewhat removed from the rewarding sense of personal fulfilment about which we are thinking here.

Finding ways to make this aspect of learning a reality in the classroom is a task for all teachers.

Those who succeed in meeting it usually draw a good response from their learners.

Acculturation

And so, we come to our final answer to the question of what learning is.

It directly mirrors the final answer I gave in the preceding trio of blogs, looking at the question ‘What is teaching all about?’

I include it here to draw the circle to a close, reminding us that teaching and learning, while separate, are dependent on each other and, always, closely intertwined.

It is through learning that children and young adults come to be full members of the culture or society to which they belong.

This process helps them to make the transition from being completely dependent on the family unit to being able to, however tentatively, and perhaps only partly, stand on their own feet, independent and ready to fend for themselves.

As Marshall McLuhan noted, the medium is the message.

While he was talking about the media, we can apply his insight to education.

The entire process of formal schooling through which learners pass – a process that now involves you in your role as an early career teacher – is itself a message about what society is and what culture consists of.

That message rests in part on the charge, sometimes implicit, often explicit, that education is vitally important.

The medium tells us this.

Fourteen years of compulsory schooling signifies quite clearly that learning matters.

It also rests on what happens during those years of schooling.

It is for this reason, among others, that the relative inconsistency of school experience across a country is frequently held up as a problem.

The argument is not that all schooling should be identical.

Rather, that it ought to meet similar standards, if we want to send the message to our country’s children that all can succeed and that all are deemed equally worthy of input and support.

Learning then, is as much about acculturation and socialisation as anything else.

And the medium through which it is experienced is as powerful as anything else in terms of the concomitant messages it conveys.

So let us not forget that you, as a teacher, have a great deal of control over the medium of your teaching.

Maybe not the medium of your school, or the system at large. But certainly, over your teaching.

Thinking about that will stand you in good stead when you decide what type of messages you want your lessons, your interactions, your communication and all the rest of it to convey.

What is learning all about?

We will leave things there.

What learning is now seems both clearer and more uncertain – a mark of the fact that we have opened up a series of answers to the question, but in so doing also intimated the unlikelihood that a definitive answer can be reached.

The aim has been to provoke a critical, nuanced engagement with an old, familiar idea.

This will help you to reflect on your own experiences with greater rigour and detachment.

It will also provide you with a way to think about your learners’ learning that is both analytical and searching.

Such an approach should help you to make excellent progress during your training.

I’ll conclude with some questions and activities you can use to reflect further on the nature of learning.

Questions

• What have been your best learning experiences? Why were they good?
• How can a teacher get in the way of learning? How can they facilitate learning that might otherwise be difficult to achieve? If possible, call on your own experiences when thinking about these questions.
• Is all learning equal? Why?
• What do you think about when you are learning? How does this affect the learning you do?
• How do you know when you have learned something? And how do you know when you have mastered something? In your opinion, what’s the difference?

Activities

• Make a table containing five of your best learning experiences and five of your worst. Compare the lists. Ask yourself why they differ. What can you take away from this analysis to use in your own teaching?
• Interview three friends or family members. Ask them about their experiences of learning, what they think learning is, and how they view the process. Compare their answers to your own reflections and see what conclusions you can draw.
• Observe an experienced teacher with a reputation for being very good at their job. Examine the role learning plays in their lesson. What do learners do? How does the teacher manage learning? What is the focus of the lesson? What language is used? If possible, talk to learners and the teacher about these questions as well, then compare their responses with your observation notes.