What is learning?
I was initially going to title this post “How do we learn?”. I have concluded that above all else, that is really my main interest. As a teacher and teacher trainer, I operate in the field of teaching and education, and I write regularly about these topics. What really interests me, however, is how we learn and what can be done by teachers and institutions to best facilitate effective and efficient learning.
The reality is, however, that much of how we learn remains a mystery. We know more and more about what happens in the brain over time where learning is concerned — neural pathways and the like — but no one can yet quite answer the question of exactly how learning works in the moment. I do believe, however, that we can make valuable surface observations of the relevant behaviours and outcomes and combine these with what we know about brain processes to get a fairly practicable idea of what learning is and what things assist or hinder it.
It is from that perspective that I write this post, and I shall begin by outline what I think learning is. Please read this with all of the necessary caveats regarding what we do not yet know.
What do I mean by learning?
I don’t think it’s too difficult to offer an agreeable definition for the idea of learning. I tend to think of it in fairly broad terms as just the process of becoming more knowledgeable and capable. That’s about it, really. Any situation where there has been an increase in knowledge or ability, I am happy to say there has been learning on a basic level. IT shouldn’t matter where that takes place or through what process. However, I do believe some processes to lead to more valuable and more reliable learning than others.
What then makes for “good learning”? I think two main characteristics should be present for learning to be considered effective or maximally good, and they are that learning should be applicable and long lasting. That is to say that learning is of less value if it cannot be usefully applied in real life situations and that learning is not good or effective if it is forgotten soon after it is first learned.
What we teachers and educators must consider very carefully and indeed with high priority, if we agree on these principles, is how we can best facilitate learning in our institutions so that it meets these criteria. What are the best ways to teach, the best materials to use, the best forms or assessment and so on in order to ensure that learning is optimally applicable to real life situations and is not instantly or immediately forgettable.
What is important for effective learning?
For me, the most important part of the definition of learning that I have provided above is the word process. I think that we should be very cautious of anybody trying to market shortcuts in learning. “Master x in # days” is a claim that we should all be very skeptical of. Anybody claiming to have a shortcut to learning is skipping or reducing the process of learning, and without process, I don’t believe there is any learning.
There might well be visible results after some of these commercial learning programmes, but there are several things we need to review in those cases. The first is what we mean by results. That is to say that an assessment can be designed to show many different things, and if we merely assess the short term uptake of a given programme, we might well get very positive results, but they will tell us nothing of the long term results of the learning nor of the potential application of the learning.
For learning to really meet those criteria, I think that time and effort must be invested. To go from a position of ‘not knowing’ to one of ‘knowing’ or of ‘can’t’ to ‘can’ requires endeavour to at least some degree. Of course some learning will be easier for some individuals than for others, and the more you learn about a given topic, perhaps the easier further learning becomes, but no learning is instant or entirely effortless. This must be not just recognised but embraced so that our students value the time and effort required in learning rather than begrudge it.
It is fortunate that some of the most effective ways to encourage students to participate more actively in their own learning and to value learning and the effort it requires are also beneficial to the process of learning itself. Students invariably make more effort in learning when they feel that the learning is valuable and relatable to their own needs and interests. This, of course, is one of the very criteria I outlined at the start of this post. Learning must be applicable to the real world and provide value to the student in his or her own context if it is to be effective.
If we make the learning process more practical and contextual, it will be both more interesting — and thus more motivating — to the student and more valuable. Learning that interesting and valuable is also more memorable, and so it helps us fulfil my second requirement as well. We remember things better if we care about them, but we also remember things more if we determine them to be of importance to our life. The first of these is a matter of preference, but the second is much less conscious.
What do we know about these processes?
Why are these things true? Well, here is where the brain science that we have established so far can help us. What we do know is that on the level of the brain, learning is represented by neurological pathways, meaning connections between regions of the brain. The more neural connections, the stronger the learning. Learning is reinforced when it is relevant because neural pathways are established between more areas and connect to areas governing more practical skills. That is to say, if the thing being learned is particularly important and relates to multiple areas of the learner’s life, this is represented in the neural map.
Learning is also reinforced through recall. Something that we study once and then never revisit is not very likely to survive in the brain. On a cognitive level, it is cast aside as unimportant, unneeded. However, something that we recall frequently, that access in the brain a lot, is recognised as important and is kept ready for use. Thus, if we want our learning to be useful, we should use what we have learned frequently, recall our knowledge, test ourselves, practise our skills. All of this leads to stronger neural networks and, as such, better learning.
Put short, our brain helps us learn the things that seem important and puts much less emphasis on things that seem unimportant. If we never use a skill, it is reasonable to say that that skill is not important and as such does not require as much real estate devoted to it in the brain, nor does it need to be kept at the ready. This is not the case for a skill we use regularly in conjunction with tasks we face frequently. In this case, we need to have the skill available to use at all times, and we hope to increase our proficiency over time as we continue to use it.
How can teachers make use of this knowledge?
I find all of this very interesting, and I look forward to more advances in your understanding of neurology and the brain’s role in learning. Of particular importance to me though is how we can leverage these findings within our education systems and teaching methodology. Much of what we have discovered in the brain sciences is in its early stages, and it is perhaps a little premature to be designing whole education infrastructures on the results of a few studies, but it is also foolish to ignore what we have learned.
As teachers, we should be striving at all times to update our approaches and methodologies to account for new findings and discoveries with regard to how people learn and how best to teach them. There are a number of things that we can take from our understanding of the brain and of learning as a process and incorporate into our classroom practice, materials design, assessment and so forth.
In particular, I believe that we should strive to make all of our lessons as relatable to our students’ needs and as contextual to their lives as we possibly can. This will make lessons more interesting for the students, and thus learning will benefit much more from intrinsic motivation, but it will also meant that the knowledge and skills the students learn will be genuinely valuable and useful for them in the tasks and challenges they face outside of the classroom.
We should also recognise the value of regular recall. Make the effort to spiral your syllabus so that topics are revisited multiple times throughout the programme, perhaps relating to different contexts and using different skills each time so that a) the brain identifies the knowledge as important based on its frequent use and b) more neural pathways are created as the knowledge is connected to an increasing variety of scenarios and abilities. As these neural networks become stronger and more complex, the students will be better able to access them instantly in the real life situations where they actually need them without having to spend time reviewing their notes or racking their brains to remember something they once learned long ago.
What techniques and approaches do you make use of in the classroom to maximise the value and memorability of learning?
