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Summary How we learn - Illeris
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Summary of 27 pages for the course Leren op de werkplek at RuG
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SV – How we learn, IllerisChapter 1 – Introduction
1.1What is learning?
It is an ordinary experience from school that not everyone learns what is expected and
some pupils forget some of it very quickly. There is no automatic link between teaching
and learning.
One also learns a great deal outside of school.
What happens is that the pupils who are good at school build up their self-confidence and
often also their desire to learn more, while those who find it difficult learn that they are
not so good at school learning.
Learning can be many and very different processes.
1.2A definition of learning
Four definitions of learning:
1. Outcomes of learning processes; that take place in the individual. Learning here is
used to mean what had been learned or the change that has taken place
2. Mental processes; that take place in the individual and can lead to such changes
or outcomes as covered by meaning 1. Learning psychology
3. Interaction processes; between individuals and their material and social
environment, which, directly or indirectly, are preconditions for the inner learning
processes covered by 2 (and 1)
4. Synonymously with the term teaching; This shows a general confusion (teaching
and learning)
The first three meanings all have significance and justifications, four not.
Central definition in this book: learning is any process that in living organisms leads to
permanent capacity change and which is not solely due to biological maturation or
ageing.
Learning is part of development; it’s an umbrella term for learning and biological
maturation.
This definition implies that processes such as socialization, qualification, competence
development and therapy are regarded as special types of learning processes.
1.3The structure of the book
Part 1: Chapter 1 and 2: basis of understanding of learning
Part 2: Chapter 3-8: structure and nature of learning
Part 3: Chapter 9: most important types of barriers to learning that exist today
Part 4: Chapter 10-14: some of the most important conditions influencing the nature,
course and outcome of learning.
Chapter 2 – The basis of the understanding of learning
Four areas must be involved in a comprehensive understanding of learning:
1. Psychological
2. Biological
3. Brain;
4. Sociological conditions of learning
These four form the basis of the understanding of learning.
2.1 The various sources of the understanding of learning
Learning has traditionally been understood first and foremost as a psychological matter.
In the recent years, understanding of learning has taken place, on the one hand, on a
,biological basis in connection with understanding the body and brain research, and, on
the other hand, on a social science basis.
What is important here is to point out that it is a fundamental view in the book that each
of these academic fields and schools can have something important to contribute to a
satisfactory holistic understanding.
2.2 Learning and psychology
The behaviourist school has limited itself to behavior that can be registered directly but,
nonetheless, learning psychology has been a key discipline in behaviourist psychology
even though learning processes are not immediately observable. Happily, other
psychological schools go much further that immediately observable behavior, and in
general psychology can best be characterized as a science of experience.
Nevertheless, there are some fundamental matters to which one always must relate when
working with learning or other psychological issues:
1. The human being is a biological creature born with certain specific possibilities and
limitations
2. We live in a physical and social environment. You can interact with it, but can
place yourself out of it.
Understanding learning must, naturally, also relate to these existential conditions.
2.3Learning, biology and the body
Learning is something that is based in the body, and what we call mental is something
that had emerged together with the development of human beings and their
predecessors over million years. In human beings, learning primarily takes place through
the brain and the CNS (Dutch: CZS).
Based on approaches mentioned in the book, it has been pointed out time and again that
learning research in the Western World tends to overlook the physical elements in
learning, and that learning is not only a rational matter but also builds on the bodily
functions. The presence of the body in learning is naturally most clear during the first
years of life (think of the developmental stages of Piaget). The bodily foundations is part
of this situation in many ways:
1. It is necessary that the child’s brain has developed normally in the different areas
that play a part in such learning.
2. The body must be sufficiently in balance that it has enough energy to become
engaged in learning rather than having to deal with countering an imbalance.
3. Small children especially will feel the urge to physicalize learning more directly in
an arithmetic situation (counting on the fingers)
4. Problems in managing the situation, or satisfaction in having calculated correctly
will also manifest themselves physically as a kind of discomfort or well-being that
can, in turn, influence the attitude to learning.
These ways are important in a society where more and more learning is an unavoidable
condition of life. At the same time the physical matters are part of a constant interaction
with motivation, which is also a part of learning and is grounded in the body.
2.4Learning and brain functions
It is in the brain, that the individual’s learning processes take place, whether they are
conscious or unconscious.
The most crucially significant discovery [in this connection is probably that in a normal,
healthy brain, what we usually call ‘reason’ cannot function independently of what we call
‘emotions’.
With respect to learning, every single learning process has its own special course
that takes place in the form of certain electrochemical circuits among thousands of brain
cells involved in different areas and centres of the brain. The impulses we receive are
coupled together with our emotions and with the results of relevant earlier learning or
experience as the foundation of both our reaction (‘decision’) and the lessons we learn
from the situation.
Voor een volledige beschrijving van hoe de hersenen werken en in elkaar zitten: p
13-16
, From the point of view of learning this means that we can learn at different levels, from
quite unconscious reflexes over more or less automatic patterns of thinking and acting to
quite conscious and targeted controlled learning processes.
The brain has considerable plasticity.
2.5Unconscious learning and tacit knowledge
It is important to be aware of the fact that we van learn something without being
conscious of it.
Michael Polanyi: tacit knowledge concept, which is that one can be in possession of
knowledge even though this knowledge neither has, nor can be given, a linguistic form.
2.6Learning and society
Learning is always embedded in a social and societal context that provides impulses and
sets the frames for what can be learned and how. Different contexts give learning
essentially different fundamental conditions. In contrast to the one-sided focus of
traditional learning psychology on individual learning, social constructionism claims that
learning is something taking place between people and, therefore, is social in nature.
Learning has both a social and individual side!
2.7Summary
Learning is thus understood as a matter that is wide-ranging and complex. In order for it
to be adequately understood and described, learning must be related to psychological,
experience-based research within many psychological disciplines, biologically based
understandings of the body and especially of brain functions, and social science analyses
of the way in which learning forms part of the current structures and ways of functioning
of societies, both in daily practice and in the general structuring of organized learning
opportunities.
Chapter 3 – The processes and dimensions of learning
3.1 The interaction and acquisition processes
The most basic understanding of how learning takes place, is that all learning contains
two very different processes, both of which must be active before we can learn anything.
1. Interaction; between individual and his environment
2. Acquisition; taking place in the individual of the impulses and influences that
interaction implies.
What determines the process of interaction is fundamentally
inter-personal and societal in nature and depends on the social
and material character of the environment and thus on time
and place. The matters determining the acquisition process
are, on the other hand, basically biological in nature. It is this
duality of two sets of possibilities and conditions that
fundamentally forms the frame of the almost limitless and
never-ending human learning.
Figure: the interactive process of learning. The environment
level and individual level are part of any learning process. The
content element concerns what is learned. The incentive can
be motivation, emotions. Just as the vertical doucle arrow of
the figure shows the individual and environment are two
instances that always form part of the interactive process in
an integrated way, the horizontal double arrow shows that in
the acquisition process there is always an interaction between
content and incentive. But the arrow, in itself, does not show
anything about the nature or weighting of two elements, only that they always contribute
in an integrated way.
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