This week I am presenting strategies for web-based learning at this year’s CSTM conference. And, as often happens in these things, I want to define “learning” for a lay audience who (quite understandably) don’t want to be subjected to extended and nuanced discussions about the philosophical under pinnings of learning. And of course, for my part, I want to convey with great earnestness that web-based learning differs from the traditional methods they are more familiar with. I always struggle with this communication, and unfortunately, I won’t be offering a resolution in this Notebook post.
Instead, I thought I would try something more fundamental, and that is, define learning for education practitioners. I thought I would start here because, for all our talk of learning, we pay little attention to what it actually involves, and because how we define learning influences how we practice our craft. Perhaps, thus equipped, I can look at bringing these definitions to communities of practice beyond our own discipline.
All definitions of learning are linked to various philosophies and theories of learning. What you believe about the mind and about the nature of knowledge affects how you think about we should be learning. The Theory Into Practice (TIP) database presents brief summaries of fifty major theories of learning and instruction. One reason for the plethora of learning definitions is that learning is both a product–an outcome, a tangible knowing–as well as a process. This is a point made in what has become the standard text on the subject, Merriam and Caffarella’s Learning in Adulthood (1998), and is nicely summarized by Mark K. Smith at Infed (the Four orientations to learning–behaviourist, cognitivist, humanist and social/situational–is a particularly worth reviewing).
Still, textbooks always divide things up so neatly, and the messier alternatives that are not as easily classified are often left out. Learning is afterall a complex phenomenon. Further, interpreting these orientations into prescriptive notions about should be learned leads to yet more complexity. So, with an effrontery only possible in a online notebook, I am offer this work in progress collection of learning definitions for my Notebook:
- Learning is the acquisition of facts, skills, and methods through study (19th century approach).
- Learning is a permanent change in behaviour brought about by experience (Haggard, 1963, p.20; clearly a behaviourist orientation to learning).
- Learning is the changes in the ways in which people “understand, or experience, or conceptualize the world around them” (Ramsden, 1992, p. 4; a cognitivist orientation to learning).
- Learning is the process of gaining knowledge and expertise (Malcolm Knowles, 1998, p.17)
- Learning is “individually constructed and socially co-constructed by learners based on their interpretations of experiences in the world” (Jonassen 1999, p. 217; a constructivist orientation).
- Learning is “properly conceived as being located in communities of practice” (Tennant, 1997, p.77). That is, learning is inseparable from doing.
References
- Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (Vol. 2), pp. 215-239.
- Knowles, M. S., Holton III, E. F., Swanson, R. A. (1998). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development.
- Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to Teach in Higher Education.
- Merriam, S. and Caffarella (1991, 1998). Learning in adulthood. A comprehensive guide.
- Tennant, M. (1988, 1997). Psychology and adult learning.
