1 - What is Learning?

Learning means acquiring the ability to respond in a competent manner to a situation. When learning occurs, our behaviour is modified through experience. Learning involves mastering information or skills that help us react successfully to our environment. Learning begins with something human beings have in abundance when they are born—curiosity. Learning means gathering information from family members, friends, music, and movies. That is informal learning. Most people think of formal learning situations when learning is mentioned. Formal learning comes to us through reading books, listening to classroom lectures, watching documentary videos, or taking tennis lessons from a qualified instructor.

girl skiing

Identifying three broad categories of learning is useful.
• Perceptual motor learning involves the acquisition of physical skills such as riding a bicycle, going downhill on skis, or doing a somersault. An individual must do two things in this learning situation—accurately perceive the skill and implement the action required.
For example, to tie a bow, you must be able to see the series of hand movements involved and then get your own hands to follow the correct movement pattern.
• Affective learning involves feelings and emotions. Our values, biases, likes, dislikes, social rules, and appropriate ways of behaving toward others are all included. Affective learning is a vital part of our humanness and our sociability.
• Cognitive learning is school learning. It covers thinking, problem solving and other creative processes of the mind.

From birth onward, much of our education involves learning to adapt ourselves to our particular environment. First, we must learn to adapt our behaviour to be acceptable to our parents and family members. In time, we learn the important lessons of adjusting our behaviour to fit the expectations of a wide circle of family, friends, and acquaintances in our society.

Learning involves a number of complex processes that occur to make both knowledge and skills remembered and stored in our brains. But learning also involves an impetus from the learner to engage in the fascinating process of learning.