1.1.1 How do we learn?

We learn in many ways using many different strategies. We learn through observation. For example, we may learn from observing others’ behaviour or the consequences of others’ behaviour. We may observe others and imitate their behaviour. We learn from the experiences we have. Through our interactions with others we acquire new information, skills and attitudes. We often remember new information by linking it to what we already know. Sometimes we may memorize facts like when we want to recall a telephone number. We learn by asking ourselves questions like who, what, where, when and how? We often develop strategies to help us learn something new.

1.1.2 Changing concepts of teaching and learning

In Reading 1.1, Whitaker draws our attention to the differences between "traditional" views of learning, and views that come from more up-to-date theories of learning. Another word for a ‘view’ or an approach is the word ‘paradigm’. A paradigm is a pattern of thinking, or the way in which facts are organized. In this section, we will briefly summarise the two paradigms because we believe that the shift from one to the other is fundamental to change in educational practice in South Africa today.

The "traditional" learning paradigm

The "traditional" paradigm was largely influenced by the social and economic forces of the industrial age. In the same way that society had its social order with the economy divided into managers and workers, schools too became social agencies to sort people into their appropriate places in the social and economic worlds, according to their intelligence.

Intelligence was viewed as an unchanging characteristic. The perception was that some people are intelligent, some are of average intelligence and others are less intelligent. You probably experienced this in your schooling career, where a learner who failed or performed poorly was regarded as lacking in intelligence or ‘dull’. Intelligence became that which was measured by IQ (intelligence quotient) tests. For example, a person of average intelligence would be expected to score approximately 100 on the IQ test. This led to a very narrow definition of human intelligence and potential.

How did this paradigm of intelligence influence our perceptions of learning?

• Firstly, it led to the belief that learning is successive. Also, learning was seen as an individual activity, which should occur without assistance (for example without the use of tools like calculators).
• Secondly, an understanding that knowledge is hierarchical. This led to the belief that intellectuals use their intelligence, tradesmen use tools. What this did, was decontextualize the nature of what learners are expected to learn. Learning was not a meaningful and relevant task in terms of the real world. The goal was to get the right answer even if you did not understand the concepts behind the problem. The traditional school paradigm was about imparting or transmitting knowledge. Educator’s imparted new knowledge as prescribed in a state structured curriculum according to government guidelines, based on state-authorized text books and standardized tests.
• Learners were categorized and labelled according to their ability with the intention of creating more homogenous groups. Recent research shows that this classification process still divides learners; not only by intelligence, but by socio-economic class, race, language competence and ethnic background.

This competitive model which separated learners, worked to serve the interests of learners from middle and upper class backgrounds. Societies in general have been able to accommodate young people who did not succeed in school but who acquired basic mathematics and reading abilities. In many clerical and administrative jobs, the ability to perform routine tasks in which punctuality and compliance were required was adequate for success at work.

The new learning paradigm

Among theorists, researchers and educators a new paradigm of learning is emerging. This paradigm is based on the philosophy that everyone is capable of achieving, even though this may be in different ways. A learner may experience great difficulty solving mathematical problems but may be excellent at writing an essay or making items in handcraft. Therefore the classroom environment should allow all learners to find their strengths.

Such a basic philosophy means that schools and classrooms will need to be structured in different ways. As a start, as educators, we can ask the following three basic questions, which we will briefly begin to answer over the next few pages:

• What do learners need to learn, and why?
• How do we know when they have learned?
• How do we help all children learn?

What do learners need to learn, and why?

The change from the traditional paradigm to the new one is marked by a definition of learning in terms of outcomes for all learners. This is a significant shift from the traditional view, which defined curriculum in terms of what teachers were required to cover, not what learners were expected to learn. Teachers are now accountable for the learning of each learner.

Drake (quoted in Changing our Schools, Stoll, 1996) provides a useful way for teachers to interpret the types of outcomes teachers use in lessons. Based on Spady’s (1994) idea of a ‘demonstration mountain’, she identifies three types of outcomes, ‘being’, ‘doing’ and ‘knowing’.

At the top of the mountain are the ‘being’ outcomes: being tolerant, being caring and being responsible. These are the sort of qualities which make for responsible citizenship as adults. In the centre, the ‘doing’ level, are outcomes which should emerge as learners are exposed to all the different learning areas, like critical thinking, problem solving, using technology, and communicating effectively. These have been captured in Curriculum 2005 as the critical crossfield outcomes. At the base of the mountain are the ‘knowing’ aspects of learning found in subject disciplines. It is easier to assess the learning of concepts at the base, i.e. knowledge; it is more difficult to measure the ‘doing’ level, and exceedingly difficult to determine the ‘being’ level. It is tempting, therefore, for educators to ignore the middle and top and focus solely on the ‘knowing’ level, because our past training has equipped us at this level.

Drake advises: “In developing our daily lessons we need to keep our focus on the type of person we want our learners to be. Then we are in a better position to decide what learners should be able to know and do as we design down from the exit outcomes to develop curriculum”. Educators need to ask a key curriculum question: “Why am I teaching this?” Asking this question - how do these activities contribute to the ‘being’ level of learners? - on a daily basis, obliges teachers to determine principles on which their work is to be based.

The ‘doing’ level of Drake’s model raises another important question: How do the learning areas relate to each other? In other words, are links made between the work in different subject areas? This has been one of the difficulties of the old curricula – learners learnt subject content in separate packages, unconnected to each other. Each day, in almost every secondary school and many primary schools around the world, learners are expected to draw together and make sense of the learning presented by five, six or even eight different teachers teaching their specialities. This task is like asking learners to put a jigsaw puzzle together without a picture to guide them! Therefore it is important to assist learners to identify the purpose of activities and how skills and information from different learning areas relate to each other. The integration of learning areas should not be forced or artificial.

How do we know what they have learned?

Assessment is an important part of education, and wherever possible it must be of a type suitable to and used for the enhancement of good quality learning. It is the role of the educator, in consultation with parents and the learner, to assess and evaluate the performance of each learner. If assessment is the gathering of information about a learner’s performance, then evaluation is the application of judgement to that data to place a ‘value’ on the performance. To this end we as educators must become ‘assessment literate’. We should be able to answer such questions as:

• What are the best assessment practices to assess this learning outcome?
• How well does this assessment sample learners’ achievement?
• Do the learners understand the assessment criteria and assessment methods?
• Does this assessment assess outcomes that matter?
• Are assessment strategies fair for all learners?

How do we help all the learners learn?

This is a crucial question asked by educators who want to shift to the new paradigm. The following suggestions are given as a start, but we hope that your study of this whole module will give you a number of ideas that you can use to change your practice to one that includes all learners.

The first suggestion is to Attend to Learners’ Self Concepts: Self concept is a person’s belief or ‘concept’ about her or himself. It is the result of the various interactions a person has had with significant people over a lifespan, and is influenced by others’ responses to him/her. The following five statements show how the school context impacts on a learner’s self-concept:

• schools which positively affirm, support and praise learners assist facilitate learners’ cognitive development
• encouragement of learners is related to positive outcomes
• learners learn more when they see themselves as capable, responsible and worthwhile
• learners learn more when they choose to learn
• people are the most important component of a school

The second suggestion is to Address the basics of classroom management and teaching skills: Research confirms the necessity for effective planning of teaching. It is important to group learners according to academic and emotional/social needs. Research has emphasised the value of the efficient use of time and of smooth and efficient classroom routines. In lessons, it is important to use higher-order questioning, questions that encourage thinking and reasoning, and to focus each lesson on one or two specific learning outcomes. Setting fair and consistent standards for classroom behaviour, and having expectations that learners will give of their best, are also important. Creating a work centred environment and planning for maximum interaction between the learner and the teacher enhance learning.

The third suggestion is to Employ a variety of teaching and learning strategies to engage multiple minds: If we see all learners as having the potential to learn, as having different abilities to learn in different ways, then a variety of strategies are required to meet these differences. The focus of instruction should be to provide meaningful learning, which relates to the learners’ context, so that learners can understand and see the relevance of what they are learning.

1.1.3 Understanding Your Own Learning and Behaviour

The central aim of this section is to help you understand more about your own thinking and learning. If you can understand how you yourself learn, you will be in a better position to understand how learners learn. Spend a few minutes thinking about yourself as an adult learner (i.e. after 18). Describe at least two instances where you learnt to do something as an adult, e.g. how did you learn to drive or how did you learn to use the banking system? Describe how you learnt the skill of driving or banking.

What have you learned in the last week? You may have gained some insight on world events and occurrences from reading the newspaper, or perhaps learnt how to use a new computer program, or learnt the value of working on a problem with others in a group. You may have learnt what OBE is, or developed a new understanding of your role as an educator, or how to operate an overhead projector. This tells us that we are learning new information and skills and developing values or different attitudes all the time. A primary responsibility of an educator is to help learners acquire new knowledge, skills and values in preparation for adulthood.

Think back to the question we asked earlier about what learning is. What do we really mean when we talk about learning? Well, there is no agreed upon definition of learning.

Some theorists define learning as:

• a change in behaviour due to experience,

and others say it is

• a change in mental associations due to experience

You will notice that the two definitions have something in common. Both describe learning as a change that is due to experience. But, they also differ in that the first definition describes learning as a change in behaviour. The second definition describes learning as a change in mental association.

We can learn something useful from both definitions in our attempt to understand the learning process and identify strategies to help learners learn more effectively. These two views of learning can be seen as the basis of the theories of learning we will discuss in the rest of this module.

The following diagram represents these theories.

In the above diagram you will see that on the left we refer to those theories which focus on changes in mental associations (in other words cognitive changes) as a result of experience. This group then divides further into ‘cognitive theory’ and ‘social cognitive theory’. The theories of Vygotsky and Piaget would fit into the cognitive theory group, and in this module we will be considering another theory: information processing theory. Social cognitive theory (based on the work of Albert Bandura) will then be covered. On the right of the above diagram, we have shown the theories which focus on changes in behaviour, and we will be introducing ideas from behaviourism at a later stage.

This diagram presents a first overview of the learning theories. Before we look at the details of these theories, we need to think about the idea of a theory. A theory is a collection of ideas that helps to explain why events occur in a particular way. Theories are useful to us because they can help us understand some aspects of the learning situation. But, there are limits to a theory’s usefulness, and there may be circumstances in which one theory does not help us to explain what we observe. You must therefore see a theory as a tool, which can help your understanding, rather than a ‘truth’ that is always applicable. A learning theory may be a versatile tool that is helpful across a broad range of learning situations, or it may be limited to certain applications.

Before we examine these theories, it is important to clarify what we can learn from theories. It is common for students to feel confused by theories especially if they seem to be given conflicting explanations. Students often think that theories must all be wrong, or that one is right and the rest are wrong. This is not necessarily the case.

Think about a researcher who wants to find out how children learn about adult authority. Depending on the researcher’s particular area of interest and beliefs, she/he may investigate the role of adult models, and/or how children’s peers influence the effectiveness of the models. But the incidence and influence of particular models may be strongly influenced by the culture in which they exist, with some being considered more acceptable than others. For example, many people in South Africa look up to Nelson Mandela as a role model, but in China, where many people might not know much about him, he would not be a role model. Role models may also change over time, as society changes its dominant beliefs. Also, people with certain characteristics of intelligence, personality, social awareness or physical appearance may respond differently to one particular role model. In the light of these complexities, most theories will take a specific context or framework within which to work. They must therefore, be seen and understood within these contexts.

The next section, on information processing approaches, takes the topic of learning further. Wittrock (An empowering conception of educational psychology, 1992) states that effective teaching :

involves knowledge and training that goes beyond subject matters to include an understanding of how people attend, comprehend, construct meaning, transfer what they know, solve problems, and get motivated to excel (pp 139-9).

In this quotation, he is referring to aspects of information processing. In order to understand your own learning, you need to know something about the way in which incoming information is processed in our minds, the way it is stored and then how we access information later. After looking at the structures of the mind that perform these tasks, in the next section, we will then look at some of the ways in which we can improve our approaches to learning.

A Summary of this section’s key learning points

• Learning is a change in an individual which results from experience.
• We learn in many ways: observing and imitating behaviour; experiences; interactions with others; memorizing and asking questions.
• There are differences between the old, narrow view of learning and the new paradigm which considers:
  • what learners need to learn and why
  • how do we know when they have learned
  • how do we help all children learn
• We developed an understanding our own learning in order to understand learners, needs.
• We considered theory as a tool which can help understanding.
• We studied cognitive theories on learning as a change in mental associations due to experiences.
• Behaviourist theories focus on learning as a change in behaviour due to experiences.