Identifying Learning

Learning can be broken down into three easy-to-understand sections: Sponge, Developmental, and Taught.

By laying out each meaning and looking at them individually, we can see just how different and sometimes contradictory these meanings are.

When we recognise learning in its many variations, it is possible to support a child in every aspect of learning.

“We are learning all the time. We never stop learning.”

Yes, we are learning all the time.  In our day-to-day life, we are mastering skills, taking in new information and behavioural ways of being - often quite effortlessly and perhaps without even realising.  This concept has been harnessed and named ‘total immersion’, where what is happening around us in our outer world makes an impression on us and is learned.  This way of learning is also referred to as ‘marinating’ and links to the  ‘hidden curriculum’.   It is through this type of learning languages are picked up, first relationship patterns become the default, and why you might sound like your mother when you get older.

The sponge symbolises total immersion learning; we are the sponge, soaking up everything in our environment.

Here, learning is a verb.  It is very much something that we ‘do’, a process, and it is where we learn about the outer environment we live in and enjoy ‘soaking in’ other cultures we visit.  And how we gain information to mimic and fit in for the best survival outcome.  This type of learning is how we map our outer world.

“Children are natural learners.  They learn more in their first years – even before they reach school age – than at any other point in their life.”

During the first few years of life, the human brain is programmed for rapid learning.  There is no other time in a person's lifetime when learning takes place so intensely - cognitively, linguistically, socially, emotionally and physically.

Developmental learning is internal.  Just as an acorn is genetically encoded with the information (also referred to as intelligence) to unfold into a mighty oak, the young human also holds the information or intelligence to unfold into a mature adult.

This genetically encoded, embedded information in every human includes the means to see a person’s development ‘unfold’.  This process is widely recognised as something children do and is held in the highest regard in the world of child development.  The means for this intelligence to unfold is through play*.  Play is one of the most important ways humans learn, and it lays the foundations for all higher learning – especially in the first seven years.

This rapid development is most beneficial when every part of the sequence unfolds naturally, when stages of development are not rushed or skipped.  Play ensures that the learner goes at the pace just right for them and that every stage is covered and in the right sequence.  Many see the benefits of this naturally paced development through play show up in the aforementioned cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional and physical development.

Here, learning is a verb; the learning achieved is in the process. Developmental learning is where we grow our inner skills, such as self-confidence and motivation, self-direction and creativity, risk management, working within one's own capabilities, and self-regulation. Many of these skills begin with 'self' for a very good reason, the development is an inside process.

*Play, like the word learning, can mean different things to different people.  Here, we refer to play a self-initiated activity, independent of adult involvement or agenda, yet dependent on adults holding a safe, secure and stable environment.

“Children go to school to learn and take learning home with them.”

Taught learning is where learning shifts from being used as a verb (sponge and developmental learning) to being used as a noun, from a process to a product.  Here, learning is something we hand out and send children home with, give them something educational to do and we can measure it.

Used a lot in mainstream school, learning as a noun has become the dominant meaning for “learning” within our cultural vocabulary.  We have grown to collectively think that children aren’t learning if they are not at school, if they don’t have a teacher, or if they are not given learning to study, and play (aka recess) is offered as a break from learning.

The symbol for this type of learning is pouring - the pouring of knowledge from an external source.

Taught learning is effective for acquiring specific skills and knowledge, for example, the skills for sailing, the highway code for driving, how to set the table, or peaceful conflict resolution skills.  When we need to learn a specific skill, we find someone (or a book, YouTube tutorial, webinar, etc.) who can teach us.

When we look at how different the three learning types are, it becomes clear that each type requires something very different from us, as adults who support learners. 

We need a global shift of focus from academics to well being, and from educators to human developers."
- Dr. Jean Clinton