Learning: three main views

When people talk or write about learning, they may adopt more simple or more complex views of what learning is.

We can group views about learning into three broad groups, each of which takes a different stance on who is doing what to (or with) whom. Perhaps you notice examples of these three being used around you in your daily life. They also show up in how learners talk about learning.

On this page you can read about three dominant views of learning that pervade in education today: learning is being taught, learning is individual sense-making, learning is building knowledge as part of doing things with others - and then we try to make sense of all three.

In the explanations that follow, some quotes from pupils (Year 7s unless otherwise stated) are included.

1. Learning is being taught - LBT for short
Put as simply as this, the first conception may seem daft, but look out; it's the dominant conception in our society. Deep-seated cultural beliefs hold that teaching is telling and learning is listening. Students repeat it, despite also saying how fragile it is. 'The best way I learn is by listening to the teacher but if there is noise around, the teacher's words just go through one ear and out the other'.

Look at the way learning is portrayed in popular newspapers for examples of learning is being taught (LBT) - sometimes put in the voice of a parent. A school which chose not to use red pen when writing on pupils' work became newsworthy for example when parents were reported to have complained N Don't bother about the colour of the ink: just tell them when they've got it wrong'.

A slightly richer version of LBT holds that teaching is communicating thoughts in speech or writing. Learning is simply the reverse procedure - listening and reading. Nevertheless, the communication is conceived of as one-way, even by those with enthusiasm.

Much of the formal arrangement of schooling is built on the view that learning is being taught. As a teacher, you are regularly bombarded by it. The powers that be decide what should go into the child's mind (curriculum), hand that to teachers to 'deliver' (pedagogy) and then create tests to check that it's in there (assessment). In these processes, the child's mind is passive a receptacle waiting to be filled - so the plans do not need to respond to the individuality of the learner or the contribution they make. Similarly, the teacher is a neutral conduit for the knowledge being delivered, and this again can be inspected without reference to the individuality of the teacher or the context of the school.
 
Government uses of the term 'learning', although rare, usually embody the LBT view. For example, the government website Learndirect is an information resource for choosing a course. If learners vary in their learning, LBT has little constructive to say, since the learner is not its focus. If there is 'failure to learn', it is often attributed to the learner, but not in any sophisticated way, as for example when their ability is invoked, or some unexplained mental ability (and there are plenty of these which have been invented). Learning deficit is a deficit in the learner - either in mental function or mental attitude (or having some barrier in your social background). The other alternative to this one-way theory of communication is that the teaching might be blamed - for example, for not being 'clear' or 'structured' enough, or 'planned' properly. In a view where learning is a passive process of knowledge acquisition, with predictable and measurable outcomes, perhaps the saddest aspect is its downplaying and discrediting the activity of the learner when describing learning and dishonouring their contribution to the process. Many adults, including teachers, report that it takes them many years after leaving school to become proactive learners.

2. Learning is individual sense-making - LIS for short
This second view focuses attention on the learner and their processes. It often highlights the processes which are called 'cognitive' (ie about thinking) but may also connect with emotional and social processes. In this view, learning is the activity of the learner. S/he is active in constructing sense from the environment, not passively receiving it, and also active in that the particular sense made will reflect what s/he already knows and has experienced, as well as future goals and views of self. 'The way I learn is to work it out by myself' (Emily).

In learning is individual sense-making (LIS), the learner's mind is not seen as passive - and this contrast with LBT has a long history. The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited' (Plutarch, born 45 AD) Learning is also described as an 'active' process in another sense - the active working with materials. This aspect is often reflected in the voice of learners themselves. 'I think that I am better at learning when I actually do things instead of just reading or writing something down' (Hannah) 'I think I'd learn a bit more if it was a bit more active' (Ben)
In LIS, the learner is not seen to discover an independent, pre-existing world outside the mind of the 'knower'. So distinctions such as 'objective versus subjective' are not used. Instead learners are involved in many two-way processes of inter-subjectivity: truths are the product of evidence, argument and construction. All the same, LIS often examines what is acquired through these processes, whether it is a conception, a notion, a misconception, a schema, or a mental representation. Thus it concurs with dictionary definitions of learning as the act of gaining knowledge', seeing it as an acquisition, like the accumulation of goods. For LIS, the process of making sense of experience emphasises standing back from experience, so that reflection and review are important.
 
Much has been written on how the principles of LIS may be built into the practices of education, and it is also clear that many teachers who do so find themselves in tension with the cultural beliefs and practices summarised in the first view, LBT. For the teacher's role to become more that of 'guide on the side', rather than sage on the stage', we need to refocus attention from teacher to learner.

Critics of LIS, many of whom are (knowingly or not) proponents of LBT, try to discredit LIS as 'new-fangled' or 'modern'. However, the change of emphasis was employed by Socrates (470-399 BC) who engaged his learners by asking questions. He often insisted that he really knew nothing, but his questioning skills allowed others to learn by self-generated understanding. Does this sound like your experience as a teacher when you help a pupil make sense?

If learning is an individual making sense of experience, it is sometimes portrayed as a cycle in which all phases are necessary: an action experience, a reflection, a making sense and an application.

Do Apply Learn Review   

A learning deficit might be understood as a lack of:
• particular experiences
• adopting a reflective stance to experience
• particular thinking for understanding
• future context for the learning to be applied.

How learning informs action in future situations is vital: LIS helps us see that learning is influenced by the use to which it is to be put. Some of the more linear practices in schools and colleges highlight application as a stage after understanding, but it is a hazard to separate them too much.

Within LIS, a key strategy for enhancing learning is to ask learners to 'explain to themselves'. Young people recognise this in their view of learning, and may also foresee the process of explaining to others. 'I like learning more because I could explain some things more' (Jacob) 'I could learn something and then put it in my own words' (Bianca).
As a teacher you might recognise much of LIS in the processes you are aware of your pupils going through, but do you also recognise similar sense-making in yourself? And are you an individual who has made sense of your own learning? Or are you more like the senior teacher who said 'I've just realised that I went through the whole of my school career and noticed nothing about my learning'?

3. Learning is building knowledge as part of doing things with others - LBKO for short
'Learning is cooperating' (Tom. 5 years)
 
This view develops the point that meaning is constructed together in social activity, not individually in people's heads. Human learning is necessarily and fundamentally social: it utilises language, culture and communication, and implicates our identities and preferred futures. All of these are social creations and are being dynamically re-created. We build our identities and connections around our work, knowledge, and contributions to our communities. Yet, sadly, schools and colleges often behave as if the social were a threat to learning, or think it should be addressed in a low-status corner of the curriculum.

Learning is building knowledge as part of doing things with others (LBKO) highlights the understanding that new knowledge emerges in the process of social activity and especially in dialogue. As a teacher you have doubtless had many occasions when you say something new to someone in a conversation, and think about it more later, perhaps relating it to other things you have said.

LBKO draws our attention to the processes through which learners act as partners, communicate in relation to their activity, involve themselves in dialogue, and create a joint product which is more than the sum of the parts.

I learn best working with a friend, they can explain it to me without me even asking. We can work together whilst combining answers' (Sarah-Jane).
‘Your partner sitting next to you says something that you don't know and you say something that your partner doesn't know, then you will both learn something' (Usha, eight years).

This view of learning suggests that as people are engaged together, they are also empowered - both to contribute and to influence. This view helps us see that the settings and situations which provide the most potential for learning are those in which participants are engaged in real action that has consequences not only for them but for their community as a whole.

In LBKO, the motivation to learn is linked to motivation for engagement, and the wish to enter and participate in new communities. It is this need for meaningful participation that may be similar for a gang member, a prize student, a scientist, a soloist, a public servant or an entrepreneur.

Formal arrangements of schooling sometimes reflect LBKO, for example in a classroom where participants are working to create new and shared knowledge on an agreed focus. But these examples are in the minority. Outside school, this view of learning is more prevalent. Ninety per cent of all adults each year involve themselves in intentional learning projects, 75 per cent outside of institutional frameworks, and this 'informal' learning is a very social phenomenon with a lot of human interaction.

In LBKO the impact of culture is taken seriously, sometimes highlighting that we are all surrounded by the cultural objects in which meaning has been vested by previous generations, and (as anthropologists remind us) cultural and cognitive development constantly interact. Here the context in which meaning-making happens comes to be more important: more attention is paid to the processes by which learning communities are built.

As a teacher, you may see yourself as a leader of a community - LBKO would suggest as one of the leaders, for just as knowledge is distributed around persons, so is leadership. Such a person will be helping learners engage in 'generative' rather than 'passive' learning activities, and will act on the assumption that learners need to engage in collaborative argumentation and knowledge-testing. LBKO moves us from viewing learning as an acquisition, whatever the commodity to be acquired, towards viewing learning as becoming part of a community. A hazard of this view would be to to focus solely on social processes to the point of excluding individual ones.

Making sense of all three

As we move though the three views, we move from the ones which are dominant in our culture (LBT) to those which are less dominant and less developed in

A simple phrase for each shows that the subject and the verb change:

1. S/he taught me...
2. 1 made sense...
3. We worked out that...

Second, as we move though the three views, we move from the ones which are dominant in our culture (LBT) to those which are less dominant and less developed in our everyday language (LBKO). Realising this helps us to explain why the latter two are less evident in many classrooms: the practices which they require are not so practised and do not conform to some of the dominant cultural images of how teaching is seen - as transmission.

Tensions between these three views can create tensions for us as educators.

The way we have come to resolve these tensions is reflected in our answers to these questions:
• does learners' knowledge come from my transmission or their construction?
• is my job to deliver or to create an environment for seeking knowledge?
• does my teaching reflect policy or what I know about the learners?
• does my teaching make a difference or not?
• do I have the skills, or do I need to learn continuously?
• am I on my own, or do my context and colleagues matter?

As teachers, our particular resolutions to these tensions will reflect our vision of teaching, the features of the local context, how the political and cultural influences are responded to, and so on.

Resources

• Learning a sense-makers guide, Pdf document, 3294 KB