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I am still learning.
Michelangelo

Wednesday 12 September 2012

My View of Learning

Learning is a complex process in my opinion. I think all the learning theories (behaviorist, cognitivist, humanist and social&situational) have brought some important factors to the knowledge of learning. I think it would be too narrow minded to box learning under only one of those theories!

We learn new things all the time, both in our private and professional lives. Sometimes learning is unconscious and sometimes learning itself is the task.

Everyone prefers to learn in his / her individual way. I myself like to search for information and reflect the outcomes in written or spoken form. I find the social context of learning really important. I also like to learn by doing. Visual material is not my cup of tea, but still sometimes needed (and therefore I should improve my visual learning skills). I strongly feel that my understanding becomes deeper when I use many different kind of methods to process the new information. Sometimes it might be the last figure or video that makes me to say "Now I got it!". This happened recently when I was learning how to tie a sling for my baby. I finally got it when I was watching some tutorial videos.

The most important factor behind "educational" learning is motivation. A learner has to know why he / she needs to learn something new, and he / she has to want it! The level of motivation is totally different if you feel that you really need the new information than if you are learning only to get some credits. One of the teacher's greatest challenges is to help the students to motivate themselves.

Further reading: http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm


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