Why learning?
What is the purpose of learning... and does it have to have one? I suspect a lot of our arguments about learning effectiveness are moot if we don't actually agree on what learning is for.
The other week I was having lunch with an excellent fellow learning designer. We were talking about sometimes-difficult relationships with academics and other educators, and how so much of our work is about handling disagreements and conflicting beliefs about how to approach teaching.
She said, “Well, at the end of the day, we all have the same goal: learning”.
But do we? Are we all using that word to mean the same thing?
There are plenty of theories (and political debates) about how learning happens, but we are very, very cagey about why. A lot of the time, learning is assumed to be a transaction: teachers give knowledge, students get knowledge. I mean, that’s part of it, right? But it’s rarely how educators really like to think about it. As Dave Cormier points out, if learning can be rendered algorithmic like this, it becomes passionless and, potentially worse, valueless.
But what is learning? Defining it, defending it, ascribing a purpose to learning are all challenging tasks because every definition seems to exclude or somehow miss a point about what learning can be.
There’s another concept that’s similar and I’ve written about it recently: play.
Brian Sutton-Smith fleshed out seven purposes for play which he described as “rhetorics of play”: play as imaginary, as frivolity, as progress, as power, as identity, as fate, as the self. They fit together and clash all at once. We think of children’s play as a kind of freedom from the demands of goal-driven life (frivolous, imaginary) yet simultaneously as a means of learning and performing or producing power relations. There is something paradoxical in play.
Learning, too, is a contrary activity. When we think about learning, we can hold simultaneous ideas of free thought and indoctrination, of opening up and closing down potentiality as capabilities are expanded (having learned, more things are possible) and options are discounted (having learned, more things are impossible).
As well, learning is a doing word: to learn is to act. It is a process, not an object (like, say, “education”). One might argue that, like the future, learning never arrives, but is always on its way somewhere.
So, as an exercise, here are seven ways of translating the learning verb into purposeful actions. They are not mutually exclusive, nor are they parts that make up a tidy whole. They are just ways of giving intent, not to the learning outcome, but to the learning process.
They are also not necessarily complete. Can you identify other actions we might mean when we say “I’m learning”?
Seven ways of learning
Being: learning as self-affirming
Some learning is framed as a practice of personal affirmation, of pursuing or deepening knowledge and practices that are important to the the learner. This rhetoric is particularly prominent in the context of personal interest learning, often but not always informal and autodidactic.
Getting: learning as acquisition
Often, learning is described as a process of acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, capabilities — as though these were things that could be got and had, like commodities. This rhetoric is invoked by human capital theory and by constructs like the “knowledge economy”.
Becoming: learning as transformation
The rhetoric of becoming is one that sees learning as a process of irreversible change in each learner. Once learned, something cannot be unlearned (though it may be forgotten or superseded by new learning). The notion of threshold concepts represents this rhetoric: pieces of knowledge which, once known, unlock new ways of thinking and new potential knowledges for a learner.
Growing: learning as development
Learning is often understood as a natural process which plays out continuously throughout a person’s life. Learning can progress along predictable lines as a person moves through stages of development, particularly but not only in the early years (Piaget’s work being a seminal example). As individual lives become increasingly differentiated, development becomes more specialised and individually unique.
Fitting in: learning as acculturation
This rhetoric sees learning as a cultural phenomenon in which learners develop contextually-important knowledge and practice. The concept of literacy is an example of this rhetoric, in which particular bodies of cultural knowledge are seen as essential foundations for participation in society.
Doing: learning as performance
When learning is perceived in terms specifically of actions and behaviours which are measurable or observable in the social world, this rhetoric is at work. The language of learning outcomes, with their performance verbs, is an example of this rhetoric.
Signalling: learning as status-affirming
The particular focus of a person’s learning can be seen as an indication of that person’s role or class within society. For example subjects like classical composition, motor mechanics and quantum physics each carry undertones about the class, intelligence, or lifestyle of the people who learn them.
So — what do you mean when you say “I’m learning”?