Learning

What is Learning?

Learning is a behaviour change that results from experience. Learning experiences involve many kinds of activities such as travelling overseas, meeting new people or seeing an object you can’t identify. Reflexes such as blinking the eyes, pulling back from a hot flame, or crying are not learned. However experiences may increase or decrease the frequency at which they occur. Some learning depends on maturation, such as a new born cannot walk, talk, or solve mathematical equations. There are several aspects of learning: classical and operant conditioning, observation and imitation.

What are the different types of Learning?

Classical conditioning is when learning takes place through the association of a stimulus and a response. For example receiving a chocolate bar for a correct answer. Operant conditioning is when behaviour is shaped by the careful use of reinforcements or rewards for appropriate behaviours. However inappropriate behaviour is ignored so that it is not rewarded with attention. For example when a child is polite they are rewarded with praise, but if the child is rude, they are ignored.

Much of children’s learning is achieved through the processes of observation and imitation. This can be done in two ways: Children can act at the same time as the adult and receive an immediate reward. For example when a child sees his father brushing his teeth, and explains that he wants to as well. The father shows the child and gives immediate praise. They also can learn when they see someone else receiving a reward for behaviour. For example when a child sees that her brother is getting praised for taking his dishes to the sink, she decides to do the same thing.

There are several basic features to learning: generalisation, discrimination, shaping, extinction and habituation. Generalisation is the process of finding similarities among things. For example girls and boys are both people. Discrimination has to do with perceiving differences. For example that girls have long hair and boys have short hair, or that girls wear pink and boys wear blue.

Shaping concerns the gradual acquisition of a learned behaviour. Extinction has to do with the unlearning. If a behaviour is not rewarded, it gradually is no longer used. Habituation is the process of getting used to something. For example if a child has a dog that never barks but it suddenly does, they will be frightened by it. However a child that has a dog that always barks will not react to it.

Classical conditioning, operant conditioning and, observational and imitative learning are behaviour- orientated approaches to explaining how learning takes place. Piaget developed a theory that addresses unseen behaviour. He views learning as a continuous process of adaption. A child adapts through the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is an incorporation process. New ideas and concepts are fit into old ideas or concepts. For example a child knows that a big, round, blue object is a ball. When the same child sees a small, round, green object they assimilate it as a ball. Accommodation is the means for changing old concepts to fit a new piece of learning. For example when the child sees a big, red, round object they call it a ball. The child is then told it is a balloon, therefore modifying their concept of a ball with a new concept of a balloon.

Learning is built on the desire to find out about the worlds. Infants and toddlers are strongly motivated to learn, but the desire seems to dwindle in many children as they proceed through school.

Children do not wait for an adult to arrive before they engage in learning. They are continuously acquiring knowledge. Traditional learning focuses on the teaching. It assumes that everything that is taught is learnt; however most learning occurs before, during, and after school without being taught to us. Most of what is learned in the classroom is forgotten.