How To Guide: Different ways of learning and the importance of improvement...all you need to know
Can you remember the last time you learned something new? Perhaps it was learning to drive, or how to cook a new recipe, or how to use a new computer programme, some new words in a foreign language, or how to propagate a plant, or change a light bulb…. We could come up with a long list, and the list would be endless because learning is a lifelong activity which means that we are learning something new every day. We might listen to something on the radio, watch a new film or learn a new way of doing something by trial and error and just ‘getting stuck in’. It could be something life-changing and of global importance, like discovering what makes a cancer cell reproduce or not; or it could simply be a new way of tying our shoelaces more efficiently or a different way to do our hair. Learning is what we do every day.?
Yet many of us are so conditioned to believe that ‘learning’ is what we do at school or nursery, and that it is something that a teacher does ‘to us’, that we often forget our own part in the process. We believe that ‘they teach, and we learn’ which makes it a very passive event, something that happens to us, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
So, what is the relationship between teaching and learning really about? And how can we help the process by being open to hearing others’ viewpoints???
Teaching and Learning – what’s the difference?
Teaching is often described as what the teacher does (talks, demonstrates, models etc.), whereas learning should be what the learner gets from the teaching. Let’s go back to our example of the last thing you learned. Chances are, if you can remember what it was you learned, you probably can’t really remember ‘how’ you learned it, let alone define what you did and the steps your brain went through to get you to learn it. Where one person learns something easily, another may struggle, and yet the ‘teaching’ could have been the same for both. They both hear and see the same things, so why is there such a difference in the retention of the knowledge imparted and the ability of the student to adapt and utilise any underlying concepts? Why don’t we all learn the same thing?
The fact is, there are many different factors that affect a child’s (or adult’s) ability to learn something new.
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Some factors that can affect early learning include:
And these are just a few of the things listed in a handful of studies.
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