According to Alexander, Schallert, and Reynolds in “What is Learning Anyway? A Topographical Perspective Considered,” learning is both a process of changing and a resulting product of human perception derived from the interactions of a multitude of factors concerning the learner’s characteristics, the situation, the topic, and the timing that indelibly alters the learner and his/her environment.

Alexander et al. list 9 principles that they believe are essential to learning as a construct and common to all learning theorists.  Here are the 5 that I find the most intriguing:

Principle 2:  Learning is inevitable, essential, and ubiquitous

There’s a great story I heard one time about a woman who always cut the ends off her meatloaf and threw them away before cooking it in the pan.  She did so because her mother had always done so.  One day, she started to wonder about it and she called her mom to ask why she should cut the ends off the meatloaf.  Her mother replied, “Well, I don’t know.  That’s just the way my mother always did it.”  They both decided to ask the grandmother.  She told them that when she was younger, she only had a small pan and couldn’t fit the whole meatloaf in, so she simply cut the ends off.  For many years, both the woman and her mother had wasted meatloaf for no good reason simply because they had learned from their mother’s example without understanding why.  This example could easily fit under Principle 4 as well, but I’ve placed it here because it demonstrates how people learn even when they aren’t being “taught.”  The grandmother had not told them they should always follow this practice.  As she went about her daily life, her daughter and then granddaughter picked up on her habits without her even knowing.  We learn from everyday life as well as from formal “lessons”.

Principle 3:  Learning can be resisted

Sometimes we don’t want to accept a new idea because it means we will have to alter some belief or habit we have already developed.  This resistance can be conscious or unconscious.  I’m a very introspective person and I try to be open to new ideas, even ones I don’t like.  Yet, I’ve sometimes noticed a curious thing that my brain does.  When I try to force myself to examine some part of my life that makes me uncomfortable, it is really hard to focus.  My mind will jump away from what I’m thinking about to some unrelated idea.  I’ll be having a “heart to heart” with myself, when suddenly I’m thinking about lunch or my afternoon plans.  I sometimes describe it as feeling like my brain is booby-trapped to avoid certain topics.  I think that on an unconscious level I fear what the consequences may be of altering some of the deep-rooted things I’ve learned, so my brain just simply avoids thinking about them altogether.

Principle 4:  Learning may be disadvantageous

It’s not difficult to imagine many of the terrible things people learn from the wrong interplay of environmental factors.  A great example of this concept is the way that children who are neglected or verbally abused “learn” to expect mistreatment.  They come to believe that they deserve disrespect.  Sometimes they may even confuse abuse for love.  Returning to principle 3, it may take prolonged intervention to counteract this learning once it has become foundational in the person’s life because he/she may be unwilling to accept any other interpretation of the events.  Sadly, I have more than one friend who is drawn to destructive relationships because of what they’ve “learned” about themselves and intimacy from their childhood.

Of course, while this is a really sad example of how this principle works, disadvantageous learning can occur on a smaller, less noticeable scale as well.  Coming to depend on coffee to wake up every morning is a habit that is learned, too.  It’s not as destructive as seeking out abusive relationships, but it’s still not really beneficial for a person either.

Principle 6:  Learning is framed by our humanness

I find this principle fascinating because I’d never truly considered it prior to reading this article.  Now I find myself wondering how my learning would change if I had the advanced sense of hearing or smell that my dog does.  One of the individual differences I’ve experienced in my life is the way I process visual information.  It’s interesting to compare my mother and myself.  She is a very visual person and notices many details about colors and shapes in the world around her.  I have strong verbal skills, but I pay very little attention to visual information.  In school, I was terrible at those exercises where I was asked to stare at a scene for 15 minutes and then after it was removed, describe everything I saw.  My brain just does not take in as much visual information.  As a result, I can’t picture my memories well, although I can describe conversations in dramatic detail.  I learn much better when I read a text with simple illustrations than when I try to learn from detailed diagrams.  They quickly overwhelm and confuse me.

Principle 8: Learning is different at different points in time

Right after I graduated from my undergraduate college, I took a job teaching preschool for a year.  I eventually decided that wasn’t the right fit for me, but I loved designing lessons for the children.  Frequently, I found myself learning new things, even though I was teaching such a young age.  One time, I remember considering new ideas about the interplay of texture and visual representation when I had my students paint with corn.  I’ve heard the idea that we learn more when we teach, but I think it went beyond needing to dig deeper into the material so I could teach.  I think I learned because of the timing in my life.  I’m sure I had completed many of these same activities when I was 4 or 5, but I knew considerably less then.  I had only picked up on some of the information and I had a limited view of what I was doing.  Nearly twenty years later, I was able to make so many more connections than I was at 4, so the experience took on new meaning for me.

References

Alexander, P. A., Schallert, D. L., & Reynolds, R. E. (2009). What is learning anyway? A topographical perspective. Educational Psychologist, 44, 176-192