Learning

Learning has been the subject of exhaustive investigations by psycholo-gists. The usual psychological definition of learning is change, or i 'modification, of behaviour or response as a result of some form of experi-ence. To understand more fully what the psychologists say about learning one would have to examine the key words in this definition. 

Firstly, there is the word change. This implies that the learner goes out of a learning situation as a different person from the one he was before he went into it. The notion of the learner being a different person at the two extreme ends of a learning situation is a very important consideration in discussing what teachers normally do, or ought to do, in the classroom, and this will be taken up more fully later in this book. 

Secondly, it is a change in behaviour which takes place. We did men-tion in Chapter One that every person comes into the world with certaintraits - physical, intellectual and emotional. The change we are talking about here does not mean a change in physical characteristics, like the individual growing bigger or stronger. Rather, it is the change in intellec-tual and emotional functioning which is important. This means that, as a result of some new form of experience, the individual now reasons in a different way, sees a problem from a different perspective, becomes increasingly aware of the complexity of a particular problem and interacts in a more socially acceptable way with other people in his environment. 

Thirdly, the change in behaviour we are concerned with is the result of some form of experience. It is possible for people to deviate from their normal behaviour because of the effect of some drug. A habitually quiet person who suddenly becomes noisy and quarrelsome after smoking Indian hemp would be one such example. It is also possible for a change of behaviour to be the result of fatigue. This would be seen in the case of a man who has earlier lifted twelve bags of cement into a truck and who finds it impossible to lift the thirteenth bag. Experience, in the sense in which it is used in this chapter, means something like seeing more light.

In other words, the individual will have been helped to realise that a particular activity can be carried out in a variety of ways: to see that a particular problem is capable of solution by adopting a new method; to see the other side of an argument; to appreciate the beauty of a poem, a piece of music, or a work of art. The individual’s encounter with a new experience usually involves his interacting with other persons. This might be by listening to a talk (as in a classroom lecture or radio talk), by observing people talk and act, by asking and answering questions or perhaps by arguing with people. Interaction with others might also take the form of the individuals carrying out some investigation or experi-ment, observing natural scenes (e.g. mountains, rivers), situations (e.g. people drinking together or dancing) or phenomena (e.g. thunder, rain- fall) and so on. '

There are changes in behaviour that seem to come about ‘naturally’, that is, they tend to occur in the normal process of the individual’s growing up or developing. One can think of numerous, everyday exam-ples of such behaviour changes. A baby’s efforts to move about, such as crawling or walking, tend to start at a particular period in life. The same goes for those other landmarks in development which occur only when the body is physiologically ready forthem, e.g. menstruating, getting married. Such ‘natural’ changes in behaviour are said by the psycholo-gists to be the result of maturation. While psychologists make a distinc-tion between maturation and learning, they admit that maturation is important in promoting learning. In other words a person cannot benefit from his exposure to a particular form of experience (_i.e. he cannot really learn) if he is not physiologically and intellectually ready for such an experience. Rea_d;ness implies having the prerequisite ability to enable one to learn. For example, the legs have to be strong enough to enable the toddler to learn to walk, the young entrant into secondary school needs to know enough English to be able to follow instruction in other school subjects, etc.

The fourth implication of the psychologist’s explanation of the con-cept learning is that learning takes time. As we have iust been saying, an individual has to be physiologically and intellectually ready for a par-ticular form of experience. He is subsequently exposed to the experience. Human beings take some time to mature. It also takes time to get them to understand fully the nature of the experience they are being exposed to. It takes time for a new experience to make an impact on the individual. The exposure to a particular form of experience can therefore take diffe-rent forms. In the end the individual is expected to react to the experi-ence he has been exposed to by modifying, or changing, his original behaviour.

Psychologists have attempted to study learning mainly by studying animals and by putting people in experimental conditions (as opposed to normal, everyday conditions) in the laboratory. They have subsequently tried to generalise their findings to apply to the conditions under which people learn in classroom situations. There have also been heated controversies over what the right theory of learning should be. Books on learning are full of expositions of such theories as stimulus-response, gestalt, programmed learning, etc. The classroom teacher need not bother himself with the controversy over such theories. In fact it is now more fashionable to see the different theories of learning as complqnen-tary to one another. In other words, no single theory of learning can explain everything that one needs to know about the concept. What we consider important for the classroom teacher is: (a) a clear understanding of what learning is, and (b) a clear idea of the factors which make learning easier. We have already tried to provide the reader with the former. The latter we shall now proceed to discuss.