Learning???

I want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!" Carl Rogers 1983: 18-19

Learning as a product

Pick up a standard psychology textbook - especially from the 1960s and 1970s and you will probably find learning defined as a change in behaviour. In other words, learning is approached as an outcome - the end product of some process. It can be recognized or seen. This approach has the virtue of highlighting a crucial aspect of learning - change. It's apparent clarity may also make some sense when conducting experiments. However, it is rather a blunt instrument. For example:

• Does a person need to perform in order for learning to have happened?

• Are there other factors that may cause behaviour to change?

• Can the change involved include the potential for change? (Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 124)

Learning as a process - task-conscious or acquisition learning and learning-conscious or formalized learning

In the five categories that Säljö identified we can see learning appearing as a process - there is a concern with what happens when the learning takes place. In this way, learning could be thought of as 'a process by which behaviour changes as a result of experience' (Maples and Webster 1980 quoted in Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 124). One of the significant questions that arises is the extent to which people are conscious of what is going on. Are they aware that they are engaged in learning - and what significance does it have if they are? Such questions have appeared in various guises over the years - and have surfaced, for example, in debates around the rather confusing notion of 'informal learning'.

One particularly helpful way of approaching the area has been formulated by Alan Rogers (2003). Drawing especially on the work of those who study the learning of language (for example, Krashen 1982), Rogers sets out two contrasting approaches: task-conscious or acquisition learning and learning-conscious or formalized learning.