Learning is the thing because for everyone involved in education, maximising people’s learning is the most important aim, after keeping them safe. We can, and probably should, debate forever about how best to maximise people’s learning, but it is hard to argue against promoting great learning as the main thing that teachers, school leaders, students and parents and everyone else wants schools to do. So, there is probably no more important subject about which to talk, in an education blog.
A good working definition of ‘learning’ is an essential foundation for talking about learning. My preferred definition at the moment is: learning is acquiring knowledge and skills and being able to retrieve them later when we need them. It is based on Brown, Roediger and McDaniel’s definition in their very lucidly-written book, ‘Make it Stick’, where they describe learning as ‘acquiring knowledge and skills and having them readily available from memory so you can make sense of future problems and opportunities’.
There are plenty of other definitions out there. Ofsted currently refer to learning as ‘an alteration in long-term memory’, which is almost identical to the Kirschner, Sweller and Clark definition in their 2006 paper, ‘Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work…’ where they define learning as ‘a change in long-term memory … If nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned’. And there’s the 2015 Soderstrom and Bjork definition of learning from the Perspectives on Psychological Science journal: ‘relatively permanent changes in comprehension, understanding, and skills of the types that will support long-term retention and transfer’ (although if there’s a substantive difference between ‘comprehending’ and ‘understanding’, it’s lost on me).
Tied up with the fundamentals of learning is memory. If we can’t recall specific knowledge that we need, when we need it, we can’t really say we have learned it, can we? Aeschylus appeared to recognise this 2500 years ago, in his play ‘Prometheus Bound’: ‘Memory is the mother of all wisdom’. In schools (and colleges and universities), one of the main things students do with their learning is to demonstrate it – this is typically called performance – and summative qualifications such as GCSEs, BTECs and A levels are designed to enable students to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do. Maximising learning is key to both achieving success in examinations at school/college/university, and over the long term.
Another reason why learning is the thing is because those who learn well and achieve well at school and beyond tend to be better-off throughout their lives in a multitude of ways. Dylan Wiliam explains this clearly in the first chapter of his 2011 book, ‘Embedded Formative Assessment’: ‘Educational achievement matters … for individuals, and it matters for society. For individuals, higher levels of education mean higher earnings, better health, and increased life span. For society, higher levels of education mean lower health care costs, lower criminal justice costs, and increased economic growth’.
That’s why learning is the thing.
