given by Stewart Hase, The Heutagogy of Social Practice
This typology is an attempt to redefine the way we think about learning in the modern classroom context. Current definitions of learning focus on performance rather than holistic development, and on what the learner can do after the learning experience. Gagne is perhaps the most unique.
Common dictionary definitions of reading refer to reading as acquiring information. A common psychological explanation is that learning is a change in behavior caused by experience. Both of these explanations seem inadequate given recent advances in neuroscience that show how complex the process is.
We are now more able to directly assess how people learn than indirectly by studying what strategies work, which are often anecdotal and qualitative. It now seems reasonable to design the learning experience around how learning happens and engages with the learner’s interest rather than producing a specific outcome.
The typology described below deals with what happens in the mind of the reader during reading. Using this as a base we are able to jump to the results and the learning experience itself.
Each type of learning means that a different learning experience can be designed to help people learn or is aimed at people who are already working at that level.
The fitness test is not intended to be used. This is a typology not a taxonomy. For example, conditioned behavior, habits and skills are important for survival and efficient use of resources. They don’t have to be seen as unimportant or neglectful to mention adaptive learning, although it can be said that they don’t stand out much.
Typology of Learning: 7 Ways We Understand It
1. Autopoietic and Adaptive
This involves what one might call deep learning. Complex connections are made between previous learning when faced with the need to adapt. Bifurcation enables shifts in perspective, the confident ability to try something new, to explore.
Autopoiesis involves self-organization and adaptive behavior in a highly complex and perhaps chaotic environment. Adaptive, adaptive, double-loop learning and triple-loop learning are used as standard practice to evaluate behavior and outcomes that then drive further change in a continuous, adaptive feedback loop. Knowledge becomes wisdom.
All learning involves processes established in the brain that are then retrieved in the form of memory. In dynamic learning, however, we see connections being made between different approaches that create new understandings, new ways of seeing the world, new ideas to explore. This is a world of creativity and innovation, and, ultimately, survival when faced with the need to adapt.
You can imagine this type of learning occurring under complex problems or when survival is threatened. We are forced to look at the world in a different way, to challenge existing teachings that clearly do not work. Therefore, motivation is higher by design or by increasing pressure. In the former case, one thinks of Edison’s laboratory in Menlo Park or perhaps Google and Apple, hotbeds of innovation and creativity.
The latter may involve a spontaneous rethinking of theory, a new way of interpreting our knowledge (data or events), a new understanding of something, perhaps reinventing ourselves.
2. Changes in Cognitive Schema
Cognitive schema are our values, attitudes and beliefs, written into thoughts and actions. In normal everyday life they cannot change. They are learned at an early age and drive much of our behavior. With strong connections to the emotional parts of our brain, a cognitive schema will often override even convincing evidence to the contrary.
Therefore, a change in our cognitive schema is a learning experience at its highest level. It usually takes an emotional event, a feeling that has the power to change them. This was what constructivism and one of its sequels, experiential learning, best understood, as did much of psychotherapy.
As learning evolves, a new complex web of pathways is developed, and old ones are broken down. So powerful is this shift from the old to the new that we may no longer remember that we ever had a particular belief or attitude.
With a change in cognitive schema comes a new set of behaviors. I might, for example, engage in a creatively designed learning activity in a workshop that makes me realize that I have a more controlling behavior as a leader. The understanding is so strong that I decide to fight this strong personality trait, delegate more and trust others rather than controlling them less.
3. Skill Development
Skilled individuals (Cairns, Stephenson) are able to apply learning to novel and familiar situations. They also have a high level of efficiency, work well with others and have the ability to learn.
Here context is the key to new learning. Changing the context provides an opportunity to test our abilities and perhaps find new and authentic ways of finding and solving problems.
To improve my skills I need to use my skills in different novel situations, stay calm when faced with difficulties, think carefully about how to use my skills, learn new skills, and seek a mentor or study further. I know about the importance of relational learning, and the power of learning encounters. As I become more skilled my confidence is increasing and becoming more common.
4. Literal Reading
High-level skills are so effectively internalized that high-skilled jobs can be performed without visible/obvious considerations. Thoughts can be made through external questions. Implicit learning is more common in professionals and occurs unconsciously.
I have been placed in situations where my skills are refined when faced with increasingly complex tasks.
5. Ability
Skills include knowledge and skills. We acquire this through direct experience or through spontaneous, spontaneous and formal education. Most formal education is concerned with skill acquisition and production.
In today’s networked world finding skills is easier than ever. We acquire the skill through formal educational experience or, more likely, through an informal process, when and if we need it.
6. Operant Conditioning
Unconscious responses, which have the form of removing objects from the environment, are also known as the active form. This is the most common form of learning in formal and informal settings and is responsible for learning many of the physical and social skills that are essential for survival.
We perform certain behaviors and are rewarded for them with some form of recognition, reward or positive outcome. A reward sets the conditions for a response and we are more likely to reproduce the behavior in the future. More complex behavior modifications become habits and are repeated unconsciously.
This type of learning (conditioning) can be effective as we watch others get good results when they do something.
7. Learning about Symbols
A simple method of learning is also known as classical conditioning. Again, this is the most common and unconscious form of learning.
When I was young, my mother gave me honey on bread when I was very sick with Scarlet Fever. It made me feel nauseous. Since then I hated honey and never ate it. This was an involuntary response (nausea) to a stimulus (honey).
Marketers use classical conditioning techniques to get us to buy things. An attractive person driving a particular car or operating a machine is used as a stimulus to seek feedback. A close friend who is always happy with you when you go out wearing a certain perfume. The smell of other people’s perfume makes you feel very good without you even knowing it.
