Learning is not simply something achieved by children over years spent in a classroom, but is a lifelong process of growing and developing through experience and understanding. People learn differently for a number of reasons, for example age, level of understanding, motivation or mood. There is an argument that adults and children learn differently because of the difference in life experience and developed thinking (Knowles 1990). While this may be true, there are equally debates as to whether learning and development are related to growing up, to social interaction or to a combination of both. However we may understand the learning process, learning itself can take many forms, the most common of which are formal learning, informal learning and experiential learning.
Formal learning is traditionally classroom learning, a behaviourist process where the learner is inactive, receiving volumes of historically defined data deposited by the teacher through a product curriculum driven by rote learning. The objective is to achieve good examination results, with an inherent assumption that the learner has no ability or inclination to think for themselves, has no ownership of the learning and by definition places little value on the learning beyond delivering the demanded product of examination results. A product curriculum is exactly what it says: a generic route to planned outcomes without consideration of the learner, mapped out in a pre-determined technical exercise independently of those upon whom it will be delivered (and often those who will be delivering it). There is no acknowledgement or expectation of any outcomes beyond those defined by the curriculum creators; the product curriculum assumes a ‘one size fits all’ model, where success is denoted by the ability of the individual to recite learned facts, irrespective of their understanding of them. Listening, memory and the capacity to repeat on demand are the required core skills.
Informal learning is personal development and social education, with a process curriculum at the core, advocating working with, as opposed to upon. Informal learning is more conversationally based than delivered, using conversation to engage and support people in processing their experiences, encouraging their consideration of options, responses and consequences. There is an assumption that the learner grows through understanding. The learner is assumed to be endowed with the capacity and will to appreciate the learning, being able to direct and control it, thereby valuing it and seeking to find opportunities to apply it. A process curriculum presupposes that the individual can think and feel, that they can ‘process’ given facts and understand, even question, them. The model sees each learner as a unique individual, who can learn through socialised discussion, who can reason logically and, critically, who can draw their own conclusions. The curriculum delivers opportunities for learning, so cognitive skills and the ability to reason and explain are the required core skills.
Just as the name implies, experiential learning arises through lived experience, progression achieved through personal engagement with something, rather than through received teaching, in an iterative cycle of experience, reflection and action, often referred to as the ‘plan, do, review’ cycle. Crucially, the learning process is directed by the learner and their engagement, achieved through reflection on action; it is this reflective process that moves the experience into experiential learning. Adventure learning is experiential but combines both formal and informal learning. The instructor must formally teach skills and explain how to perform activities, but equally talks to people, helping them to realise their skill progression and personal development, supporting them to see what concepts are emerging and enabling them to realise what they are learning. Personal ability combines with understanding of the self and social reflected understanding to determine the way in which the individual views the experience and derives learning from it, as they respond to the situation and the environment.
Learning is also derived intentionally, as a deliberate act, or unintentionally, as a result simply of living in the moment of the experience or situation. People interpret their experiences in relation to what they have experienced in the past (their lived experience), and in relation to the environment in which the experience takes place and the people with whom they share the experience (their reflected experience), a concept known as situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991). Human evolution has determined that every experience will be translated into an act of learning, even unconsciously. To maximise the move from this accidental learning, the simple learning of skill acquisition from doing the activity into deliberate learning and meaningful life skills, the learner has to be supported to understand and contextualise the experience and to realise its applicability and transferability to other areas of their life. The most effective learning comes from the conscious act of absorption, understanding and deliberate or unconscious future application. Teaching is not the same as learning, for what is taught is not always what is learned. Equally, learning may be temporary, retained only as long as the knowledge is required or it may be more ingrained for repeated future use. Temporary learning has little or no meaning to the learner, such as facts learned by rote for an examination; it bears almost no relation to the learner’s ‘everyday’ life. On the other hand, long-term or permanent learning is understood as knowledge, having meaning and use beyond the context in which it was learned. Passive learning tends towards the former, striving to a defined measurable output; active learning on the other hand tends towards the latter as learners embrace knowledge more readily and feel rewarded (fulfilled) when they can reuse it successfully.
Knowles, M. S. (1990) The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing Company.
Lave, J. and Wenger. E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.