Why Learning Matters
Learning is a natural phenomenon common to all organisms, human and animal alike. It’s the modification of behaviour as a result of experience, and it’s a key concept in psychology — genuinely important for human development. All educational processes, whether formal, non-formal, or informal, ultimately aim at the development of learning.
Defining Learning
Learning has been defined in numerous ways by different theorists, researchers, and practitioners, and while no single universally agreed definition exists, most share common elements. Broadly, learning can be defined as a relatively permanent change in behaviour brought about by experience. Cognitive psychologists treat learning as an active mental process of acquiring, remembering, and using knowledge, while constructivists treat it as a process of building understanding and making sense of information.
| Definition | Proposed By |
| Learning is an enduring change in behaviour, or in the capacity to behave in a given fashion, which results from practice or other forms of experience. | Shuell |
| Learning is the acquisition of new behaviour or the strengthening or weakening of old behaviour as a result of experience. | Smith |
| Learning is the modification of behaviour through experience and training. | Gates |
| Learning is a process of progressive behaviour adaptation. | Skinner |
The Nature and Characteristics of Learning
A set of characteristics captures what learning fundamentally is, across every context in which it occurs:
| Characteristic | What It Means |
| A continuous process | Learning goes on throughout life; it can be formal or informal, direct or indirect. As a learner learns, they develop knowledge, skills, habits, attitudes, and aptitudes. |
| A change in behaviour | Learning’s results can be measured as behavioural change — desirable or undesirable — and it spans cognitive, affective, and conative (action-oriented) aspects of mental process. |
| A universal process | Learning happens everywhere, for all living creatures, across all cultures, as a lifelong process. |
| Purposive and goal-oriented | Learning always has a purpose; without an aim or goal, the learning process won’t show real effect. |
| Relationship between stimulus and response | A person is considered ‘learned’ when they react appropriately to the task at hand — learning teaches reactions to environmental and life stimuli. |
| Transferable | Learning acquired in one situation can transfer to another — though a learner should be careful that previously gained knowledge doesn’t interfere with acquiring new knowledge. |
The Three Categories of Factors Affecting Learning
A variable in learning is any factor that influences the learning process. These factors fall into three broad categories:
- Individual Variables (Nature of the Learner)
- Task Variables (Nature of the Learning Material)
- Method Variables (Nature of the Learning Situation)
Individual Variables
| Factor | Effect on Learning |
| Maturation | Learning depends on the learner’s maturation level; insufficient maturity sets a hard limit that no method or motivation can overcome. |
| Readiness to learn | Learning readiness — capacity and willingness to learn — determines whether specific learning can occur at all; a ready child learns faster, better, with more satisfaction. |
| Age | Learning ability improves progressively with age, increasing until about 20, remaining steady until 30, then declining rapidly after 50. |
| Sex | Sex differences show up in certain skills — boys tend to excel at motor skills needing strong gross muscles; girls at tasks needing fine coordination and attention to detail. |
| Previous experience | Successful past experience motivates future performance; unsuccessful experience drags on further learning and lowers aspiration. |
| Merited abilities | Learning a task depends on the learner’s mental abilities — intelligence, aptitude, creativity, imagination, reasoning. |
| Physical handicaps | Vision, hearing, or speech defects adversely affect learning; orthopaedic handicaps specifically retard the learning of motor skills. |
Task Variables
| Factor | Effect on Learning |
| Length of the task | If the learning material exceeds the learner’s memory span, more time will be needed to learn it. |
| Difficulty of the task | Difficult tasks take more time and energy, creating fatigue that slows the rate of learning. |
| Meaningfulness of the task | Meaningful material is easier to learn and retain, since meaning lets the learner connect new material to previous experience. |
Method Variables
| Factor | Effect on Learning |
| Method of learning | Whole-method learning suits compact, meaningful units; part-method works better when the parts are more tightly integrated than the whole. |
| Amount of practice | Retention increases with practice; over-learning (continuing past the point of first errorless performance) is recommended for better retention. |
| Distribution of practice | Spaced (distributed) practice beats massed practice for learning and retention — it avoids monotony and gives the learner a fresh start after rest. |
| Availability of incentives | Incentives improve learning and retention; knowledge of results is itself a strong incentive, and prompt feedback on improvement produces more satisfactory progress. |
| Nature of sensory approach | Senses are the gateways of knowledge; involving more senses (a multi-sensory approach) causes better learning. |
