How we learn

--Impression of reading the book ‘How we learn’?

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Following the recommendation of my teacher’s, I’m fortunate to have read the book How we learn, Learning and non-learning in school and beyond, which written by Danish Doctor of psychology, Knud Illeris. ?Although because the matter of time, I couldn’t have read it up completely and absorbed, I still got many in my brief and scattered reading. ?So, I just write it down here. ?

The learning is the heart mission of human’s development, the discussions on learning problems have always played a big role in scientific researches. ?And this book written by Danish writer Knud Illeris, translated by doctor Meilu Sun from East China Teachers’ University, How we learn, had absorbed the newest results in the field of learning researching, and extended closely with the theoretical basis of learning, its structure and characters, processes and dimensions, also the barriers and the influential elements as well as other topics. ?Talking vital and vast problems, containing enormous and deep fields and subjects, this book is the one deserved to read in detail. ?

At the beginning of the book, author makes a simple introduction on its content and structure, and mentions the pivotal concept: the definition of learning. ?He combines many past definitions, including the consequential definition, procedural definition and the other one which simply equal learning to teaching, defining it from generalized angles: ‘‘Every process leading to long lasting abilities change which happens in organic organism, and, these processes are happening not only owing to physiological maturation or aging mechanism.’’?This definition, summarized the most past ones, explains learning is any processes happening in organism?(the main is human’s body)?that can cause changes on abilities, and emphasizes this kind of processes is not processing passively because of body maturation, aging or other biological regulations, also emphasizes the existence and application of human subjective initiative in learning, making we could all-roundly understand the essence of learning, also having made many inspiration to us. ?

Then, author in detail introduces learning’s processes and dimensions, represented it in a scheme composing of two two-direction arrows of vertical and horizontal. ?The horizontal arrow’s two sides are Content?and Motivation, it explains when we’re learning, there must have something to be learned?and have motivation comes from inside or outside along with goals we want to achieve. ?And, these two dimensions are continuously interacting with each other, the content?accelerates motivation to become more, with motivation promotes us learning more; the two sides of vertical arrow are Individual?and Environment, representing one individual has the content and motivation of learning of the horizontal arrow, and in the reality, it couldn’t be detached that learning of individuals is interacting with environment, other people and society?(these are also what will be mentioned after) , in this interaction, individuals' learning get tested, improved and deposited. ?From this scheme with two arrows, we could clearly see the processes and dimensions of learning, and also the interactions of each parts of it, and compared with the old trisection of ‘Perception, Mood and Volition’ of psychology and its discrete summary of learning’s processes, the scheme is seemingly more compact and integral. ?

Next, we’ll develop them, we obtain knowledge, understandings and techniques, are wanting to generate our meanings of this world, develop our abilities at meanwhile, and let us could deal with the problems we met, apply our knowledge into practice at a further step. ?And our learning is motivated by motivation, the motivation contains power, moods, volition and other factors, related to the using of mental energy used by learning, and it comes from or is formed by individuals’ volition, attitudes, moods, three values and other part, and it seems that the moods have played a bigger role there. ?For a further step, after we gained content motivated by motivation as an individual, we need to then put it into environment for testing and applying, and speak from learning’s processes, content obtaining processes, we’re general in an external environment, gaining knowledge and skills from the interactions with?external environment, like students receiving classroom-instruction in classrooms, also reacting to the teaching of teachers, then acquire the knowledge, or human beings with environment, or gain results of learning by imitating others under some work environment. ?Therefore, interaction dimension contains activities, communication and corporation. ?

After we’ve known the dimensions and processes of learning, author sorted the learning’s types, he divided it into four types: Accumulated Learning, Assimilative Learning, Adaptive Learning?and Transformational Learning. ?The accumulative learning is the initial type of human’s learning, its representative feature is to learn memories which have never been learned?under mechanical memorizing, create a new scheme, and it also will happen in situations that learner hasn’t get any developed schemes, can be served for impressions from environment to get a connection. ?The content learned?by accumulated learning is rigid and stiff, is if environment doesn’t give a stimulation, we just couldn’t rapidly memorize it when in our daily situations. ?But it is that this mechanical accumulation lays a foundation for our following learning, like before the computer computing out amazing results, we have to type in stiff data, it’s the guide, and foundation of our following learning. ?

Then the author introduced the specific content and researches on learning in detail, analyse and explain it with putting it into an entirety, these introduction has some repeated parts with the front ones, so we just compose it into next content ‘Learning’s Barriers’ , and introduce them together. ?

Learning’s Barriers?are made up with ‘‘the expected learning doesn’t happen, wrong learning, the defense on learning an contradictory mentality on learning, ect’’?, its essence just is there have one or two dimensions have getting trouble with (there will be three when under extreme circumstances) . ?For instance, ‘the expected learning doesn’t happen’ , its problem is in motivation dimension, the direction of learners’ motivation is different with the ones instructors or environment offered, even is opposing, learners’ motivation couldn’t be released fluently, thus causes generating boredom on learning and then causes the decreasing of learning’s results, also content dimension has some influence on. ?As to ‘wrong learning’?, the problem is on content dimension, the preparation for learning is not enough, is there are some misunderstandings of learners on learning, or the existed knowledge of learners’ have some conflict with the new ones, problems generated in the process of acceptance or rejection (it’s exact because the adaptive learning is more difficult), or just because learners are distracting or having some bored moods themselves, or have preparation thoughts to their learning content, these all could let show the ‘wrong learning’ . ?Defense on learning happens in interaction dimension, learners refuse to interact with environment, refuse to accept the stimulation and influence come from teachers or environment, making problems appeared, also these have some relationships with motivation dimension. ?At the ‘Learning Barriers’ part, we have had understood the deeper meanings and influence of learning’s every dimensions, and meanwhile an element which has partly bigger influence is emotion element, author also introduced it that: the external stimulation lands on people’s working memory will generate two ways, one leads to working memory’s parts, the other, which is faster will lead to emotion, after the emotion’s judgement it will directly cut off the proceeding of working memory. ?This is very according to the situations will be observed in our daily life: when you’re under a proper emotion and do your learning, your learning will get accelerated by it, but when there comes to passive emotion, it will be a bad obstacle for your learning. ?And all these upon give us so many benefits.

In the end, the author introduced the life-long learning and learning in other spaces, but speak in one conclusion that the learning in the society, has the many benefits for our life-long development and innovation and construction of our society, we wouldn’t talk more here.

Sum the whole book up, we’ve traveled a new understanding trip on learning, we’re very glad to acquire such an all-round, systematical and in detail understandings and knowledge. ?But during the reading, I also have some problems, here are them. ?The first is that to the organization of learning’s dimensions, maybe it could be more close: let the two arrows cross more closely, composing a two-dimensional planar structure, for that in the reality, even though the content learning motivated by motivation and interaction in environment could be divided by the differentiation of interior and exterior, but could not be divided more, because there are enormously existed relationships between the matters, and also in the reality learning’s content and motivation must have come from or been inspired from environment, individuals’ learned content is also applied into reality or we should say, environment, consciously or unconsciously, but author’s scheme and introduction have all divided them nearly thoroughly into two independent parts, for instance he didn’t have explanation on elapsing or forgetting of the knowledge which hadn’t been tested or used efficiently in applications into reality, but only explained the leading on individuals learning’s content comes from environment elements such as individuals have different directions and content when they’re in different society, and either didn’t mention the differentiation of internal or external levels of reflective thoughts. ?The second is the differentiation of learning’s types, the differentiation of orders and structures of it are not far enough, some instinctive activities which gained by inheritance needn’t to have accumulated, could be directly stimulated by the real situations, and do the further assimilation and adaptation. ?And also the configuration and happening procedures of every processes in the time and space, were not introduced more and properly, it will mislead readers that just present them all in an order. ?The third is about the effect of emotions,maybe the author had just exaggerated its uses, the emotions could accelerate or hinder the memory or other psychological processes, but it just couldn’t rightly stop their works or effects, emotions are only one of the resources of human’s motivation, people are just only using them as one of elements used for judging and deciding. ?(These only represent my own opinions)?.

All in all, it’s very lucky to have this book read, makes me obtain so many knowledge and benefits. ?In the following days, I’ll finish my reading and will also pick it up again and have new things more. ?Thank you.