Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel- Socrates
Learning is something which we have been doing each moment since we are born and will continue each moment until we die and we are always in the process of change , always in a dynamic state and so the Purpose of the learning is to allow us to be in the dynamic state . As per a research humans are hardwired in the brain in such a way to not be satisfied which is in a way good for us and which helped humanity has reached at this level. Fundamentally, learning is an inherent biological imperative and people never stop learning. Best Definition of Learning I found is “It is relatively permanent change in your behavior that occurs through experience” and which is gradual and continuous experience. In Psychology there is a term called SOR which is Stimulus-Organism-Response theory and it states that there’s a stimulus that triggers a response based on the internal feelings or behavior of an organism (person) and Learning is the development of association and relationship by a living being between stimulus and the response. For an example, if a child observes that 1st things every other student does when Teacher comes is to wish them so may be few times he/she may miss to wish but after some occurrences, entrance of Teacher in the class will stimulate the student to wish the Teacher and this is how we Learn everything with experiences happening around.
Human brain can never have storage capacity in the long term memory i.e Subconscious mind as it can store around information of 4.7 billion books. Learning is about linking in the brain and making Patterns where whenever you learn something, small electrical signals travel along the sets of link or pattern you have created. The building blocks of brain called the Neurons which is responsible for transfer of information and create the link with the help of Synapses. These connections can be made stronger or weaker depending on when and how often they have been activated in the past. Active connections tend to get stronger and turned into memory whereas those that aren’t used get weaker and can eventually disappear entirely.
Hebbian Rule- Neurons that fire together , wire together.
Let me comeback to the Purpose of Learning which was defined earlier to facilitate us to be in the dynamic state and it happens when something stimulates a person which can happens at its best when it is connected to some objective , aligned to the passion or a Purpose and when it is not connected to any objective or an individual interest, it creates boredom and they can’t focus on it. High school students are dropping out and many employees are not engaged today and biggest reason for this is Boredom as the subject or the work are not interesting to them and which certainly cause stress to them with a feeling of confinement which threatens the sense of survival and disconnects from decision making of the brain and thus inefficient and in static state. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow explain about Alienment which corresponds to Boredom and “it is a condition in which people are constrained by a social system to act in ways that go against their goals” and thus a student in order to get a grade and an employee to feed the family with only extrinsic motivation ignoring the important intrinsic. He also mentions a term Autotelic experience where auto means self and telos means goal and Autotelic refers to a self contained activity which is done not with the expectation of some reward but simply because doing the job itself is reward which is very rare is society still today.
I went through a Course from EDX platform named “Leaders of Learning” designed by Professor Richard Elmore which was quite interesting to understand different Modes of Learning which was a breakthrough for me in terms of my personal understanding of where learning is going in society.
Hierarchical individual – There is particular structure and It emphasizes individual achievement with clearly-defined metrics for success. For example typical school and colleges where we studied .
Hierarchical Collective – Learning is still defined by the idea that there is a particular structure and sequence to knowledge but emphasizes learning as a group activity as opposed to an individual activity. The most important learning objective is social and cognitive development and they are more interested in Group presentation and group discussions. Example is Socrative way of teaching .
Distributed Individual – This is an individual who wish to choose what he /she wants to learn and at what depth ..This is very simple and we are already seeing the trend of it . Online learning has already accelerated this mode.
Distributed collective – This is again individual wish to choose but it happens in a group with a common mission or Purpose and support each other.. Everyone learn and teaches each other.. Fox ex Toastmaster where people come together to improve communication and leadership skills
In this course Professor also talk about Will Richardson’s five major ways in which learning is going to be transformed in the future.
- Content is everywhere
- Teachers are everywhere
- Learning will be much more individualized and personalized
- Networks are the new classroom
- Learning will begin to occur everywhere
Broadly if we see in Society, the learning whether it is for students or anyone working in Organization where most of the practical learning happens, it is moving from Hierarchical to Distributed which is People will look for their own interest/Passion/Intrinsic motivation either in individual mode or in a group with common mission or Purpose. It may happen in both digital or physical world. What this means is that individuals will no longer be restricted to a particular set of institutions or a particular set of modalities for learning. Individuals will be able to tailor their learning to the things that matter most to them and to the things that they want to achieve in life. Access to learning and the explosion of digital culture and the demands of learning has opened up a huge amount of territory, in the future that can be occupied by people who are passionate about learning and continue to be in the Dynamic state. Dynamism will be at its best when one will have autotelic experience and one of the best way to have this experience to practice learning with Purpose
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