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CONCEPT OF
LEARNING
What is Learning?

‡ Learning is a term frequency used by


people in a wide variety of contexts.
‡ Learning means the process of
acquiring the ability to respond adequately
to situation which mayor may not have
been previously Encountered.
_ 
‡ Learning is a process that depends on
experience and leads to long term
changes in behavior potential

‡ relatively permanent change in an


individual's behavior or behavior
potential (or capability) as a result of
experience or practice
_EFINITION
‡ Learning is the process by which
new behaviors are acquired. It is
generally agreed that
learning involves changes in
behaviors, practicing new behaviors,
and establishing permanency in the
change.
NATURE OF LEARNING
' Learning involves a change in behavior.
' The behavioral change must be relatively
permanent.
' The behavioral change must be based
on some form of practice or experience.
' The practice or experience must be
reinforced in order for learning to occur
p pp 

 
‡ If teaching is defined in terms of learning,
i.e. as the attempt to promote it, then
successful teaching must be grounded,
implicitly or explicitly, in the processes of
effective learning. This includes
adaptation to ways learners vary in their
styles and resources as regards any
particular learning task or phase. Thus
understanding teaching partly requires us
to understand learning and learners.
Putting this formally, whatever its source,
teaching will embody a psychology of
learning.
‡ Although everyday culture provides
elements of a view of learning which has
much to do with traditional pedagogy
there is also a need to examine what
academic and professional psychology
offer by the way of systematic findings.
Given that this relatively young discipline
contains a number of branches all having
some relevance to learning, any use of
psychological research and theory must be
intelligently critical and eclectic
‡ In the following subsection, therefore,
insights into the nature of human
knowledge, skill and learning are
considered, drawing largely from cognitive
process psychology. Next, attention turns
to motivational issues, utilising counselling
and social psychology. We then briefly
consider the importance of individual
differences in learning-related qualities
before linking the emerging themes to the
active learning emphasis of the Flexible
Learning approach.

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