Learning is acquiring new, or modifying existing, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves. Learning is not compulsory; it is contextual. It does not happen all at once, but builds upon and is shaped by what we already know. To that end, learning may be viewed as a process, rather than a collection of factual and procedural knowledge.
Human learning may occur as part of education, personal development, schooling, or training. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy. Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. There is evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally, in which habituation has been observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation, indicating that the central nervous system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning and memory to occur very early on in development.
Play has been approached by several theorists as the first form of learning. Children play, experiment with the world, learn the rules, and learn to interact. Lev Vygotsky agrees that play is pivotal for children's development, since they make meaning of their environment through play. The context of conversation based on moral reasoning offers some proper observations on the responsibilities of parents.
Read more about Learning: Domains of Learning, Transfer of Learning, Active Learning, Further Reading
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... The National Learning Network (NLN) was a UK national partnership programme designed to increase the uptake of Information Learning Technology (ILT) across the ... Supported by the Learning and Skills Council and other sector bodies, the NLN provided network infrastructure and a wide-ranging programme of support, information and training, as well as the ... and wide-ranging collections of e-learning materials in the UK ...
Famous quotes containing the word learning:
“The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state.”
—Kwame Nkrumah (1900–1972)
“If learning to read was as easy as learning to talk, as some writers claim, many more children would learn to read on their own. The fact that they do not, despite their being surrounded by print, suggests that learning to read is not a spontaneous or simple skill.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity—both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)