Teaching practice: Sixth form & post-16

Editor's Note: This article is part of a series of 10 best practice pieces to have published in 2017. Access them here:

There are two major ways of learning: the first is the natural process we all engage in unconsciously or subconsciously like learning the lyrics to a song, the second is the more formal, planned process carried out consciously and deliberately like learning algebra by rote.

Most “education” consists of a combination of unconscious and conscious learning and both kinds of learning are common to children, adolescents and adults. The flavour of cocktail we mix for different groups of learners (i.e. the proportion of unconscious to conscious learning) may differ but children as well as adults engage in both natural and planned learning and both types of learning can take various forms with both children and adults.