The process of learning: Total recall (part 10)

I started this 10-part series by asking the ostensibly simple question, what is learning? It’s only ostensibly simple because it isn’t as easy to answer as we might at first assume.

Learning, after all, is multifaceted. Some forms of learning, like learning to ride a bike for instance, are immediate and observable but other types of learning are neither of these things. The immediate demonstration of knowledge or skill could be mere performance, mimicry rather than mastery, a poor proxy for learning.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with mimicry if it helps a pupil pass a test and get a qualification, but assuming we want to do more than “teach to the test” and assuming we regard education as something meaningful and life-long, a way of becoming an engaged and active citizen, and an inquisitive, cultured adult, then surely we must aim to move beyond mimicry and towards mastery?