Learning is a life-long process that begins at birth and ends at death. Humans are hard-wired to learn, and we start early. Babies learn at warp-speed and make exponential growth in many aspects between ages 0 and 2. Just in that short amount of time, babies have already acquired an uncountable amount of knowledge…naturally! Within their natural environment throughout babyhood, little ones are absolute sponges soaking up knowledge and information constantly. That exposure conditions us and begins to shape our person. Our home environment and the people around us add to forming who we are. People learn from the environment they grow up in starting at a young age. This idea constantly spurs the nature vs. nurture debate that’s discussed in psychology classrooms and child development courses nationwide. Whether caretakers are aware of it or not, they’re modeling for their child behavior that they’ll soon emulate. Children pick up habits left and right from watching what goes on in their environment. Most of the next few years will be spent continuing to learn at the elbow of primary caretakers and others in their immediate environment.
In addition to the home-environment playing an important role molding children at such a young age, learning happens most when it is contextualized in situations. Context shapes the learning experience, and has a profound affect on deep-learning. For the sake of discussion, I feel it’s fair to separate how I believe learning happens in different contexts. I’ve already outlined how I believe learning to happen in early years, but now I’ll shift my focus to a school-and-classroom context and my beliefs under that umbrella. If not, I’ll continue to chase my tail.
Most children enter a form of public school holding basically only what they’ve learned from their home environment. Students shift their focus to a new leader and center of attention: the teacher. In those young years, students need that routine and comfort that the teacher is there. Teachers become school-moms or school-dads to children who look to the teacher for everything…similar to that of primary caregiver. During school hours, that teacher is your primary caregiver substitute.
Another aspect students learn in school through osmosis is the corporate-hierarchy. Students are conditioned to recognize themselves as the lowest on the totem poll. The teacher is the boss of students, and the administration is the boss of teachers. Everybody has somebody else that they are either in charge of, or underneath and answer to.
In order for learning to take place, educators need to look at a discrepancy model in order to prioritize where to make gains. They need to take a look at the student’s present-levels and design a plan to get them to meet instructional goals. Learning is scaffolded and should be prepared specifically for the students and their needs. Learning is measurable and trackable with data-analysis. Even further, learning tools have been streamlined and put online in order to give in-depth analysis towards students cognitive ability and what interventions might be most practical to make those necessary gains. Technology, and its evolution, can collect accurate data in order to directly to support student needs. It then becomes the teacher’s job to bridge the gap from where they are to where they need to be. Students meeting instructional goals is clear evidence of learning.