What is learning?

First Steps into Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education
What is Learning?

Programme

• What is Learning?
• Core Concepts for Teaching in
HE
• Planning & Running Sessions
• Next Steps

Aims

• Introduce the group to one another
• Provide basic guidance on
 Learning theories
 Objective-led teaching

• Practice a small piece of “microteaching”
• Address some of your practical challenges of teaching

Your Objectives

• With partner, pairs or a three

• What do you hope to be able to DO better as a
result of this course

Objective led

• Objectives define students
knowledge, understanding, intellectual and
subject specific skills at each level.
• Objectives clarify the purpose of the course – for
you and your students
• Objectives help you decide and prioritise which
topics to teach, and in what depth
• Objectives help define appropriate teaching and
learning strategies
• Thinking about how students demonstrate their
learning leads naturally to purposeful assessment
tasks

Objectives

What do I hope you will be able to do better as a result of this
morning‟s sessions?

• Describe some approaches to learning

• Write [effective] learning outcomes

• Elaborate/develop [some] “effectiveness criteria” for
teaching

Learning

“I want to talk about learning. But not the
lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in
to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by
ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING -
the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb
everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines
in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I
am talking about the student who says, "I am
discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that
which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any
learning in which the experience of the learner progresses
along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is
closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is!
Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I
want to know!” Carl Rogers

Rogers, C. and Freiberg, H. J. (1993) Freedom to Learn (3rd edn.)

My Learning and view of students learning

With a partner, discuss and produce a joint „poster‟ on the following:

• How do you learn best?
• How [have / will] your own learning
experiences influence(d) how you teach?
• What strategies and techniques [do you /
would you] employ to help students learn?

Some models / theories of learning

• Learning Cycles
• Approaches to Learning
• Process / product
• Deep / Surface
• Social Learning

What is Learning?

Write down, in one sentence, your definition of
learning.

Conceptions of Learning
1. Learning as a quantitative increase in knowledge. Learning
is acquiring information or „knowing a lot‟.
2. Learning as memorising. Learning is storing information that
can be reproduced.
3. Learning as acquiring facts, skills, and methods that can be
retained and used as necessary.
4. Learning as making sense or abstracting meaning. Learning
involves relating parts of the subject matter to each other
and to the real world.
5. Learning as interpreting and understanding reality in a
different way. Learning involves comprehending the world
by reinterpreting knowledge.

How do your definitions fit with these?

Deep and surface
• Surface learning
– Rote learning or memorisation
• Deep learning
– Learning with understanding

• 2 examples follow:
– How would you characterise these?
– Discuss with your neighbour(s)

• MARTON F and SÄLJÖ (1976) "On Qualitative Differences in Learning — 1:
Outcome and Process" Brit. J. Educ. Psych. 46, 4-11

The first time I read it I really came away with the
feeling I hadn’t actually got anything from it ... A few of
the things I would just skim through it and got
completely the wrong meaning, just because I assumed
it would be a different meaning ... I thought ... I must be
reading it wrong or something. So I just read through it
a second time very slowly. Sometimes I would read it
aloud, that kind of helped ... It was very much easier to
understand ... I think actually this time I understood
what they were talking about rather than just made up
what they were talking about by making little references
back to it …

There’ll be a topic in the book which the question
comes under, and then you hunt through that
section to see if they’ve got any... Hopefully, they’ll
have the exact question and you can copy it
straight down without doing any work at all ...
Usually you have to hunt out the various related
equations, then you just apply these to the
problem. That’s all really.

Strategic learning
• Well-organised form of Surface approach; the
motivation is to get good marks.
• Learning construed as a game: acquisition of
technique improves performance.
• Insofar as learning is not a game, it breaks
down.

• Atherton J S (2011) Learning and Teaching; Deep and Surface
learning [On-line: UK] retrieved 19 September 2011 from
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/deepsurf.htm

The lecturer told us his marking scheme, and 16 of the
possible 20 marks went for the design, building and
performance of the bridge. It was a model bridge, and
only 4 marks, 20% of the marks, were available for the
report. So obviously I didn’t put much effort into that at
all ... I’m well aware that I’m here to get a degree you
know, you don’t write what you think, you write what
the tutor wants you to think. And in engineering in
general there’s not much room for that. I think there
would be a lot more room for it in subjective things,
and I would do it even more then, presumably.

Kolb‟s experiential learning cycle In practice and
also in the
„microteaching‟
What we hope you
do when you teach Concrete
Experience

Active Reflective
Experimentatio Observation
n

Abstract
Conceptualis-
“Theories” – ation This is what we want
your own and to encourage
others‟
Reproduced with acknowledgement to James Atherton (2009)

Product and Process
• Learning as Process

• Learning as Product or outcome

• Learning and teaching as a subject of
inquiry, a field or discipline in its own right
– pedagogy, andragogy

Social Learning

Q: Is learning purely a possession of the individual
that can be found inside their heads?
• Learning is in the relationship between people
• We educate for learners to become part of a
community of practice, e.g. a disciplinary
community. (See Lave & Wenger)
• There is a connection between knowledge and
activity

Summary

• Deep, surface & strategic
• Learning Cycles
• Process and product
• Social and individual

Summary: good practice

• encourage student-tutor contact
• encourage student-student co-operation
• encourage active learning
• give prompt feedback
• emphasise time on task
• have and communicate high expectations
• respect diverse talents and ways of
learning
(Chickering & Gamson, 1987)

independent of the mode of engagement

What is learning?

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Editor's Notes