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How do we learn?

 

It is impossible to live without learning. Thus, learning is a natural instinct; an inborn, irrepressible talent. We can practice and improve this instinct, but we cannot eliminate it; 'though of course we can, and all too easily do suppress, neglect and abuse this gift.

 

We have three built-in, instinctive procedures that drive this inescapable, natural way of learning. The first is observation: seeing and looking at things and making comparisons in time and among objects and processes. The second is communication: talking and listening to others to invent, articulate and refine theories that explain and question why things are the way we see them. Basically, we figure out what to try in order to improve our understanding of how the world works. The third is action & manipulation: through trial and error, as humanity famously, and often in disastrous ignorance '...shapes matter to the purpose of our human minds'.

 

Through observation, communication and action - an autopoietic process of 'doingness' - we build, validate and share knowledge as experience. Notice that 'instruction' does not play a dominant role in this continuous, dynamic process of construction, de-construction and re-construction.

 

Inevitably experience is refined and distilled into 'rules of thumb', synthesized statements that become 'on-ramps' and 'milestones' in our personal journeys of experiential learning. David Ausubel, famous for insisting that 'all learning starts from what we already know', called the kind of rules of thumb that drive learning, 'expository organizers'. (Also see UNESCO's Four Pillars of Education)

 

Notice that Rules of Thumb are not instructions that tell you precisely how to do things; that they do not ordain or predict specific outcomes.  Instead, they are like maps to the journey of your mind; experiential learning journeys that are different every time for every individual and community - for every ecosystem.  (The map is not the territory…)