About learning

Before we look at lesson planning, let's look at how people learn. You really, really need to know how people learn.

Your role is to help students learn. You’re a facilitator. The point is not how much knowledge you provide or even how well you perform, but whether or not students learn.

Learning is not the same as schooling

You might think that learning and education is the same as schooling. You might think that setting up a school will automatically produce learning. The idea of gathering all the students in one especially designed building seems to be effective and efficient.

But learning and schooling are not the same:

Schooling works well for many people; after all, it's the simplest way to provide an education. And many schools do a good job of education.

But a "school" environment isn’t always such a good idea. It might be irrelevant or clearly unhelpful for providing an education. If your students feel they consistently failed in school, you might find a non-school environment much more conducive to real learning.

Some students get frustrated with being institutionalized in a school and learn best on the job; they may resent the artificial controls of a school but do better under the real discipline of a workplace.

Learning is not the same as teaching

You also might think that learning is obviously what happens when you teach. But no, teaching people doesn't mean that they will learn.

Let's look at a wish-it-were-fictional example:

Jill put a lot of effort into teaching. She provided lots of information and carefully explained everything that she thought her students should know and be able to do. She worked hard at what she did.

However, her students were generally bored and confused. It all came unstuck when, near the end of the course, students started asking basic questions that made it clear that they hadn't got the basic idea of what the whole unit was about.

She had to go back and teach everything from scratch, with very limited time to do so.

So that's why there's a trend not to talk about teaching but about facilitating learning. Students are sometimes called "learners" and the process is called the "teaching-learning" process.

After all, it's what the students learn that is the measure of success.

So how do you teach so that people will learn?

Involve them in the process with discussion questions, activities and opportunities to ask questions. You easily be able to see whether or not they are learning what you teach.

When do people learn best?

Researchers have put a great deal of effort into finding out how people learn. They found that different ways of learning suit some people better than others, and some people learn different kinds of things more easily. However, some principles apply to everyone.

Adult learning principles

Adults learn differently from children. You cannot think that you are filling up an empty container with knowledge.

First, adults highly value what they have learned through their life experiences. Consequently, they need to connect new information to what they already know from experience for it to be meaningful. Many of their questions will be about relating new information to their existing knowledge They will want to know that your new information is somehow better than the way things were once done.

Being pragmatic, they need to know that new knowledge will work and they will envisage practical situations. You might talk theory but they will visualize implementation. Training needs to be strongly experimental and participatory learning.

On the disadvantage side, adults can be confused by new information if they cannot relate it to what they already know, especially if it involves unlearning old habits. On the advantage side, they can understand huge amounts of new information very quickly by relating to what they already know.

Second, they may be better than children at understanding information and integrating it, but weaker on memorizing details. They are more likely to want to know where to look it up, and let the book do the remembering for them.

Third, they want to be involved. They want to try things out or be part of the discussion. Even if they don't talk, they might be passively involved by deeply thinking and feeling their responses rather than saying them out loud. (Of course, most people learn better by being actively involved, not just adults.)

Fourth, they usually have their own clear goals for studying. This has several consequences:

• They need to know why they are learning something and what its benefits are. They need to see the relevance of what they are learning to their goals.
• They need to make their own choices about what they will or won't study.
• Training needs to be student-centred to engage them and their individual circumstances and needs. (They can be very frustrated with a teacher who doesn't address their needs.)
• The learning process needs to support increasing student independence.

Fifth, they like to learn through modeling. ("Modeling," is the educational word for following an example.) They observe people quite closely, and believe something is possible and practical when they see someone do it.

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