Teaching vs. Learning

"Teaching: the creation of suitable (external) conditions for learning, using different forms of information, exercises, assignments, etc.

Learning: the mental process that leads to knowledge."

From Klas Mellander's book, The Power of Learning; Fostering Employee Growth

The difference can be illustrated by thinking about a child learning to ride a bike. Using teaching a parent might take a small blackboard and illustrate the process of exchanging the power from the pedals to the drive sprocket, plus you would certainly need to test the child's understanding of the steering mechanism.

Obviously, this is not how a child wants or even can learn to ride a bike. In real life a parent will put the child on the bike, with training wheels, and let the child "discover" the power from pedal to wheel concept and how to steer. Real learning will take place, quickly. Soon, the child will demand the removal of the training wheels and the whole process has been spontaneous and fun.

The Power of Learning

Improve Learning

The guru of Accelerated Learning Systems is Klas Mellander, Chief Designer of Celemi. Klas is author or co-author of over 30 books including The Power of Learning: Fostering Employee Growth, a book in which he shares the results of over 25 years of experience in the conception, design, and development of learning tools that work.

Klas believes, and we agree, that what we have to do is stop focusing our attention solely on teaching methods (as we have so far) and start concentrating on learning methods, which is something completely different. Klas' key theories are summarized from his book The Power of Learning as follows:

Aha! The learning process

Klas uses the following illustration and description in his book of a woman that has just bought a new camera to illustrate the Aha! and the learning process.

"Her interest in learning to use the camera has already been aroused; she's curious about how it works, and her curiosity makes her receptive to the information that the camera and the instructions provide. She spontaneously chooses and assimilates the information that is meaningful to her. Just as unconsciously, she ignores other information. The information she takes in is processed in her brain as she uses the trail-and-error method to find meaningful relationships. She continues this way until she understands: "Aha, this is the shutter." Then she tries it a few times just for fun, and to confirm that she has drawn the right conclusions."

"… Here's the learning process in a nutshell:

•	Attention makes us receptive to
•	Information, which we
•	Process together with prior knowledge, until we arrive at
•	Conclusions and understanding, which we then
•	Apply and test for confirmation

This series of mental processes is precisely what film directors, authors, and politicians base their presentations on in order to capture and hold our attention and reach us with their message.

1. Attention:

2. Information:

3. Processing:

4. Conclusion:

5. Application:

The search for meaning: seeing the big picture

Klas states in his book:

"It is easy to be fascinated by the human trait that drives little people to learn to crawl, walk, and communicate, and big people to scrutinize nature's smallest building blocks in an attempt to figure out how things work.

And we can ask ourselves what's behind this drive?

I won't even try to give a general answer to that question but, there is one characteristic of the brain that is easy to observe, and that has resulted in many interesting conclusions about how we learn: the brain's constant effort to find relationships, to make wholes out of parts, to create gestalts."

"This is one of the fundamental characteristics of our ability to learn-the driving force behind all learning.

Here is an example of where the gestalt is harder to see. It takes some effort. Here's a clue the picture depicts an animal.