How Do Children Learn?

How Do Children Learn?

Lifelong learning 

Lifelong learning is a broad, generic term that is difficult to define with specificity. Its overlap, or its interchangeable use, with other closely related concepts, such as lifelong, permanent, recurrent, continuing, or adult education; learning organizations; and the learning society (society in which learning is pervasive), makes this even more true. For some it includes learning from childhood and early schooling, while others treat it in terms of the adult learning process. It has grown to a global concept, with differing manifestations that vary with national political and economic priorities, and with cultural and social value systems.

Lifelong learning is used here in an inclusive sense that accommodates this heterogeneity. A statement resulting from a collaboration of the European Lifelong Learning Initiative and the American Council on Education provides a workable expression of this broader acceptance:

Lifelong learning is the development of human potential through a continuously supportive process which stimulates and empowers individuals to acquire all the knowledge, values, skills, and understanding they will require throughout their lifetimes and to apply them with confidence, creativity and enjoyment in all roles, circumstances, and environments. (Longworth and Davies, p. 22)

This definition includes several basic elements of the lifelong learning ideal: (1) a belief in the idea of lifetime human potential and the possibility of its realization; (2) efforts to facilitate achievement of the skills, knowledge, and aptitudes necessary for a successful life; (3) recognition that learning takes place in many modes and places, including formal educational institutions and nonformal experiences such as employment, military service, and civic participation and informal self-initiated activity; and (4) the need to provide integrated supportive systems adapted to individual differences that encourage and facilitate individuals to achieve mastery and self-direction. Society should make these systems available to learners with flexibility and diversity.

Lev Vykotsky

The inclusion of society and culture as impactors of cognitive development is most evident in the work of Lev Vygotsky (1978). His work uses social interaction as the framework for all learning and development. To Vygotsky, “the development of the mind is the interweaving of biological development of the human body and the appropriation of the cultural/ideal/material heritage which exists in the present to coordinate people with each other and the physical world” (Cole and Wertsch, 1996, p. 2). There are three major principles underlying Vygotsky's social development theory (Wink & Putney, 2002). First, social interaction plays a critical role in cognitive development in relation to what is learned and when and how learning occurs. This principle asserts that “Without the learning that occurs as a result of social interaction, without self awareness or the use of signs and symbols that allow us to think in more complex ways, we would remain slaves to the situation, responding directly to the environment” (Nicholl, 1998, p. 1). The second principle associated with this theory is “the idea that the potential for cognitive development is limited to a certain time span” (Kearsley, 2001b, p. 1). Finally, Vygotsky asserted that the only way to understand how humans come to know is to study learning in an environment where the process of learning rather than the ...