Learning is a process that is often not under our control and is wrapped up with the environments we inhabit and the relationships we make. It involves encountering signals from the senses; attending to them; looking for connections and meanings; and framing them so that we may act.

What do people think learning is? · learning as a product · learning as a process · experience · reflective thinking · making connections · committing and acting · task-conscious or acquisition learning, and learning-conscious or formalized learning · learning theory · What is education? Over the last thirty years or so, ‘learning’ has become one of the most used words in the field of education. Adult education became lifelong learning; students became learners, teachers facilitators of learning; schools are now learning environments; learning outcomes are carefully monitored.

Perhaps the most striking result of recent research around learning in childhood and adolescence is that very little comes through conscious and deliberate teaching (Gopnik 2016: 60). It comes from participation in life. [O]ther kinds of social learning are more sophisticated, and more fundamental. They are evolutionarily deeper, developmentally earlier, and more pervasive than schooling. They have been much more important across a wide range of historical periods and cultural traditions. Children learn by watching and imitating the people around them. Psychologists call this observational learning. And they learn by listening to what other people say about how the world works—what psychologists call learning from testimony.