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- Title
The Nature of Change in Successful Learning.
- Authors
Sosniak, Lauren A.
- Abstract
The article focuses on the process of learning. By definition, learning is a process of change--of movement and progress from naive, uninformed, inexperienced, or unskilled to more capable or sophisticated states of being. The tendency when one studies how people are different after a period of instruction is to emphasize quantitative methods of investigation. The kinds of changes typically associated with learning are student gains in skill and understanding, and increasing depth and breadth to the substance of the learning. Research on learning seems to presume the change and focus instead on things associated with it. At best, quantitative analysis tells nothing about changes in kind; at worst, it obscures them. The experiences of unusually successful learners strongly suggest that this emphasis in educational research on how much and how much better is misplaced. It is not simply a matter of becoming more knowledgeable and skilled over time, by working more intensely for longer hours. More importantly, it is a matter of qualitative transformations of both the individual and that which is being learned.
- Subjects
LEARNING; EDUCATION research; QUANTITATIVE research; COMPREHENSION; QUALITATIVE research; COMPARATIVE education
- Publication
Teachers College Record, 1987, Vol 88, Issue 4, p519
- ISSN
0161-4681
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/016146818708800404