Northern Grid for Learning - School Broadband, eSafety, Learning Resources and More

Learning can be defined as the act of acquiring knowledge, skills, ideas or understanding over and above those which existed previously. Learning can be thought of as a set of possible actions - an addition of ideas or skills, a reordering of ideas, or an acquisition of concepts, for example. The act of learning requires learners to be involved in three sets of processes:

• internalisation (the processes which enable ideas or knowledge to enter the mind from an external source);
• internal processes (those processes which enable the ideas or knowledge acquired to be compared or contrasted or integrated in some way with those which already exist);
• externalisation (the processes which enable ideas or knowledge or skills to leave the mind and to be observable by others from the exterior).

The processes involved in learning, or in aspects of learning, can be detailed to a greater extent: internalisation includes three distinct processes:

• attention (a focus by the learner on the 'new' knowledge or ideas);
• sensory stimulus (the ways or forms in which the new skills or knowledge are recognised by the learner);
• acquisition or reception (the point at which these new skills or knowledge impinge upon the consciousness);

internal processes include a range of other actions:

• retention (the point at which new ideas are held in the mind);
• rehearsal (the ways in which 'new' knowledge or skills are compared or contrasted to that which exists already);
• recall (the ability to recognise, identify and refer to the new skills or knowledge again in an existing or new context);
• short-term memory (where new ideas or skills are held in an existing context for a limited time);
• long-term memory (where ideas and skills are held for longer periods of time and where they are often associated with other existing ideas or concepts);

externalisation includes the processes of making skills or knowledge or ideas external to the individual:

• motor stimulus (the means of making the internal range of ideas and skills external, and choosing the ways to do this).