The Meaning Of “Learning”: A Twist Of The Mindset

By María Elena Zambrana de la Portilla

At the start of this module, “How the Brain Learns and its Applications”, I was
given three “simple” questions to answer at that moment and to keep my
answers and answer them again as an assessment for the end of the month,
making a comparison of what I thought “learning” was and what I now think it
is.

For people who has seen the term “learning” only in an academic way, as I have
done it, most of the time, taking any course of neuroscience and understanding
the way the brain works, will be a total twist of their mindset and will help them
not only to really know what “learning” means, but also to understand people
and their behavior in a better way.

What does “learning” mean for you? This was the first question and what I
literally thought at that moment and wrote in my notebook was:

“I think it means to receive any kind of stimuli or information, to process

it and finally turn it into knowledge.”
My answer wasn’t that bad as I was close to the real meaning of “learning”, but
it wasn’t enough. After taking this module now I know, thanks to Erick Kandel,
Michael Posner, Francis Crick and many other neuroscientists’ studies, that
learning is a continuous, cyclic, whole and complex process that occurs all the
time in everyone through neuroplasticity which is caused by constant
modifications of the brains’ neuronal connections through electrical, chemical,
structural and functional changes in our body and which are harmoniously
orchestrated by the communication between billions of neurons as a result of
the interaction of genetic and environmental factors throughout the human
experience and existence. And yes, all of this, scientifically proven.

The next question. When do you know you have learned something? It didn’t took
much time to answer and what I wrote was:

“When that knowledge – referring to the answer of the first question – can
be turned into action.”
Because “You know when you know”, right? Every stimuli has a response, and
that is caused by the creation of new connections between neurons and, that,
happens all the time in our brains. This is how we adapt to change and how we,
as humankind, have adapted to change and evolved through history. Every time
we learn something new, we recall information we have learned before, making
more and more connections between neurons; when this happens, the physical
structure of the brain changes and our thoughts get “reorganized”. This is why,
learning is always happening, consciously and unconsciously. Also,
scientifically proven.

And finally, the last question. Do you think you learn in the classroom? Why?
How?

“Yes, I do think we learn in the classroom and out of it. Because we turn
information into knowledge and knowledge into action every second, like
I said before, by responding to any kind of stimuli we receive.”
I know my answer is really close to what it really should be. But now, I
understand what it actually takes to learn something, and now I also know that,
as I explained in the last question, we are constantly learning, that our brain is
processing information all the time through billions of connections between
neurons. In that way we respond to stimuli, in that way we adapt, we survive and
we evolve.

Finally to add more meaning to this answer, I would like to quote a paragraph I
found in an online article written by the team of Ceed Learning about
Neuroscience and Learning.

“If we understand how the brain works and changes, we can use this
knowledge and understanding to improve learning. We learn by
connecting ideas and emotions, and these emotional connections help to
unlock learning potential. The existence of neural wiring, between the
thinking and emotional centres of the brain, suggests that emotions can
either enhance or inhibit the brain’s ability to learn. In designing learning
programmes, if we give learners the opportunity to create an emotional
connection with the content, better learning takes place.”
Neuroscience not only helps the learning industry by giving more information
about how the brain works and how people learn and improving the process; it
also helps everyone to understand much more better who they are, why they are
that way, how other people is and that we are not totally defined, that we can
improve ourselves and we can help others to do so too. Chances are infinite, we
just have to open our minds.

Studying this module generated a total twist of my mindset, and I’m glad it did.