The process, characteristics of learning involves quite a number of things which include benefits and life’s skills. Learning is expectedly thought to be able provoke both behavioral and psychological change in anyone who has claimed to be some victim of it or as experienced it.
As it is factually known that learning is the process of acquiring information, knowledge, wisdom, idea, innovation, and skills, it occurs as a result of interaction with the person’s environment.
To constitute learning, the change should be permanent. Temporary changes may be only reflective and fail to represent any learning. The effect of true learning is proven through the consistent showcasing of change in character and expression of character in different situations.
The Process, Characteristics of Learning
The process of learning may be slow or fast; it depends largely on the medium utilized or used to get it. As a matter of fact, many scholars believe that learning is a lifelong business which might have no end. The expectations however is that one responds to the learning as a process of personal development.
A process that leads to change and which occurs as a result of experience and then increase the potential for improved performance and future learning in terms of human attitude, belief, and character is called learning. Therefore, let us peep at the process, characteristics of learning as outlined below:
Change
It is a reconstruction, combined thinking, skill, information, and appropriation in a single unity process.
For example, when a child learns to read, they can retain this knowledge and behavior for the rest of their lives. It is not always reflected in performance. The change from the learning may not be clear until a situation arises in which the new behavior can occur.
Activities
These activities involve either physical or mental activity. They may be simple mental activities of complex involving various muscles, bones, etc.
So also, the mental activities may be very simple, involving one or two activities of the mind, or complex, which involve higher mental activities.
Interaction
At the time of learning, the individual is constantly interacting with and influenced by the environment. This experience makes him change or modify his behavior to deal effectively with it.
Read Also: The Role of Learning in Education
Lifelong Process
Learning is a lifelong process of gaining and using the information presented to a person. It is not static.
A person never stops acquiring new information. It keeps a person’s mind active and aware but also conscious of the world around them.
Randomness
Some learning occurs randomly throughout life, from new experiences, gaining information, and from our perceptions, for example: reading a newspaper or watching a news broadcast, talking with a friend or colleague, chance meetings, and unexpected experiences.
Problems Solving
Learning involves problem-solving, i.e., understanding and discovering relations between different contents in a situation.
Perception and Intuition
Learning involves far more than thinking: it involves the whole personality – senses, feelings, intuition, beliefs, values, and will.
If we do not have the will to learn, we cannot learn, and if we have learned, we are changed in some way. If the learning makes no difference, it can have very little significance.
Experience
Some sort of experience is necessary for learning and it involves the process, characteristics of learning. We can get the experience from direct observation or from formal approaches to learning such as training, mentoring, coaching, and teaching.
We can get the experience from direct observation or from formal approaches to learning such as training, mentoring, coaching, and teaching.
Learning is more or less the acquisition of a new discourse, a new way of speaking, acting, interacting, looking at the world, and knowing it. It will be successful only when the information gained is used and understood.
It is a continuous process followed by an individual that allows for the acquisition of information, attitudes, and practices through observation, seeking previous knowledge, searching out guides, and looking within as well as without. It is a key process in human behavior.