Learning is defined as a relatively permanent change in behaviour that occurs due to past experience or practice.
The characteristics of learning are:
1. It involves some relatively permanent change in behaviour,
2. The change in behaviour is due to experience or practice,
3. Change in behaviour may be in knowledge, e.g. learning a new formula, or in skill, e.g. learning to ride a cycle, or in muscular movements.
4. Learning is an inferred process.
The processes of learning are:
(i) Learning by classical conditioning Classical conditioning was first explained by Ivan Pavlov. It is learning by forming associations and by stimulus substitution. In daily life, we learn many things this way. Example: a child is given an injection by the doctor and begins to cry in pain. He soon makes the connection between ‘doctor’, ‘injection’ and ‘pain’ and begins crying as soon as he is taken to a doctor. Many of our fears, phobias and superstitions are learnt by classical conditioning.
(ii) Learning by operant conditioning – Learning by operant conditioning was first explained by B. F. Skinner. He said that learning takes place to gain positive consequences or to avoid negative consequences. Example: in Skinner’s experiment a rat was put in a special box that had a lever. When the rat pressed the lever, it received a food pellet. Gradually it learnt to press the lever to receive the pellet of food. In daily life, we tend to learn some behaviour either because we are rewarded for it or because we are not punished for it.
(iii) Learning by observation – According to Albert Bandura, we learn by observation and imitation of the of behaviour of others, etc. Both desirable behaviour and for e.g., empathy, and undesirable behaviour for e.g., bullying, can be learned this way. This occurs, in respect to skills, for e.g., eating with a fork/spoon as well as in our thinking, decision making, etc.
(iv) Learning by assimilation and accommodation – Jean Piaget explains that we learn by forming and refining our concepts on the basis of similarities and differences between new and existing information. Example: A child forms a concept of cow by extracting some characteristics of the cow. When the child encounters a buffalo he/she notices the differences between cow and buffalo and forms a new concept of buffalo.
