Verb

learning

1. Present participle of learn.

   I'm learning to ride a unicycle.

Noun

Singular learning

Plural usually uncountable; plural learnings

learning (usually uncountable; plural learnings)

1. (uncountable) An act in which something is learned.

   Learning to ride a unicycle sounds exciting.

2. (uncountable) Accumulated knowledge.

   The department head was also a scholar of great learning.

3. (countable) Something that has been learned
   • 2007 April 5, Stuart Elliott, “Online Experiment for Print Magazine”, New York Times:

     “We’ll take the learnings and apply them to the rest of our business.”

Derived terms

• higher learning
• learning disability
• learning by doing

António Damásio Phineas Gage Norman Geschwind Elkhonon Goldberg Patricia Goldman Rakic Pasko Rakic Donald O. Hebb Kenneth Heilman Edith Kaplan Muriel Lezak Benjamin Libet Rodolfo Llinás Alexander Luria Brenda Milner Karl H. Pribram Oliver Sacks Mark Rosenzweig Roger W. Sperry

Benton Visual Retention Test Clinical Dementia Rating Continuous Performance Task Glasgow Coma Scale Hayling and Brixton tests Johari window Lexical decision task Mini-mental state examination Stroop effect Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values or preferences. It may involve processing different types of information. Learning functions can be performed by different brain learning processes, which depend on the mental capacities of learning subject/agent, the type of knowledge which has to be acquitted, as well as on socio-cognitive and environmental circumstances .

The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.

Human learning may occur as part of education or personal development. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy.

Learning may occur as a result of habituation or classical conditioning, seen in many animal species, or as a result of more complex activities such as play, seen only in relatively intelligent animals and humans. Learning may occur consciously or without conscious awareness. There is evidence for human behavioral learning prenatally, in which habituation has been observed as early as 32 weeks into gestation, indicating that the central nervous system is sufficiently developed and primed for learning and memory to occur very early on in development.

Play has been approached by several theorists as the first form of learning. Children play, experiment with the world, learn the rules, and learn to interact. Vygotsky agrees that play is pivotal for children's development, since they make meaning of their environment through play.

Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom. It is the goal of education, and the product of experience.

Sourced

• "Then let every one of us, being warned by this sentence of the angel, acknowledge that he as yet cleaves to first principles, or, at least, does not comprehend all those things which are necessary to be known; and that therefore progress is to be made to the very end of life: for this is our wisdom, to be learners to the end."
  • John Calvin, Commentaries on the Prophet Zechariah. Part 9.

• "The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners."
  • John Holt, in 'Growing Without Schooling' magazine #40

• A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Part II

• "It is never too late to study, but it may be too late to learn." ~Leonid S. Sukhorukov, All About Everything (2005), p. 135

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sun Feb 28 18:18:30 2010