Learning

When I was eight years old and admired as a bright child both in my family and at the school, I did not have any clue of how other kids’ lives might be. To me everybody was smart and valuable and an exciting universe to be unfolded.

One day on the school bus a classmate told me she did not understand the lessons because she was “stupid”! I was hurt and shocked. Quickly I started to count her capabilities to convince her she is smart and clever because everyone is. She said everybody had told her she was stupid so she must have been. That day became a day of “initiation” for me. Probably I promised myself to never ever let anybody feel or be named stupid. So there began my lifelong journey of concern and curiosity about intelligence(s) and ultimately learning.

When I finally came across with extensive research on nine types of intelligence by Howard Gardner in my PhD research, I got it as a scientific confirmation to my lifelong approach to learning and human intelligence variety and spectrum.

Although learning and education go hand in hand and sometimes used as similar words, I deliberately decided to separate them and share my ideas on different pages. I would like to explore learning as an innate human aspect and not through the institutionalized education systems.

In my professional life I have the opportunity to teach and participate in the learning process of young children, college students, seniors and adults within a broad range of literacy or language capabilities. I have observed the influence of health (physical, mental and neurological), food and nutrition, sense of safety and belonging either to the physical or technological environment, experience, motivation and competency in language on learning.

I am engaged with the concept of learning for long time. My studies and experience so far have convinced me that the archetypal patterns and personal temperament blueprints have fundamental impact on individuals ways of life including their learning. Even the “Learning Style” personality tests shed such a profound light on each person’s learning strengths. So it sounds like it is a good investment to investigate an individual’s archetypal patterns, temperaments and learning style to facilitate the learning journey. It makes sense to customize and tailor learning programs and approaches for each person. Having said that, there are researches and courses to teach/learn how to learn. These techniques facilitate training of each individual brain to develop patterns and become armed with skills to master learning and do it effectively. I have found the resources below a few of the useful and enlightening ones on this subject:

The traditional overlap of learning and education has been changed significantly over the past few decades. With the necessity of reskilling and upskilling in work environments and businesses the education has shifted from mainly pedagogy to include adult-focused learning and therefore the concept of learning has become a lifelong process. The emergence of e-learning and technological advances to support the process of learning including games have made a foundation to upgrade this process from a class-based to customized learning process for individuals. When the pandemic started in 2020 it became clear that the platforms were available and accessible. In this sense I feel the arena is open in front of us to be creative and develop flexible and customized platforms of learning towards the individuation of education process so each person can learn according to their gifts and strengths and with their personal pace.