The learning process

Phenomenologically, that is, in terms of the way we construct our (interpretation of) experience, learning occurs when we encounter the area of the unknown. This is a necessary condition for learning, but is not sufficient. The meeting with the unknown is the encounter with our own ignorance: we do not know what to make of things, what they mean, we are unsure how to proceed, we are at a loss. Since we normally prefer to know what we are doing, this can be off-putting.

For learning to take place, a strategy is needed to enable us to embrace our lack of knowledge successfully, without being deterred by it. A willingness to proceed is necessary, a desire, as well as the means, to go forwards into the unknown and impose or find some order in it that enables us to absorb it into our corpus of pre-existing knowledge as something now known.

‘Knowledge’ is not merely the end result of this process, ‘knowing’ is the process itself.

For this reason, education must pay attention to the individual’s encounter with the unknown as the process of knowledge generation, an encounter which s/he may be reluctant to have and ffor which they may not have the necessary skills to manage successfully.

People think that the goal of learning is to amass knowledge, but it is more the seeking out of uncertainty.