"Consider the view that adults learn differently than children. Relate your answer to personal experience and theoretical work."

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“Consider the view that adults learn differently than children.  Relate your answer to personal experience and theoretical work.”

All human beings go through the process of learning. It is the gain in skill or knowledge.  Learning can be described as a relatively permanent modification of responses as a result of experience.  A relatively permanent change in behaviour.  Learning varies with different individuals.  It varies in time, depth and many more aspects. Learning is the method by which an individual senses and responds to its surroundings, remembering its experience in the process.   D. Kolb suggests that learning is ‘the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience’.  There are many different perspectives in psychology that are express on learning. Learning is a very complex process, even though it so frequent.  N. Hayes proposes that research shows that expectations, imitations and identification are all segments of a child’s learning process.

Behaviourists believe learning to be achieved through being receptive to stimuli from the environment.  Behaviourists argue that it is impossible to study mental experiences and processes such as learning, since they are essentially private and therefore cannot be observed.  Hence, behaviour is observed and studied.  Biologists mainly concern themselves with brain and the nervous system and their relation to our behaviour.  Cognitive theories stress the active process involved in learning, whereas the phenomenological perspective concerns the active nature of the learner.

It is important that learning is viewed in a holistic way so that the foundation of the way of thinking lie in the individual having grasped the conclusions from their own perspective.  This is because there is then an active learning process that occurs rather than a passive teacher-led perspective that enables learning.

The distinguishing characteristic of adult learning is the self-directed nature of the learning.  Hayes 1998 suggests the nature of child learning to be dominated by Piaget’s ideas.  Children engage in imitating other people in a reflective manner as a learning process.  Thus a child’s learning is more rigid, and more task-orientated.  Adult’s on the other hand can draw on a wealth of previous experience to help achieve a task.  According to Piaget, children construct an understanding of the world, then experience discrepancies between what is already known and what is discovered.  Through adoption, assimilation and accommodation they are able to move through processes of development.  So when children encounter something similar to what is already known they assimilate it into existing knowledge, whereas anything different they may “accommodate” by rethinking their views of the world.  This is through disequilibria the experience of cognitive conflict, and by accommodation we can facilitate cognitive growth.  

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Research evidence suggests that intelligence is the most necessary instrument of learning and is chiefly characterised through the process of development, distinct from the process of learning.    Piaget’s theory explains the general development of intelligence to be the basis for any specific learning.  Learning can only take place on the condition that the individual has the general mechanisms to assimilate the information so that specific information can be memorised and specific skills can be acquired necessary for learning.  Different cultures and social environments require different aspects of intelligence.  Children are active learners and therefore learning is dependent on ...

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