“Learning” is a word we use all the time, but there have long been disagreements about what it really means.

Concepts like “learning” and “knowledge” are to education what weights and measures are to the marketplace: these are the tools we use to compare, classify and discriminate.

And just as the standardisation of weights and measures is central to a fair and accountable marketplace, so is the standardisation of our concepts central to a fair and accountable education system.

Sometimes this standardisation occurs deliberately. Consider, for example, the previous Ofsted framework citing John Sweller: “If nothing is altered in long-term memory, nothing has been learned.”

But standardisation can also occur as a side effect of accountability measures, which often narrow the de facto meaning of “learning” to “what tests can measure”.

This poses a problem, because while most of us would agree that learning is about more than just exam grades, if we want children to “learn” in the sense we have always understood the word, any standardisation - and the policies and practices related to that - need to reflect our ordinary use.

In short, we don’t just need to be able to use the word “learning”; we need to understand how our idea of learning is constructed, and interrogate how the education we provide aligns with that.

So, if we were to boil learning down to its essential properties, what might that look like?

How do we define ‘learning’?

According to one kind of essentialism (often called Platonism), ideas are somehow built into the universe and are independent of our language. So, to find out what learning really is, we would need to come up with a “checklist” of necessary and sufficient conditions.

However, most concepts aren’t definable in this way; they’re far too messy for that. If, for example, someone says, “Learning is a change in long-term memory,” we can point out that a car crash might also lead to a change in long-term memory, but it isn’t learning; or that I can learn something, but quickly forget it.

Some believe we can “discover” the essence of learning through observation and experiment. In other words, can’t we simply see what different examples of learning have in common and build our checklist of conditions from there?

Unfortunately, any such “discoveries” are entirely circular, since any act of selecting samples of “learning” for investigation presupposes a definition of learning.

As philosopher Alan White would point out, there are two quite distinct questions here. Firstly, there’s the conceptual question: what sorts of things do we call “learning”? This is about the concept we use to classify, order and compare our educational activities and aims.

Secondly, there are empirical questions regarding those activities defined as “learning”. For example, what will happen if I use mini-whiteboards rather than Kahoot!? Or what’s the quickest, cheapest or most efficient way to raise our Progress 8 score?

The latter are the questions that science is concerned with. We mustn’t, therefore, confuse the concept that identifies what we’re investigating (learning) with the technical ideas we develop to study it.

How do we map out learning?

Learning might not be easy to define, but good educational policy requires a realistic conceptual map of it, all the same.

But how do we reach that? One approach might be to look at how we use words that express the idea of learning in real life. For example, we often substitute the word “learning” for “memorising” or “practising”, as in: “I am learning my times tables.”

There are also many other uses of the word “learning” that cannot be reduced like this. For example, “I learned the value of friendship today” can’t be switched with “I memorised the value of friendship”; nor can “I learned that she didn’t go after all” be switched with “I memorised that she didn’t go after all”.

So, let’s take a broader range of examples. In each of the following sentences, the main verb could be replaced by “to learn”:

• I discovered that she wasn’t Greek.
• I have memorised this poem.
• I noticed that each time this happened, that happened.
• I became aware of her jealous streak.
• I am practising the piano.
• I am looking up how to answer this question.
• I am thinking about the Civil War.
• I am rehearsing my lines.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but we can begin to see some patterns and logical distinctions.

Learning as a result

Sometimes the word “learning” is used to describe a result (that some knowledge or skill has been acquired), and sometimes it is used to describe an activity (the act of acquiring).

I can achieve results repeatedly, or gradually, but not continuously. Hence, activities can have a progressive form, but results tend not to. For instance, it would be odd to say “I am discovering that she wasn’t Greek”, as if it were some kind of ongoing process. However, we might memorise a poem bit-by-bit.

Learning-as-result words can indicate that something has been achieved or attained: words like “discover”, “discern”, “memorise”, “hear”, “see”, “read” and “understand”. These are things that we can try to do - although it’s important to note that while you can try to understand something, understanding isn’t always the result of trying.

Learning-as-result words can also indicate that something’s been received; for example, “notice”, “realise” or “become aware of”. These are things we generally do not try to do.

Results learning might also be concerned with ethics and values; for example, learning not to interrupt, to be brave or to speak your mind. And there can be emotional aspects to learning-as-results, too: I can be “surprised that…”, “shocked that…”, “fascinated by the fact that…”, “horrified by the fact that…” and so on.

Learning as an activity

When it comes to learning as an activity, meanwhile, we can further differentiate this into four different categories:

• Searching activities like looking up, looking for, listening for, searching for. These activities are completed when a particular piece of information has been found.
• Training activities, which differ insofar as their end is an ability to do something. If, for example, we are rehearsing our lines, the aim is to be able to recite them at will.
• Contemplative activities like listening to, looking at, contemplating, paying attention and thinking about. In contrast to training and searching activities, contemplative activities have no specific end in mind (though they are done for specific reasons).
• Productive or generative activities, which involve thinking up possibilities, imagining or coming up with things. These also have no specific end in mind, but unlike contemplative activities, they are productive, rather than attentive.

With all of this in mind, we can think of learning in terms of the following map:

Using this map, we can now ask whether we want to focus on training activities (like practice testing) at the expense of contemplative or searching ones (open discussions or navigating the internet).

Or we can ask whether we want to focus on learning-as-attainment (developing abilities) rather than learning-as-reception (opportunities for pupils to realise or notice things).

It’s important to recognise that both types of activity have worth. For instance, I remember going on a trip to the beach with a class, only to find that lots of the children had never been to a beach before. They had never played in sand, never felt it run through their fingers. It wasn’t on the exam, but it was an important learning experience for them, nonetheless.

Education policy and learning

So, how far does current education policy fit with this map of learning?

To my mind, much of the government’s work aligns well with it. The personal development and wellbeing section of Ofsted’s new inspection toolkit, for instance, highlights pupils’ “fascination in learning” and their engagement with artistic, musical, sporting and cultural opportunities.

The curriculum and assessment review’s call to cut exam time by 10 per cent and “go further where possible” is also welcome as a means to free up curriculum time for activities beyond training for exams.

Likewise, the government’s proposed core enrichment entitlement (guaranteeing all pupils access to civic engagement; arts and culture; nature, outdoor and adventure; sport and physical activities; and developing wider life skills) recognises a rich conception of learning.

However, I would like to see the Department for Education go further still and embed a fuller concept of learning into law. The 2002 Education Act requires schools to provide a “balanced and broadly based curriculum which:

• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and
• prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.”

I would add to this a third stipulation: “Provides opportunities for learning in all its forms.”

Such a commitment should be supported by protected time each week for kinds of learning that are not easily measured or directly tied to grades - especially those that cultivate receptivity: noticing, realising and related capacities, or those that involve contemplation rather than practising.

Standardised understanding of learning

The new enrichment entitlement will help, but schools also need space for the open (and unassessed) conversations advocated by Peter Hyman. And if we are to take media literacy seriously, pupils must have time for exploratory searching - particularly online research. It is an inefficient way to acquire examinable knowledge, but an essential skill to foster.

Ultimately, education is an area of policy that is highly susceptible to big swings in vision. It therefore needs ballast to keep it steady against the winds of opinion.

That ballast can’t be science alone, since the questions to which we require answers aren’t merely empirical; nor can it simply be performances in tests and tables like P8 or the Programme for International Student Assessment, as there are things that are more valuable than grades.

Instead, a stable, broad and ordinary understanding of “learning” must anchor educational policy. If we want a fair and accountable education system that works for all, we need to standardise our core “weights” and “measures” in a way that speaks to this ambition.

Bernard Andrews is a secondary school philosophy teacher

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