Learning about Learning and Teaching: “You don’t learn in there, you play”

An apparently simple statement from a student participant in research that I was conducting more than 10 years ago has led me on a long, unexpected path of investigation and of personal learning that has had a profound effect on my tertiary teaching. I had not seriously considered the impact that views or perceptions of learning might have on attitudes, expectations, and consequent success in learning. In this chapter I will trace my path of investigation and self-reflection about perceptions of learning and the effects of articulating personal learning. This path has involved changes in my research emphases, but more importantly it has changed my approach to my own teaching and the pedagogy I share with my teacher education students for their own learning and future teaching. This chapter traces my developing realization of the need to confront my own teacher education practice to incorporate my new learning about schoolchildren’s and student teachers’ own perceptions of learning. Interestingly, it has been my observation of students’ learning in informal settings that has broken me out of the traditional mould of thinking about teaching and learning in classrooms.