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Understandings of Learning

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The Emergence of Complexity

Part of the book series: Perspectives on Rethinking and Reforming Education ((PRRE))

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Abstract

Achieving new understandings of the development of professional practice, skills and expertise is the main focus of this book. But the process of attaining high levels of these professional attributes requires a particular type of learning journey. Thus, we maintain that a detailed examination of the nature of learning itself is a prerequisite for better appreciating the nature of such learning journeys. However, as this chapter demonstrates, our understandings of learning are far from settled. Indeed, as it happens, how we think about learning has been unduly shaped, even distorted, by too much focus on formal classroom learning as the purported paradigm of all learning. This chapter begins by outlining some traditional understandings of learning and the key assumptions that underpin these understandings. Then more recent theorisations of learning that emphasise its previously underplayed social aspects are outlined and discussed, thus presenting various challenges to the traditional understandings of learning and their underpinning assumptions. The result of this discussion is that various as-yet-unresolved issues concerning learning are identified. The chapter goes on to claim that developing richer understandings of the nature of the learning involved in attaining high levels of professional practice, skills or expertise has the additional benefit of pointing the way to a sounder understanding of the nature of learning in general. This sounder understanding is elucidated in Part II (i.e. Chaps. 6–8) and Part III (i.e. Chaps. 9 and 10) of the book.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Paul Hager

  2. Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    David Beckett

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Hager, P., Beckett, D. (2019). Understandings of Learning. In: The Emergence of Complexity. Perspectives on Rethinking and Reforming Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31839-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31839-0_5

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