How do you define learning?

Learning. Engagement. Empowerment. 

This week I listened to a conversation on VoicEd Radio about learning and how we define it. I plan to listen to it again to try and solidify my thoughts around the conversation that took place and I think it should be mandatory listening for all educators. 

Follow this link to have a listen for yourself. 

So what is learning? How do we define it? 

These are great questions for all educators to grapple with on an ongoing basis. I don't believe it's something we can define one time and move on. It will be an living definition that changes as an educator grows in their pedagogical knowledge, as they build their capacity of assessment for, as and of learning, as they develop their ability to build trusting relationships with their students.

As they learn.

Learning is ongoing. Learning is a process. Learning is a collection of moments. 

Learning is the reflection of those moments. 

Learning is the discussions that take place within a community. Learning is looking back to move forward. 

Learning is asking questions and being okay to sit in the space with those questions and not always have all the answers. Learning is not knowing everything but wanting to learn more. Learning is saying "I was wrong and now I know better". 

Learning requires quiet moments of thinking. 

Learning requires that we make a mess and tinker with ideas, materials, and making. 

Learning requires that we pause and rethink. Learning requires that we listen just as much if not more than we talk. Learning requires that we recognize the knowledge of others and invite them in to learn with us. 

Learning requires that we read and read widely. Read about others who are different than us, from different backgrounds than us, from others that we disagree with and want to argue with, and that we read with a window into our own world as well. 

That we read for fun. Learning requires that we question our reading. 

Most of all, learning requires time. 

Time to sit in the space of our learning. 

Time to move beyond what we thought we knew to be true. 

Time to come back to our thinking and re-think and re-learn. 

So what does all this mean for educators in the classroom?

Well, that is the question isn't it?

And it is a question without an easy answer.