A&O FIGURE: LEARNING is ADAPTIVE CHANGE

TO LEARN is to CHANGE

New experiences either consolidate and strengthen our current understanding, or we adopt a more adaptive understanding. 

New experiences either consolidate and strengthen our current understanding, or we adopt a more adaptive understanding. 

TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING is manifest in a student’s experience of change from merely knowing course content to realizing its relevance in their personal and professional lives.

This kind of change is shadowed by the Piagetian distinction between assimilation (enlarging; incorporating new knowledge in to a data base that is coherent in  a specific theory, model, or world-view) and accommodation (changing shape; changing a theory, model, or world-view in order to allow novel experiences and new knowledge).

The difference between knowing and realizing reflects affective as well as cognitive depth. Realizing involves an aesthetic sense of gratification that imparts confidence in one’s understanding or insight – an intuitive sense of its truth.

 

More about COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: see Festinger:  https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-cognitive-dissonance-notes/  and  ASSIMILATION and ACCOMMODATION: see Piaget: https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-change-development-learning/