What is Learning at Global Jaya School

By Pak Steve Spannring

“Learning how to learn is life’s most important skill.” - Tony Buzan

Last January GJS teachers were asked to discuss this quote within the context of our school. As you might imagine, the conversations were as varied as the personalities and life experiences of our staff. Some took it at face value: Teaching students to learn is the most important aspect of our jobs. Others thoroughly analyzed the quote: How do we learn how to learn? Do we need to learn how to learn, or do we just learn? Whose life are we talking about? All life? Human life? A Bug’s Life? Others asked, “Who is Tony Buzan and who gave him the authority to rank life skills?” Our purpose was not to rank life skills, but to have a focused discussion about learning at GJS.

Prior to this meeting, we asked a handful of students from Year 1 to Year 12 how they define learning. The most common words in their definitions were: different, new, know, apply, and understand. We looked at research from leaders in the field of education, and principals reflected on their own learning from the EARCOS Leadership Conference. We asked teachers to meet in mixed groups from Kindergarten to the Diploma Programme to discuss all of the above and come up with their own definitions of learning. Teachers definitions often focused on time, change, skills, growth, challenge and experience. All of those definitions were then analyzed by principals, programme coordinators, and the Head of School to define learning at Global Jaya School: “At Global Jaya School, learning is the lasting growth, change, and development of knowledge, skills, understanding and behaviour.”

Why do we need a definition of learning? Can’t we just look it up in the dictionary? Sure. A quick Google search gives us the following: “the acquisition of knowledge or skills through learning, experience, or being taught.” However, we were not simply concerned with defining learning; we were concerned with defining what learning means to us, the Global Jaya community. So, let’s break it down:

Learning is lasting: In order for something to truly be learned, it must endure beyond the classroom and beyond the end of a unit of inquiry, programme of study, or year level. It must be remembered.

Learning requires change: This one is biological. When information is committed to long-term memory (learned), your brain physically changes to create new neurological pathways for that information. But we cannot observe biological changes in the brain. Instead, we monitor and assess the observable growth and development of our students academically, socially, emotionally, and behaviourally.

Learning requires knowledge, but not only knowledge: It is important to know . . . stuff, for lack of a better term. The stuff we require students to know (content knowledge) is the foundation upon which our students build and develop the communication, self-management, social, thinking, and research skills necessary for success both within and beyond the walls of our campus. But even those skills are not enough if we do not help students develop the understanding to know when and how to apply each of those skills in a given situation.

If Mr. Buzan is correct and learning how to learn is life’s most important skill, it is equally important that we have a shared understanding of what learning is. This is the real importance of having a community-wide definition of learning. It allows us to start all conversations about teaching and learning with a common goal: the lasting growth, change, and development of knowledge, skills, understanding and behaviour.