Understanding Learning: Beyond the Classroom

Think about the last time you figured out a quicker route to work, adjusted how you communicate with a difficult colleague, or stopped a habit that was no longer serving you. None of that happened in a classroom – yet all of it was learning. The word “learning” is used so casually in everyday life that its deeper meaning often goes unexamined. When psychologists, educationists, and philosophers actually sit down to define it, the picture that emerges is far richer, more dynamic, and more universal than most people expect.

What learning actually means
Learning happens everywhere, not just in schools
Key definitions by psychologists and educationists
The behaviourist view
Learning as modification of behaviour through experience
Learning as a sequence of mental events
What counts as learning – and what does not
Learning includes unlearning
Learning from nature: lessons from Indian literature
Why this matters for teaching

What learning actually means

Learning, at its broadest, is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviour, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. That scope is enormous. It covers everything from a toddler learning to walk, to a surgeon updating her technique after reading new research, to a retiree picking up a second language.

From a psychological standpoint, the definition is more precise. According to behavioural psychologists, learning is indicated by a relatively permanent change in behaviour or knowledge as a result of a learning experience – and crucially, it can occur without any deliberate intention to learn, even without conscious awareness that something new has been absorbed. The moment a person’s behaviour shifts in response to an experience, learning has taken place.

The University of Wolverhampton’s psychology of learning resource puts it succinctly: learning is generally defined as a relatively permanent change in behaviour as a result of experience. The word permanent is key here. A child who flinches after touching a hot stove has learned. A student who performs well on a test after cramming but forgets everything the following week has not truly learned – that was a temporary change. Genuine learning leaves a lasting mark on how a person thinks, feels, or acts.

AllPsych’s Psychology 101 frames it this way: learning is the process leading to relatively permanent behavioural change or the potential for behavioural change. As we learn, we alter how we perceive our environment, how we interpret incoming stimuli, and therefore how we interact with the world around us.

Learning happens everywhere, not just in schools

One of the most important things to understand about learning is that it is not the exclusive property of schools, colleges, or training programmes. According to Wikipedia’s overview of learning, human learning begins at birth – and may even start before birth – and continues until death as a consequence of ongoing interactions between people and their environment. This lifelong, boundary-free nature of learning is what makes it such a fundamental human capacity.

Consider how much a child learns before ever setting foot in a classroom: language, emotional regulation, social norms, physical coordination, problem-solving. All of this emerges through observation, experience, trial and error, and interaction with caregivers and the surrounding world. The classroom formalises and accelerates learning in particular domains, but it does not hold a monopoly on it.

This understanding matters enormously for teachers. When students enter a classroom, they do not arrive as blank slates. The concept of tabula rasa – the idea that the mind at birth is a blank slate ready to be written on by experience – is a useful theoretical starting point, but in practice, every learner arrives with a rich history of prior learning already embedded in their behaviour, attitudes, and expectations.

Key definitions by psychologists and educationists

Over the decades, psychologists and educationists have proposed many definitions of learning, each highlighting different facets of the same process. Here are some of the most influential perspectives.

The behaviourist view

Behaviourist learning theory, developed in the early 20th century by John B. Watson and later expanded by B.F. Skinner, defines learning as a change in observable behaviour shaped by environmental stimuli, reinforcement, and punishment. Watson argued that psychology should be a science of observable, measurable events – not internal mental states – and that all behaviour is learned from the environment. This opened up systematic, empirical study of how learning works.

B.F. Skinner built on Watson’s work through operant conditioning – the principle that behaviour followed by pleasant consequences tends to be repeated, while behaviour followed by unpleasant consequences tends to be avoided. Educators still use these principles today: praise and rewards to encourage productive behaviours, consistent feedback to shape mastery of specific skills.

Learning as modification of behaviour through experience

Beyond strict behaviourism, educationists have emphasised that learning is fundamentally about the modification of behaviour through experience, effort, and exercise. This framing connects the abstract psychological definition to practical pedagogy. Learning is not passive reception – it requires active engagement with material, situations, and challenges. The greater the quality of experience and the effort invested, the more durable and transferable the resulting learning tends to be.

As noted in educational learning theory literature, behaviourist theories emphasise changes in behaviour that result from the stimulus-response associations the learner makes. Behaviour is directed by stimuli, and individuals select responses based on prior conditioning and current psychological drives. This framework helps teachers design structured experiences that reinforce the behaviours and understanding they want students to develop.

Learning as a sequence of mental events

The behaviourist definition, while powerful, does not capture the full picture. Fagin (1958) described learning as a sequence of mental events or conditions – acknowledging that what goes on inside the learner matters too. This perspective shifted attention toward cognitive processes: perception, memory, reasoning, and insight. The conclusion that educational psychologists at IGNOU draw is that learning is a process by which an individual, as a result of interactions in a situation, modifies his or her behaviour – leading to desirable changes that help the person achieve better adjustment and development.

What counts as learning – and what does not

Defining learning also requires clarity about what does not qualify. Three categories of behavioural change are typically excluded.

Biological instincts – a newborn crying when hungry, a person feeling sleepy when tired, attraction to a potential partner – are natural, hardwired responses. They are not the result of experience or effort, so they are not learned behaviour.

Maturation – the physical and neurological development that allows a child to walk, talk, or reason at certain ages – is also not learning in itself. A six-month-old cannot learn to walk through instruction alone; the body simply is not ready. However, in most real-world cases, maturation and learning happen simultaneously and reinforce each other, which makes the boundary between them genuinely blurry.

Temporary behavioural changes caused by fatigue, illness, drugs, or injury are also excluded. Temporary change in behaviour is not learning. The change must be relatively lasting to qualify.

Learning includes unlearning

One of the most underappreciated dimensions of learning is that it is not simply accumulative – it is also subtractive. Learning includes unlearning: the deliberate process of letting go of outdated, inaccurate, or unhelpful knowledge, beliefs, or behaviours.

Research published on NCBI defines unlearning broadly as abandoning or giving up knowledge, ideas, or behaviours – in contrast to learning, which involves increasing one’s capacity for effective action through new skills or knowledge. Importantly, unlearning is distinct from forgetting. Forgetting is passive and unconscious – it simply happens over time when knowledge goes unused. Unlearning is a conscious, intentional decision to set aside something one has previously known or done, in order to make room for something more accurate or more useful.

Maryville University’s overview of the learn-unlearn-relearn cycle points out that learning often requires people to unlearn information and ways of doing things. Something as simple as relearning how to format a document after a software upgrade, or revising a clinical practice after new medical research contradicts an old standard, involves genuinely setting aside what was previously believed to be correct. This is not just a matter of adding new information on top of old – it requires actively restructuring one’s mental framework.

Harvard Business Review notes that the process of unlearning has three steps: first, recognising that an old mental model is no longer relevant or effective; second, finding or creating a new model; and third, putting the new model into practice until it becomes habitual. The difficulty of unlearning is precisely why it is so often neglected – it demands intellectual humility and a willingness to question what we have already invested effort in knowing.

Alvin Toffler’s famous observation captures this well: the illiterate of the future will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. In a rapidly changing world, the capacity to update one’s knowledge base is at least as important as the capacity to build it in the first place.

Learning from nature: lessons from Indian literature

The idea that learning extends far beyond formal instruction – and that nature itself is a teacher – is deeply embedded in Indian literary and philosophical traditions. Long before the modern psychology of learning was formalised, ancient Indian texts were using the natural world as a curriculum.

The Panchatantra, believed to have been composed around 200 BCE by the Sanskrit scholar Vishnu Sharma, is one of the most remarkable examples. Originally created to teach political wisdom and practical life skills to three young princes in the shortest possible time, it uses animal fables as its primary pedagogical vehicle. The princes were required to observe nature – to see the jackal as cunning, the bull as noble, the turtle-dove as constant – and extract from those observations principles for governing their own behaviour and statecraft. Panchatantra translator Chandra Rajan notes that Vishnu Sharma required the princes to look at the world of nature and bring their culture-conditioned perceptions to bear upon it – using animals as mirrors for human character.

The Hitopadesha, composed by Narayana between the 9th and 10th centuries CE, follows a similar tradition. Narayana states that the purpose of the work is to encourage proficiency in Sanskrit and knowledge of wise behaviour (niti-vidyam), achieved through moral stories in which birds, beasts, and humans interact. The Hitopadesha’s famous declaration – Vidya dadati vinayam (wisdom brings modesty, and modesty makes one deserving of success) – positions learning itself as the highest form of wealth, one that cannot be stolen.

Both texts share the conviction that the observations of the authors, based on what they saw in their surroundings – friendships, conflicts, politics, overcoming obstacles – form the raw material of genuine education. The natural world was not merely a backdrop; it was an active source of knowledge. Watching how a colony of ants organises itself, how a heron waits with patience, how a river finds its way around obstacles – these were lessons in strategy, resilience, and adaptability that no lecture hall could replicate.

This tradition anticipates what modern educational psychology now confirms: that learning is situational, experiential, and deeply connected to the environment in which it occurs. The Panchatantra and Hitopadesha understood, centuries before Vygotsky or Dewey, that the richest learning happens when the learner is actively engaged with the world – not passively receiving information from a single, authoritative source.

Why this matters for teaching

Understanding what learning truly is – a lasting change in behaviour arising from experience, effort, and engagement, which includes both acquiring new knowledge and consciously discarding the outdated – transforms how a teacher approaches their role. It shifts the emphasis from content delivery to experience design. It raises the question: am I creating conditions in which genuine, lasting change is possible? Am I helping learners not only build new knowledge, but also feel safe enough to question and revise what they already believe?

It also broadens the definition of what counts as a teaching moment. A walk through a garden, a conversation with an elder, a story about a crow that outsmarted a hunter – all of these are legitimate sites of learning. The ancient Indian literary tradition recognised this. Contemporary educational psychology confirms it. The classroom, at its best, does not replace these experiences; it organises, enriches, and extends them.

What do you think? If learning includes unlearning, how does that change the way teachers should respond when a student holds a misconception – should the focus be on adding correct information, or on actively helping the student let go of the incorrect belief first? And given that ancient texts like the Panchatantra used nature as a curriculum centuries ago, what opportunities might today’s teachers be missing by keeping learning confined to four walls?

References

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Table of Contents

What learning actually means 🔗

Learning happens everywhere, not just in schools 🔗

Key definitions by psychologists and educationists 🔗

The behaviourist view 🔗

Learning as modification of behaviour through experience 🔗

Learning as a sequence of mental events 🔗

What counts as learning – and what does not 🔗

Learning includes unlearning 🔗

Learning from nature: lessons from Indian literature 🔗

Why this matters for teaching 🔗