Understanding Perception

All learning theories are based on certain assumptions about how learners process experience. It can be quite difficult to ascertain what fundamental conventions exist about how our consciousness is supported and channeled. But somebody has to do it.

Because our assumptions determine our MO for teaching and learning, logically we should explore our cultural “givens” about consciousness, to make sure we don’t have something fundamentally “wrong” that we’ve based our learning theories on.

Pragmatically, we can observe circumstances where the results of educational practice don’t match the expectations. At least we can presume where there’s smoke there’s fire. Students who are dropping out, and/or failing to “graduate” with employable skills and capabilities indicate something amiss, or many somethings amiss.

One obvious but profound oddity is that a certain demographic of students can fail dramatically in one schooling context, and succeed dramatically in another. Sometimes the most salient difference is something to do with how the students, their families, the teachers, and the administrators perceive capabilities. Which at heart, seems to be a differing take on how we form the means of success, or how we form the functional patterns of success.

And that means understanding perception and consciousness. Which is a very tall order, as it is often an unconscious given derived from the whole gestalt of a particular “civilization”. So yes, this seems an absurdly difficult research odyssey, full of unknowns. OTOH, the rewards from understanding our cultural consciousness givens can be powerful for making better results, and better recipes for learning.

Here’s one example of “thinking about perception” (below), for those who don’t mind spending time pondering imponderables. Which may or may not produce useful ideas in proportion to the time and energy invested. Similar perhaps to researching McLuhan’s ideas about understanding media…lots of big thoughts that reduce down to wobbly practical results.

Yet despite the wobbles, we need to understand media, and similarly need to understand perception, to advance all forms of education, training, and learning.