Do We Really Know What Learning Is?

Education has never been short of debate. Every few years, new conversations emerge about what schools should prioritise. Should we focus on knowledge or competencies? Explicit instruction or inquiry? Student agency or teacher direction? Assessment or wellbeing?

These debates matter, but they all assume something that is rarely examined. Before we can decide how learning should happen, we need to understand what learning is. It is a deceptively simple question, yet one that sits beneath every curriculum decision, every assessment practice and every teaching approach we choose to adopt.

For me, this question became the catalyst for both my doctoral research at Cambridge University and The Hesscairn Guide to Learning. It emerged not because I was searching for another educational model, but because I repeatedly found myself asking whether we had developed a sufficiently clear understanding of learning before attempting to improve it.

These ideas continue to shape the work we do at Ingrove Academy, where we support educators and leaders in developing a deeper understanding of learning, curriculum design and educational improvement.

Looking Beyond Individual Parts

Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to work with schools, international organisations and policy groups exploring educational improvement. Whether those conversations took place within schools, through the LEGO Foundation or as part of work with organisations such as the OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank, I kept noticing a similar pattern.

Groups of highly capable educators would gather to discuss learning. Someone would emphasise knowledge. Someone else would champion competencies. Others would advocate for character, creativity, wellbeing or agency. Every contribution was valuable, yet something important was often missing.

We were discussing individual parts of learning without first understanding how those parts connected. There was rarely a shared conception of learning as a whole.

That matters more than we might think. When there is no coherent framework underpinning our thinking, the curriculum can become a collection of worthwhile ideas rather than a purposeful design. Educational initiatives are adopted because they are compelling in isolation, not because they align with a broader understanding of what we believe learning is trying to achieve.

Why Intentionality Matters

There is a quotation that has stayed with me for many years, although I have never been able to identify its original source. It suggests that if we are going to take children away from play, friendship, family and childhood, and ask them to spend such a significant proportion of their lives in schools, then the education we provide ought to be extraordinary.

That idea continues to challenge me because it reminds us that education is a choice.

The systems we have created are not inevitable. They have been designed by people, which means they can also be redesigned by people. If that is true, then we have a responsibility to be intentional about what we are trying to accomplish through education rather than simply accepting inherited practices because they have always existed.

Intentionality requires us to ask more fundamental questions.

What do we believe learning is?
What do we want young people to become capable of?
Do our curriculum, pedagogy and assessment genuinely reflect those beliefs?

Without that clarity, even well intentioned educational decisions can begin pulling in different directions.

A More Coherent Way Forward

One of the strongest themes to emerge from my research has been that educators are rarely lacking commitment or expertise. What they often lack is a shared way of conceptualising learning that helps them see the whole picture before making decisions about its individual parts.

The goal is not to prescribe one correct philosophy of learning. Different schools, communities and cultures will quite legitimately value different outcomes. The challenge is ensuring that whatever we value is reflected consistently throughout the learning experiences we design.

When we begin with a clearer understanding of learning itself, our decisions become more coherent. Knowledge, skills, understanding, competencies and character stop competing for attention and instead become interconnected dimensions of a much richer conception of learning.

Perhaps that is the conversation education needs more often.

Not simply asking which teaching strategy works best, but first asking whether we have developed a sufficiently thoughtful understanding of learning itself. Because until we truly understand what learning is, it becomes remarkably difficult to know whether we are designing the kind of education our young people truly deserve.