The most popular discussion these days between parents is how well their child is doing in school. Often we hear parents complaining, that ‘my child is not a good student, he always fails a test. What should I do?’ We constantly discuss what we want children to learn and more importantly HOW we want them to learn, forgetting the fact that each child is an individual with different learning capacities. In recent years, tuitions have become a fad. Children come back from school; have lunch and half an hour later bundle up again to go to a tuition centre. All because these centres help them ‘learn’ in a better manner. I have known of children as young as 3.5 and 4 years of age whose parents send them for further tuitions after school hours. However, has any one us, ever stopped for moment and thought about what exactly is the manner in which children learn? Why do parents, who send their young children for tuition, feel the need even after the children have come back from a full day at school? The reason for this is pure and simple competition between parents, about whose child is a better student, a better learner and more intelligent. What these parents forget is it is actually the competition between themselves that their child is sucked into.

Even within schools, the story is the same. There is immense competition encouraged between students, to be the best in everything. This is the reason that tests and exams are conducted on such a regular basis and grades and honours’ standing awarded to those securing the highest percentages. For all the talk of learning amongst educational policymakers and practitioners, there is a surprising lack of attention to what learning actually entails. For example, theories of learning do not figure strongly in professional education programmes for teachers and those within different areas of informal education. It is almost as if it is something that is unproblematic and can be taken for granted. Get the teaching methodology and the curriculum right, the message seems to be, and learning (as measured by tests and assessments) will follow. This lack of attention to the nature of learning inevitably leads to an impoverishment of education. It isn't simply that the process is less effective as a result, but what passes for education can actually diminish well-being.

Young children learn by doing. The work of Piaget (1950, 1972), Montessori (1964), Erikson (1950), and other child development theorists and researchers (Elkind, 1986; Kamii, 1985) has demonstrated that learning is a complex process that results from the interaction of children's own thinking and their experiences in the external world. Maturation is an important contributor to learning because it provides a framework from which children's learning proceeds. As children get older, they acquire new skills and experiences that facilitate the learning process. For example, as children grow physically, they are more able to manipulate and explore their own environment. Also, as children mature, they are more able to understand the point of view of other people.

Knowledge is not something that is given to children as though they were empty vessels to be filled. Children acquire knowledge about the physical and social worlds in which they live through playful interaction with objects and people. Children do not need to be forced to learn; they are motivated by their own desire to make sense of their world.

This article discusses the basis of learning. How learning takes place and how it should take place are two different concepts. We all want our children to learn, but when it comes to contributing towards their learning, we teach them what we want them to know and expect them to remember everything. We tend to forget the fact that young children are young explorers and they learn best when exploring, experimenting and experiencing the world around them.

We begin by understanding the four categories of learning that are relevant to the education of young children:

Knowledge:
In early childhood, knowledge consists of facts, concepts, ideas, vocabulary, and stories. A child acquires knowledge from someone's answers to his questions, explanations, descriptions and accounts of events as well as through observation.

Skills:
Skills are small units of action which occur in a relatively short period of time and are easily observed or inferred. Physical, social, verbal, counting and drawing skills are among a few of the almost endless number of skills learned in the early years. Skills can be learned from direct instruction and improved with practice and drill.

Dispositions:
Dispositions can be thought of as habits of mind or tendencies to respond to certain situations in certain ways. Curiosity, friendliness or unfriendliness, bossiness, and creativity are dispositions or sets of dispositions. Dispositions are not learned through instruction or drill. The dispositions that children need to acquire or to strengthen--curiosity, creativity, cooperation, friendliness--are learned primarily from being around people who exhibit them. A child who is to learn a particular disposition must have the opportunity to behave in a manner that is in keeping with the disposition. If that occurs, then the child's behavior can be responded to, and thus strengthened. Teachers can reinforce certain dispositions by setting learning goals rather than performance goals. A teacher who says, "Let's see how much we can find out about something," rather than, "I want to see how well you can do," encourages children to focus on what they are learning rather than on their performance.

Feelings:
These are subjective emotional states, many of which are innate. Among those that are learned are feelings of competence, belonging, and security. Feelings about school, teachers, learning and other children are also learned in the early years.

Children Learn Through Interaction
Contemporary research confirms the view that young children learn most efficiently when they are engaged in interaction rather than in merely receptive or passive activities. Young children should be interacting with adults, materials and their surroundings in ways which help them make sense of their own experience and environment. They should be investigating and observing aspects of their environment worth learning about, and recording their findings and observations in discussion, paintings and drawings. Interaction that arises in the course of such activities provides a context for much social and cognitive learning.

Observing Children’s Learning Styles
In your classroom you observe a four-year-old in the block area is creating a house, while his friend carefully balances each addition to The Tallest Building in the World. Or you notice a three-year-old splashing away water at the table; while another child keeps punching dough in the kitchen area to get it into the shape of her choice. Action, reaction, concentration, problem solving, decision making, joy – whether your classroom or your home – the atmosphere is alive with discovery as children approach learning opportunities in countless ways.

Children may be sharing the same class or the same house, they investigate, learn, and process using a combination of several different approaches and learning styles. The learning styles presented here are not measures of intelligence or descriptions of temperament; rather, they are a way of describing children's different approaches to living and learning. One day a child may jump in without hesitation and try something totally new; another time, that same child may hold back just a little, needing to watch what is happening and size things up before getting involved. Both approaches are fine; the child is finding out what works for her/him in a particular situation.

Let's look at some of the different approaches to learning, keeping in mind that this is a time in the lives of young children when they should be encouraged to explore, shift, combine, and enjoy their learning styles and interests.

Learning through Symbols
Four-year-old Faiza loves writing and inventive spelling. She's comfortable with pencils, paper, pictures, and using words to express herself. She'll sit for quite a while just looking at stories and their illustrations, listening and playing with new words, drawing and painting. She is learning a lot by working with symbols and through other two-dimensional activities.

Another four-year-old Munim plays vigorously with blocks, cardboard, tape, and wooden figures, creating worlds of imagination. Using blocks, he designs an entire city for his family, including garages, cars and buses. His whole body is involved in his work - clambering, twisting and balancing - as he narrates his own play: "Here's the cat. Watch out. Get the car in the garage. Quick! Bad guy coming." This is three-dimensional activity. Though an entirely different approach than Faiza’s, Munim's play tells you that he is learning by working with concrete objects, taking in and making up worlds.

In many ways these two children are not so different from one another, as both enjoy learning and expressing themselves creatively.

Both two-dimensional and three-dimensional activities give children opportunities to express themselves creatively. Taqi may need encouragement to write or draw, and his teacher could suggest that he make up stories, poems, songs, or a painting about his worlds. A child who seems to prefer two-dimensional activities can be encouraged to tell her stories using puppets or creative movement.

Leaping in or Taking Things a Step at a Time
Do you have children like Reem in your class? At three, she is filled with curiosity about the world and most things in it. Thrilled with her selection of collage materials -- cotton balls, glue and pencil sharpenings she is totally absorbed in her art project. Her simultaneous approach to learning is much like the swimmer who jumps right into the pool rather than testing the water or deciding to use the steps. Often risk takers, children involved in a simultaneous approach to learning forge ahead and are sometimes as surprised as they are delighted with their creations.

Fawad, another child in Reem's class, approaches learning in a different way. Making a collage sounds like lots of fun, but rather than jump right in, he looks at the available choices, collects what he thinks he'll need, and may even line up his materials before he begins. Since he's taking a sequential approach to this particular task, Fawad may already have an idea of just what he wants to do with the materials or how he wants the end result to look. When things seem organized and perhaps tested out a bit, he works fairly methodically. However, it is important to remember that this tidy style doesn't mean that he lacks creativity or imagination.

Whether a child chooses to approach learning simultaneously or sequentially can be affected not only by that child's attitude toward life but also, and more simply, by the mood of the day, the particular circumstances or materials, or even a whim. Both approaches offer children interesting insights and opportunities to learn. Activities where children can express themselves in these ways need to be readily available in early childhood settings. If a child seems to be reluctant to veer from a sequential approach, a few suggestions or open-ended questions may do the trick: "Fawad, what do you think will happen if we take a few of these colors and just mix them up? Let's find out. We can always go back and do it another way later." Offering safe ways to try new methods, such as helping children see that planning doesn't have to inhibit creativity or that discovery can be just as fulfilling as a specific result, can broaden children's involvement in learning.

Relating Patterns or Separating Categories
Soha a four-year-old is delighted in making connections. Gazing alertly around her world, she discovers patterns everywhere. From her vantage point, she sees and shares similarities and differences, observing comparisons and even making simple analogies. "You know that story we read about two sisters and how one is jealous of the other? I got jealous at my sister's birthday when she got all the presents”. The child is connecting her own experiences with literature, other children, and movies.

Both connecting and compartmentalizing contribute to children's insights and understanding of the world around them. Ideally, we would all grow to be adept at both, and certainly early childhood is a great time to begin. For innate connectors, links are irresistible: Single facts or notions spawn webs and networks of thoughts and ideas. This is a delightful learning process to encourage! There may be times when you want to help focus a child immersed in connecting, involving her in sorting by category or discussing how items are similar or different. Choose stories to read together by saying: "What would you like to read about?" As you read - and afterwards - take time to discuss what you've each noticed in the book.

"Look What I Made!" or "I Can Do That!"
In the art area in your class, one child picks up a sheet of paper and starts drawing Winnie the Pooh from her memory. She draws exactly from memory the Winnie the Pooh cartoon she watched on TV a couple of days ago. On the other hand, another child sits at the table and first thinks through what he wants to draw and then begins by looking at the story in front of him about Peter the Rabbit, reproducing the character how he sees fit. Like many of the other approaches to learning, both inventing and reproducing are valuable processes to take through life, and both need to be encouraged in early childhood settings. Children who are prone to invent may need help learning how to categorize. You might suggest they start collections -- leaves, labels, or pictures from magazines of pets, clouds, and favorite things.

Encourage the reproducer to stretch this learning style by presenting him with potential inventing situations. Offering a bag of materials - cardboard paper rolls, tape, different-sized tin cans, a bunch of feathers, leaves, gold, silver, and black paint - you might say, "What could we make from these that could help us if we went into space?"

In conclusion, adults need to understand the learning process and be able to identify the patterns children encounter throughout their childhood. A child needs to be understood, both physically and mentally, in order to gain the appropriate tools to succeed as an adult. Theories set guidelines that parents, teachers, etc. can follow in order to achieve that goal. Learning is a difficult thing, but because we have so many ideas and theories as to why children process it is easier to teach the necessary, age appropriate, environmentally correct lessons. Letting children know that you respect their learning approaches will encourage special talents and tendencies to grow. Drawing children into learning opportunities where they feel safe stretching mental muscles in new ways not only broadens their horizons but also helps children feel better about themselves as active, able learners.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sarah is an Advocacy and Publications Associate at Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) and has acquired a two year diploma in Early Childhood Education (ECE) from Sheriden College in Canada. She has a vast experience in developing and conducting workshops for pre-primary teachers.