Chapter 2 - How We Learn

Summary

This chapter reviews the basics of cognition, showing how old ideas about learning as storehouses of information, standing at the ready to address problems, have given way to much more complex notions about how our brains make meaning of information by attaching it – or not – to existing mental models. Meaning-making is not only vital to our survival as a species but also presents a challenge to our cognitive development. How we change our mental models is known as transformative learning, arguably the most important theory on adult learning in the last half-century.