Learning

I've been trying to consider this notion of "what is learning"?
At first I agreed that it was undefineable, but then I began to consider the evidence of learning. The ability for us to form new memories, experience, knowledge and meaning. So, maybe learning is the process of recieving sensory input, cognitive reasoning and creating and understanding all of these things? I started to consider even silly examples of learning.

1. I've learnt this week that my new next door neighbour has a dog. By experiencing a new sound in my home environment I questioned what the noise was and where it was coming from. My hypothesis was a new dog, but where? Soon I spotted it running in my next door neighboursgarden which I can see from my kitchen window. So even for something totally trivial, I can see that my learing was directed by a sensory experience, questioning the meaning of the sensory input in light of my preconceived ideas of my surroundings and using further investigation to come to a conclusion. 

It seems so trivial to consider such a thing to be learning, but it is, by definition. We learn, everyday in every circumstance. In a community setting, anyone of any age could learn something in the same way. Maybe they will learn from their doctor that decreasing the amount of sugar in their diet might help prevent diabetes. Maybe a child will learn how a slide works in a local playground. Maybe an elderly citizen will learn that they aren't as fit as they used to be walking around their town.

I've decided to base my ethnographic report on a town at the end of a train line. The town, Belgrave must surely have a different approach to life to my current home in Box Hill. I live about 10kkms from the city, Belgrave I think is about 30 kms from the city. So I've deduced from that that probably fewer people from the Belgrave would travel to the city of Melbourne! I'm not sure how to limit my community as I'm not sure how centralised the community is around this town. Maybe it ends when the train line ends? Maybe the community extends beyond that? I'm not sure.