Learning comes as natural to us as drinking water or craving a banana cream pie. We learn throughout our lives both formally and naturally through informal channels and experience. In education we have different styles of learning. Each of them relates in some ways to our methods of understanding and providing sensory experiences that deepen learning can help. While there may be different styles, each codes information on a neural level. Understanding how learning leads to unique solutions and deep knowledge is helpful for finding ways to foster similar learning with other students.
Types of Learning StylesWhile formal learning can provide us specific skills, theory, and expose us to best practices learned within a field over many years, it is often the informal learning that can be the most profound. We often call this experience and some people can create a manager's gut feeling that hedges formal and informal experience to make the best decisions. In some that deeper learning can lead to more accurate thinking.
Most Learning is SubconsciousLet us consider that most gifted people's brains are wired differently, and they have excitabilities that impact their learning in a way that most can't emulate (It is part of biology). This is why there is a difference between smart and gifted. The gifted dig deep into formal learning but also use their informal learning processes rooted in some of their overexcitabilities to deeply process information from their environment and fields of study. Overexcitabilities are part of over stimulation related to information inputs. The smart often repeat others already know and have learned leading to A+ in class.
Gifted Learning StylesPattern detection and predictability are factors that gifted people often excel. They can process information on a deeper level and have enough formal knowledge to put it within useful framework. This is also why they sometimes make new scientific discoveries because on a deeper subconscious level they can connect concepts, ideate and then come to a new conclusion/prediction/model.
The process of cognitive leaps is often more common with some people where two different processes come to solve a major problem. Keep in mind that solving a problem using abstract conception requires the capacity to think in ways that others may have not done prior. It leads to a new solution. A level of profound creativity sometimes must occur to abstractly determine events, factors, and outputs.
Creative BreakthroughThe background of such learning is based in the deep neural processing of some gifted people and years of experience and background knowledge exploring ideas mentally and physically. Problem solving is abstract and one could make the argument that what sets gifted people up as different is this deep neural processing they were born with (i.e. the gifted curse with all of its traits.)
Neural LearningThis article is really more about exploring an idea of creative breakthroughs, cognitive leaps and gifted capacity. I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer here. However, a question rose about cellular learning and predictability of environment. Do we learn on a deep neural level automatically for survival and in turn creae problem resolutions? The gifted would seem to be a good place to look because they seem to have more creative breakthroughs in history.
*As a side thought could one create a sequence of learning that utilizes formal knowledge, mixed with lived experience and abstract problems to find those who can create the most unique and successful solutions? Those who give a canned answered learned well but those who created a solution went beyond that learning. Maybe or maybe not?
