Process Learning

The process model conceives of education: "in terms of its processes rather than its products and must be approached and planned by reference to the kinds of activities and experience that constitute it than to the outcomes it is hoped it will lead to ... the major emphasis is on the processes of development it sets out to promote, so that if it can be said to be concerned with products or outcomes, these will be defined in terms of intellectual development and cognitive functioning rather than in terms of quantities of knowledge absorbed or changes of behavioural performance." (Blenkin, G. M.& Kelly, A.V. (1981). The primary curriculum. London: Harper and Row, p. 89)

A process model of curriculum development focuses on providing opportunity for experiences which educators have identified as offering intellectual challenge through thinking tasks and problem solving without identifying singular outcomes. In teaching information skills within a process model, students should be encouraged to actively engage in information rather than to listen unquestioningly as they receive the knowledge of others. Not only do students learn by doing, they also need to reflect on the learning process itself so that when a situation arises where information skills are called for, they can create a plan to address their needs drawing on their own understanding of previous knowledge and interpretation. In this way they take control of the learning process and are able to transfer their skills from one situation to another. The relationship of the learner to the information source is direct whereby student learning is a personal interpretation rather than translation of the teacher's experience. Learners construct their own framework of understanding to make meaning of a subject and convert it into personal knowledge. This kind of internal processing encourages the use of metacognition whereby students question what they need to know and identify the means to obtaining needed information.

An example of teaching information skills using the process model is problem solving that is at least partly initiated by students as a result of interest in a topic. This requires that students identify and interpret information to produce knowledge for themselves. They must identify what they need to know and how they will search for what they need. It draws on their own life experience and information-handling experience and exposes the process of assessing the problem, finding and interpreting, and suggesting solutions as equally important. Information skills are exposed as essential learning tools in the quest for solutions to the problem and find obvious merit in part of the thinking process. False starts, wrong turns, and unsubstantiated conclusions are legitimate pathways and acceptable behaviours because they mirror true active learning as it shapes new ways of thinking.

The best way to integrate the process model is through an integrated currculum rather than individual disciplines because the former is more likely to foster the view that information skills are generic learning tools and are connected across all disciplines. Teachers who value process learning emphasize how students learn to find out about a subject as much as what they eventually discover about the subject material itself. Students who are involved with creating personal meaning are engaged in finding information, reading, taking notes, discussing ideas, and presenting their findings to the class. On a daily basis, they discuss how they learn the necessary skills and strategies that make them successful self-directed investigators. In effect, they think about how they think and learn, openly analyze problems they have in completing a task, and take charge of mapping out alternate strategies that will help them accomplish it.

Resource-based learning provides a framework for the articulation of the learning process throughout the school because it involves researching topics. Moving the process of investigation into daily classroom activities identifies it as an important part of learning and consequently elevates the nature of the research process in the minds of students. Presenting questions and topics to be explored rather than distributing packaged information serves as an enormous stimulus to provoke inquiring minds into thought and action. Learners are encouraged to discover and re-invent for themselves the very information they need to learn. This active participation makes learning meaningful and memorable because it becomes a personal voyage of discovery as opposed to a teacher-manufactured textbook of information.

Process learning addresses the development of information literacy skills as an ongoing exploration which begins during the early school years and potentially continues throughout a lifetime. Unfortunately, learning of these critical skills is often given only one or two hours training each year at the elementary, secondary, and university level even though they take years to master. Educators who introduce resource-based programmes in the classroom provide opportunities for students to learn about the process of learning. They also acknowledge the role of this process in learning throughout a lifetime and serve to model how it provides a fundamental support structure in all future learning endeavours.