Learning and the Malleability of Children There are as many definitions of learning as there are dictionaries, psychologists, and educators. Ellington & Harris (1986) see learning as "a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from past experience or purposeful instruction." Page & Thomas (1977) stress that "it is important to realize that learning need not be correct, deliberate, or overt." Whatever the school of thought, in modern pedagogy learning is characterized by a change in the stable relationship between a stimulus that an individual perceives, and the response that is made, either covertly or overtly. Learning, in other words, is "behavioral modification especially through experience or conditioning" (The American Heritage Dictionary).
By definition, then, learning infers malleability, i.e. adaptability, tractability of the organism subjected to internal or external forces which modify its active and reactive status. To understand how any organism learns, one must first understand the nature and extent of its malleability and the dynamism of its altered state. Two questions spring to mind: "What does it take to cause behavioral changes in the child? and "How permanent are these changes?" And the fundamental question is: "How plastic is the developing organism called 'child'?"
One wonders also as to the variables that cause or otherwise affect plasticity in the child in terms of behavioral acquisitions--suc
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