The developmental and educational context: the emotional experience of learning

We also want to draw attention to how models of learning vary at different stages of development. Whatever the age of the child, there is an important distinction to be drawn between the two types of learning distinguished by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, as ‘learning about’ and ‘learning from experience’. The former is characterised by a lack of curiosity and the accumulation of facts and figures the latter by a gradual making sense of the world through one’s own experience of it.