Initiating learning

Learning processes are never at hand or evident. How we learn something is for the most part not visible for us and for others. Primarily, learning is carried out by implicit and unspoken attitudes and mindsets, as it is stimulated by more or less ungraspable former experiences. Furthermore, it is influenced by opaque actual happenings such as subtexts of a spoken text, by forms of bodily communication and interaction and by the material conditions of learning processes and their limitations. Thus, learning cannot be reduced to its visible side such as its tasks, to the conscious motives and to forms of controlling it. When looking at learning only as an explicit process, its taciturnity and, by this, the real challenges of educating, teaching and learning get out of sight. Therefore, the endeavor to initiate learning cannot but deal with its explicit as well with its tacit aspects.