Definition
Natural learning is the way that humans learn since birth. Natural learners set their own objectives in response to needs, frustration, and curiosity. They find and engage in tasks that help them to learn and seek feedback to monitor their progress and improve their performance. In other words, natural learning is self-motivated and self-directed learning.
Theoretical Background
Parents do not send their children to school to learn how to speak. How then do children learn to speak? The objective becomes obvious to children due to the frustration of being unable to communicate. Learning tasks allow for practice. Feedback is immediate and clear because adults love to help young learners. Applications of new knowledge are made so as to continue learning. Children take responsibility for all aspects of this “natural learning process.” Natural learning obviously works.
Adults often use the natural learning process...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ahlburg, D. A. (1992). Predicting the job performance of managers: what do the experts know? International Journal of Forecasting, 7, 467–472.
Armstrong, J. S. (1991). Prediction of consumer behavior by experts and novices. Journal of Consumer Research, 18, 251–256.
Armstrong, J. S. (1995). The devil’s advocate responds to an MBA student’s claim that research harms learning. Journal of Marketing, 59(July), 101–106.
Armstrong, J. S. (1996). Management Folklore and Management Science: on portfolio planning, escalation bias and such. Interfaces, 26(4), 28–42.
Armstrong, J. S. (1998). Are student ratings of instruction useful? American Psychologist, 53, 1223–1224.
Armstrong, J. S., & Schultz, R. (1993). Principles involving marketing policies: an empirical assessment. Marketing Letters, 4(3), 253–265.
Armstrong, J. S., & Sperry, T. (1994). Business school prestige: research versus teaching, (with commentary). Interfaces, 24, 13–22.
Attiyeh, R., & Lumsden, K. G. (1972). Some modern myths in teaching economics: the U.K. experience. American Economic Review, 62, 429–433.
Babcock, P. (2010). Real costs of nominal grade inflation? New evidence from student course evaluations. Economic Inquiry, 48, 983–996.
Babcock, P. S., & Marks, M., (2010). The falling cost of college: Evidence from half a century of time use data. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/papers/w15954.
Bacon, D. R., & Stewart, K. A. (2006). How fast do students forget what they learn in consumer behavior? A longitudinal study. Journal of Marketing Education, 28(3), 181–192.
Batson, C. D. (1975). Rational processing or rationalization? The effect of disconfirming evidence on a stated religious belief. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(1), 176–184.
Berg, I. (1970). Education and jobs: The great training robbery. New York: Praeger.
Carrell, S. E., & West, J. E. (2010). Does professor quality matter? Evidence from random assignment of students to professors. Journal of Political Economy, 118(3), 409–432.
Clayson, D. E. (2009). Student evaluations of teaching: are they related to what students learn? A meta-analysis and review of the literature. Journal of Marketing Education, 31(1), 16–30.
Condry, J. (1977). Enemies of exploration: self-initiated versus other-initiated learning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 459–477.
Dale, S. B., & Krueger, A. B. (2002). Estimating the payoff to attending a more selective college: an application of selection on observables and unobservables. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117, 1491–1527.
Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627–668.
Duckworth, A. I., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science, 16, 939–944.
Espenshade, T. J., & Radford, A. W. (2009). No longer separate, not yet equal: Race and class in Elite college admission and campus life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Furnham, A., Gunter, B., & Green, A. (1990). Remembering science: the recall of factual information as a function of the presentation mode. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 4(3), 203–212.
Gray, M., & Bergmann, B. R. (2003). Student teaching evaluation: inaccurate, demeaning, misused. Academe, 89(5), 44–46 (September–October).
Hanushek, E. A. (1999). Some findings from an independent investigation of the Tennessee STAR experiment and from other investigations of class size effects. Educational Evaluation and Policy-analysis, 21(2), 143–163.
Horwitz, S. K., & Horwitz, I. B. (2007). The effects of team diversity on team outcomes: a meta-analytic review of team demography. Journal of Management, 33, 987–1015.
Hunt, S. D., Chonko, L. B., & Wood, V. R. (1986). Marketing education and marketing success: are they related? Journal of Marketing Education, 6(Summer), 2–13.
Hunter, J. E., & Hunter, R. F. (1984). Validity and utility of alternative predictors of job performance. Psychological Bulletin, 96, 72–98.
Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: a meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 681–706.
Kealey, T. (1996). The economic laws of scientific research. London: Macmillan.
Kohn, A. (1986). No contest: The case against competition. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Kohn, A. (1993). Punished by rewards. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: a 35 year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57, 705–717.
McCabe, D. L., & Trevino, L. K. (1996). What we know about cheating in college. Change, 28(1), 29–33. January/February.
McCord, J. (1978). A thirty-year follow-up of treatment effects. American Psychologist, 33(3), 284–290.
Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriquez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244, 933–938.
Murray, C. (2008). Real education. New York: Crown Forum, an imprint of Random House.
Ofir, C., & Simonson, I. (2001). In search of negative customer feedback: the effect of expecting to evaluate on satisfaction evaluations. Journal of Marketing Research, 38, 170–182.
Robinson, P. (1994). Snapshots from hell. New York: Warner Books.
Roth, P. L., Bevier, C. A., Switzer, F. S., & Schippmann, J. S. (1996). Meta-analyzing the relationship between grades and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 548–556.
Tough, A. (1971). The adult’s learning projects. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Tough, A. (1982). Intentional changes. Chicago: Follett Publication.
Vaughan, E. D. (1977). Misperceptions about psychology among psychology students. Teaching of Psychology, 4(3), 138–141.
Winston, C. (2006). Government failure versus market failure. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Wolf, A. (2004). Education and economic performance: simplistic theories and their policy consequences. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 20, 315–333.
Acknowledgments
Dennis A. Ahlburg, Kay A. Armstrong, Donald R. Bacon, Fred Collopy, Andreas Graefe, Kesten Green, Brian Martin, Skip McCann, Frank Schmidt, Christophe van den Bulte, Herb Walberg, and Malcolm Wright made helpful suggestions. These acknowledgments do not imply that all agreed with my conclusions, of course. Rita Shen helped with the literature review. Kanica Allagh, Venu Amar, Jennifer L. Armstrong, Alexandra House, Grace Li, and Beverly Tantiansu edited the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this entry
Cite this entry
Armstrong, J.S. (2012). Natural Learning in Higher Education. In: Seel, N.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_994
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_994
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1427-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1428-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law